Wednesday Aug 23rd 2006 15.07
Chu Shu – Limit of Heat
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Solar fortnight beginning:
Wednesday Aug 23rd 2006 15.07
Hour Day Month Year
water wood fire fire
ren chia bing bing
shen shen shen xu
monkey monkey monkey dog
Month: bing shen the Fire Monkey.
Solar Fortnight: Chu Shu Limit of Heat
Monkeys
If you look ar the date set out above, you will spot that it includes no less than three monkeys. Out of a possible four. That’s a lot of monkeys.
Now a well-adjusted monkey is ingenious and gregarious, an adept and resourceful ally but a less-balanced group is just what it sounds like: naughty, inventive and shameless. As they are in the majority here, these are the qualities the month is likely to feature.
And I don’t mean incidentally to slander 8% of my readership; anyone whose ba zi (that is moment of birth) includes monkey energy has some understanding of this
chi. This includes those born in August and the late afternoon as well 1932,1944,1956, 1968, 1980 and 1992 which includes me by the way.
The Chinese divination system based on dates works on the premise that the chi at the instant that the solar fortnight starts rules the fortnight. The same is true for a year, a month, a day or even an hour.
August is always ruled by the monkey of course but the odds are we are in for a whole parcel of mischief this fortnight. That’s the tenor of the time – whether in regard to personal, public or global events: see no evil, see no evil and see no evil.
Incoming Dragon
Back from Tuscany where we stayed with our friends Carlo and Marietta Reyneri. I had not been to Tuscany before. It was low and flat as I had expected, bordered with hills and punctuated with shady olive groves. From Capalbio we could see across the plain to the where the mountains push gently out to sea. This is classically where the Incoming Dragon sits. Although I could not see it, pointing at the dragon was also to point at Orbetello, the nearest major town which is exactly what you would expect.
The landscape was flat, floaty and flyaway. Not a place where people would concentrate; a lazy shimmery place, miles and miles of sunflowers and maize. The house was like the landscape, lots of doors, no clear orientaion; it could have been facing any of three directions. Interesting.
It was even more interesting when flying back, we were caught in the security chaos following the arrests of the 11th and 12th. Monkeys.
More Monkeys
I am invited onto a pilot for a tv “documentary” on feng shui for BBC3. I agree because you never know what they may turn into but these invitations are not always what they seem. In June, for example, one regional BBC radio producer contacted my agent asking me onto a show. It turned out to be hosted by a boisterous little chap doing an impression of Chris Moyles for his modest catchment. I only found this out when I was on air. It was in theory a phone-in show but his was the only voice I heard.
“So you claim feng shui is going to help us win the World Cup, do you?” he demanded without so much as a good morning..
This is not an entirely fatuous question of course but I had made no such claim.
“Just how exactly?” he railed. “My front room. Come on. Come on.”
This was no time to explain that feng shui is 70% out of doors or that décor is mostly fine tuning. Or to ask if he still lived with his Mum.
“Sofa backing onto a wall, open space in front.”
“Which wall? There’s a radiator on one and french windows and a door on the others.”
I didn’t know.
“So it’s radiator or French Windows?”
“That’s right, pal. Make up your mind.”
“Radiator,” I blurted.
“So this bloke says we’ll win the World Cup if we all back our sofas onto our radiators.”
And then he was gone: onto the next caller.
Stuart Goldsmith who was presenting the alleged tv pilot no longer lives with his Mum. He is a standup with boyish good looks and a quick wit who lives in a gated complex in Peckham. The door to his flat was eccentrically angled to the North West – into the tai sui or year animal; facing the Dog, exactly where you wouldn’t want it this year. Odd because the open front porch faces tse, the Rat, in the North.
“So I should get a dog?” he asks with practised disingenuity.
The crew of three are all blokes in their 20’s and 30’s. Monkeys. We are in a small overfurnished first floor sitting room. It would not take genius to note the floor lost under a carpet of dvd’s and mugs and conclude this is the home of a young single bloke.
The mood is like Top Gear, not actually unlike the Chris Moyles wanna-be’s radio show described above. What the lads appear to have in mind is something like a new age Brainiac-Science Abuse. Young lads asking irreverent questions. They want good television and they don’t much care how they get it. Stuart is quite like the young guy on Top Gear: I’ve forgotten his name; not Jeremy Clarkson, the other one.
I am a little taken aback but at the end of the day, however much time I have spent contemplating the Tao, I am a bloke. As Zhuang Tse remarked: “Tidiness and untidiness both have their beauty.”
“So what would you do with this room to help me?” Stuart asks with an endearing smile. He is a charming bloke; I have a son just four days younger.We are on camera now. “I mean I know you can move things around to do stuff. Where do I put things? Or do I move what I’ve already got? Where to and why? What is feng shui?”
He talks very quickly.
“That depends a lot on what you want.”
“What would you say if I said I want a serious longterm relationship?”
“I’d say I’m astonished,” I reply, looking at the surrounding squalor, then at him. “You’re not good at monogamy.” This, if we examine his ba zi (or personal feng shui) is not the half of it. He looks back unable not to acknowledge the accuracy of this but doing his best to keep his endorsement from the other three guys. “But if you did, classically there are two places to look. First the SouthWest.”
“That’s where?” he says wheeling, “Over there?” We agree where South West is.
“That’s the Relationship area? So I cover this in pink? Is pink a girly colour in feng shui? What else do I do? Pink, right?” Questions are shot at me like pellets. He doesn’t wait for answers. It’s hard to keep up.
“The South West is the realm of kun the Mother, whose number is two and who being a mother, may know something about relationship.”
“And that’s it?” he asks excitedly. “I place things there, relationship sorted? How much do you charge? Who are your clients? Do you charge better-off people more?”
“No Stuart, calm down. A relationship takes two.”
“I’m with you. Got any A-listers? Pamela Anderson?”
“And we need to look at the area relating to the other half of the relationship.”
“The bloke?”
“Exactly. He lives in the North West.”
“So we check that area? Where the Dog is?”
“Yes.”
“So I’m a Dog?”
“No, Stuart.”
“I should get a dog?”
“We’ve been there.”
“So blokey stuff NorthWest?”
“Yes. Often I survey for ladies who have read a bit of feng shui and the South West is all crystals, turtle doves and Klimt prints.”
“Which is wrong?”
“Which is incomplete.”
“It takes two to tango?”
“Exactly. Very often what is needed is attention to the North West which is where the mature man is. Qian, the Father.”
“And what do we do there?”
“Nothing this year because your door is facing the Dog.”
“And I don’t need a dog? What about my dvd’s?” he asks pointing at a storage tower jutting out of the chaos. “Les Dennis?”
I think this is an A-list question. Is Les Dennis A-List?
I look around at the crowded room; an unpromising L-shape, perhaps 15 foot by 15, dominated by a heavy chest of drawers with open drawers spilling bric-a-brac, a vast chaotic bookshelf and no less than three sofas as well as a huge tv. In the North West. “Mostly what you need to do is get rid of stuff.” I look closely at the dvd storage. His taste includes violence and mayhem but open on the floor is “It’s a Wonderful Life” and is that “Brief Encounter” I can see?
“You don’t want to let that Richard Hammond see these,” I say. I’ve remembered the name. That’s the guy – the other one from Top Gear: Richard Hammond, the lad of lads. For the first time Stuart is quiet. It is the first time I am aware of him drawing breath. He has coloured.
“What then? “ he asks with something approaching but not arriving at, respect.
“Move the bookcase to the North East against the wall. Give yourself back support, back one sofa onto it and lose the rest. Make space in front. Move the tv out of the tai sui and place some water at 155° in the South East and a solid male figure where the tv is, facing in. Get rid of the chest of the drawers and tidy up.”
The lads confer. Can they do this in the timescale? No, they’ve only got 20 minutes.
Monkeys.
Feedback is encouraged including that you never want to hear from me again if that happens to be the case.
Richard Ashworth
If this is not quite enough for you, my voice is featured on myspiritradio. Programmes change monthly. My guest this month is Gill Hale, author of the Feng Shui Encyclopedia.
My new super-duper revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info
Richardashworthfengshui@hotmail.com
No names have been changed to protect anybody this fortnight