Thursday June 21st 2008 08.57

The Bees’ Knees

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Thursday June 21st 2008 08.57

Hour  Day  Month  Year

wood         water     earth              earth

chia          ren          wu                  wu

zhen        zhen        wu                  tze

dragon         dragon         horse                    rat

Month:                wu wu      the earth Horse

Solar Fortnight:  ha gee     Summer Solstice

The Bees’ Knees

The Hibiscus that sits in its pot outside my office door to the South East next to the water feature, has not flowered this year. More than halfway through the summer, I am worried.

There are no bees in Sichuan Province in China. They have been wiped out wholesale by overuse of pesticides: a sort of apine Bhopal disaster. Since no beans or fruit will grow without pollination, many see the worldwide collapse of the bee population as a more pressing crisis than global warming. Some of these may be bees: unrecognised by any of the industrial conciliation bodies, colonies of the creatures, perhaps tired of being bussed from pillar to post, kept in cramped conditions and forced into high yields, may be protesting the only way they know how. There are bees – both bumble and worker- on the South Downs but they aren’t bothering my Hibiscus. It just gets greener and greener without any sign of a bloom.

My mother died just before the Summer Solstice and my father three years before her, precisely on Midsummer’s Day. He was that sort of man; to him everything was explicable and measurable. He would not have wanted to die a day too early or a day too late.

Ha gee and dung gee, respectively the Summer and Winter Solstices, are traditionally the time the old slip away. At Midsummer the energy is too rapid to resist if you’re in two minds abour hanging on and in the winter it’s so easy to float into the dying of the light. Government mortality statistics apparently back this up.

I have been surveying homes and offices all over the place: today’s task is Theresa’s flat in Bayswater which appears to have been cut off from the chi that sweeps down Queensway from Hyde Park. A Master I studied with claimed one of the 20-odd Chinese restaurants on this street had perfect feng shui and advised a visit. I think it belonged to his Auntie. But the roadblock on Westbourne Grove does seem to have slowed everything up. Even the midsummer dust is staying East of the Serpentine. For Theresa I conclude, this may not be such a bad idea.

Her apartment block appears to face East. That is to say that the road it opens onto is to the East, the direction of wood. Facing direction is a tricky issue in feng shui, one over which Masters can reach for their numchuks, because measuring it correctly dictates so much of what we do with a building. A lot of hoo-hah is raised over the location of the front door but we generally know where that is because we entered through it. The front door tells us mainlywhere the human chi, the nail parings, dropped hairs and fuzz enter, the rear bricks or sitting position tell us about the nature of the house. Front doors move; generally bricks don’t.

There are two principal considerations in identifying the sitting direction (and therefore the facing which is opposite):

  1. Where the land is lower is the front.
  2. Where the luopan (compass) measurement is a still kua (don’t ask) is the rear

Following these criteria, Theresa’s house faces West. Metal not wood and the chi comes in at the back. Her ba zi (or personal feng shui) is predominantly wood. A strong wood person can be resolute to the point of obduracy. The last thing she needs is more wood to make her more stuck, which is what she’d get from the East. Equally she has told me that her fillings may be leaking mercury so she doesn’t want to face metal either. What she tells me she really wants is fire which for her means work, activity and expression. Interesting. It takes me a while but the cogs whir and I realise the house needs to pick up fire chi.

As I leave Theresa, Karen’s email on my Blackberry reminds me that I told her about the relationship between the Solstice and the aged some time ago. Now her mother has died at last: on June 21st. Her mother’s passing has not been easy and I’m not sure this knowledge has helped Karen any. Karen runs a pr business in the West Country. The email actually says that the way she feels right now she could walk away from everything except Roger, her husband. I email back that I’m glad she’s keeping Roger. Roger’s ba zi says he has a book to write.

Midsummer obviously enough, is dominated by fire energy especially in a Rat year like this one which is otherwise ruled by water. Fire concerns itself with such issues as fame, imagination and intellectual curiosity. And pr. All my pr clients have had to be resourceful this year. One is so resourceful she hasn’t noticed the difficulty. This may be connected to the fact that we have artfully focused all the available chi in SW2 into her couple of thousand square feet and her gels are hanging from the rafters as they complete deal after deal.

But this has not been an easy year for Karen with clients making impossible demands or going into liquidation We have done a few tricks around the office and she continues to prosper but there have been obstacles.

Back at Starbucks, Kurt’s name shows up on the messages screen as I sip the venti latte I have been promising myself all day. I feel an anticipatory twinge as I remember that his workstation faces South into fire and that among his current projects is a series of workshops for celebrities. He tells me he is owed money he can’t afford to wait for while the Inland Revenue help out with fresh bills. He says he hasn’t encountered anything like this since 1998. 1998 has much in common with 2008, I tell him. Years ending in 8, you may recall, all being substantially yang earth, are a cycle all to themselves. The clearest parallel may be 1968 with its troubled contest for the Democratic nomination but let’s not go there. What’s likely is that Karl will find instructive parallels between 2008 and 1998.

There’s so much in these cycles. In the folding papers this week there’s lots about the Emperor Hadrian

“If there is value in looking at life in terms of cycles, it is surely to learn,” I suggest.

“Learn what?” he asks.

“Whatever you missed ten years ago,” is my suggestion.

“What sort of thing?”

“It will be wrapped up in a feeling you don’t want to have.”

“Aren’t they all?”

 “And concern an issue that was live then and is live again now.”

“Someone not paying me?”

“Could be; it’ll certainly feel like that. Tax bills too, I expect.”

Later that week we place water very carefully in his apartment at a location in the SouthWest. Never, by the way, place water in the South West unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

Anyone for Tennis?

My children fancy Nadal for the men’s singles. In keeping with the year, major sporting events have fallen to those in red or red and white: Spain, Wales, Liverpool, Manchester United. As a Spaniard Nadal is the obvious choice. Joey, my 13-year old wants to put money on this but fortunately Betfred won’t let him in.

Karl emails again to tell me he has re-considered the current crisis in the light of what I said and it feels better. It turns out that 1998 was a mirror image of the current situation: tax bills and all. Good old ba zi. He has been in contact with his major debtor and there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. For light read money.

This has demanded deep introspection. He has had to feel into the unhealed wounds of a decade ago. This will heal them of course but it is rarely a comfortable process.

Most of us appear to be trying not to feel most of the time – with food and drink and tv and reassurance. The universe seems to have in mind that we should feel nonetheless and it keeps throwing back at us those feelings we have not completed. This is the tao.

“Sometimes,” I tell Karl, “I think this all the advice I ever give.”

“That and where to place water,” he says.

Men constitute perhaps 30% of my clientele. One like Karl who will dig into his inner life is very unusual. And girls, he’s single.

Foundation and Empire: the Curse of Nes lai

My daughter Jessie who as an actress is more yoked than most to the Horse of fame, has also had a demanding year. A cereal ad in January with a shoot in Toronto has kept her in frocks but is not particularly cv-boosting. In fact the confusion over work permits which threatened to leave her banned from North America for life suggests the reverse. It seems a long time since her last (and first) big movie was reviewed in Empire.

The ad was for a major Swiss food conglomerate. One that buys out English chocolate manufacturers and oversells powdered milk. She has on principle never worked for them before but a girl has to do what a girl has to do. I’m a vegetarian but anytime I think that puts me on the moral high ground it is time for a Big Mac.

But the ad was in the winter which is ruled by the Rat and her ba zi tends to make best use of the fire chi towards the middle of the year. That’s now. This year, however, I have not been able to use the Southern part of the house to support her. I have only been able to draw fire into the nearby South East which represents the eldest daughter (and is a particularly favoured location this year) otherwise we risk a plague of boils. I trust all this will move with the Solstice. In the meantime of course, we have worked with her ba zi.

On many surveys this year, I have identified action that needs to be taken in the North or South of buildings, only to add that it can’t be done until next year. Pretty much all the nasty portents from wasp nests to ccjs are gathered with the fire chi in the South this year and of course we never disturb the year animal, this year in the North. Theresa’s home has been full of such postdated advice. Oddly though we have found more than one place that my calculations suggest should be red (that is fire) and that will tend to bring in along with work a new relationship which is one of her priorities. One of these locations is what is called the toe far or Plumflower spot which relates to the facing direction of the apartment building.

“As red as you like,” I say when we reach her bedroom. I’m not sure Theresa’s impressed but she is game. I can only respect that; it’s not that easy to dive headlong into this mumbo jumbo.

Jessie of course has been brought up on mumbo jumbo but this year she has had to be so brave. Unless you have done it you may struggle to understand exactly how hard it is to give 100% to casting after casting and then not die of rejection when you don’t get the job. Many times she has cried and cursed and talked of joining the Foreign Legion, but she has never truly wavered. Anyway the Legion won’t take her because she’s too short.

Next day I’m back in my office at home and at this interesting juncture our drains back up. The Hibiscus and myself exchange enquiring looks. One otherwise well-placed Southern outflow is brimming with raw sewage. There are a number of ways of looking at this. All of them involve holding your nose. Well I’ve sold a couple of books and done some tv but Hello are not queuing up to film my garden parties. I need to be awake to the perils of fame and there will be more interpretation to draw from this but it is more immediately to do with Jessie. Fame is her stock-in-trade.

There is in the Tong Sing, the Chinese Almanac, no mention of an auspicious time to leave sewage to back up. So we simply – against all the odds – get a plumber out immediately. The fact that he is here within an hour is so remarkable that we must, I think, be dealing with this right. Under the storeroom floor it’s like the last day of  a rock festival. It looks like he may need SCUBA equipment. Even this hardened sniffer’s nose wrinkles but he is prepared to apply his various rods and suckers and soon we are faeces-free. Tomorrow he’s off to Greece for three weeks, he tells us cheerfully. He has a house out there. It’s a different way of life. Britain’s full of foreigners.

Almost as the faecal matter disappears, the phone rings and Jessie has a big job on Casualty. It is another sort of breakthrough also: she is not to be a cute kid but a pintsized femme fatale. The phone goes again and she has a casting for a dream part in a movie.

Theresa emails to tell me cautiously that she may have met someone. Karl has received most of his money. Karen’s receptionist thanks me for healing the stye in her eye, apparently sttributable to computer radiation, that has been cured with a crystal and some mumbo jumbo. Jessie celebrates with a jar of Yves St Laurent foundation.

Must be something in this stuff. Feng Shui I mean, not slap.

Richard Ashworth © 2008

Names have been changed to protect..uh…me.

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This has not been an easy year altogether for Karen whose business is pr: clients making impossible demands or going into liquidation. We have done a few tricks around the office and she continues to prosper but there have been obstacles.

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