Wednesday March 5th 2008 13.13
A High Wind in Basingstoke
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Solar fortnight beginning:
Wednesday March 5th 2008 13.13
Hour Day Month Year
metal wood wood earth
xun chia yi mow
wei zhen muw tze
sheep dragon rabbit rat
Month: yi muw the wood Rabbit
Solar Fortnight: ging jit excited insects
A High Wind in Basingstoke
It’s a funny old year the Earth Rat. Ging jit means the insects are awakening as they always do at this time. And putting their heads straight back down, I shouldn’t wonder. The Spring winds have been so fierce and each year they get more so. Still as my friend Delilah was telling me over the weekend, in the Caribbean there is a hurricane season. Maybe as global warming sets in we’ll get our own.
As a little girl she loved to go out in the hurricane, she tells me. I was brought up in Cornwall and I recall waking to the high winds and the cry of seagulls. Living by the sea was a powerful part of my formation. When I am surveying coastal property, whether it’s Bognor, Bristol or Jamaica, I remember.
There is a tradition that coastal settlements are artistic: take Liverpool or Brighton as examples. More writers, more painters, more jewel makers per square foot than anywhere inland. Why would this be? I think it is that the energy bounced back from the sea is so mixed. The trick in doing feng shui by the coast is to close up a building to all but the chi that is appropriate. I never forget that the Inland Revenue Enforcement office is in Worthing.
So when Nick emails me to tell me that the chi trail I have set up to his Sussex office has proved so strong that as well as customers and investors and more business than he has seen before, schoolchildren, tourists and the occasional drunk have started turning up on his doorstep, I am unsurprised.
” I have a potential investor at long last too.”
Well hurrah: no side-effect, as they say in pharmacy, no central effect.
One aspect of this unusual year is that everything to the South is suspect. Whether we are talking about an office, a building, a city, a nation or the world, the South is hogging the poor portents. In that direction lie what are picturesquely called the Three Killings as well as wu huang, the Five Yellow. These unsavoury auspices must be respected. Do not disturb them lightly: no digging, refurbishment, hammering or plumbing there. The worst position to sit this year is South facing due North. The converse (North facing South) however is among the best.
I make sure I am up to date with the birth details of Nick’s staff and suggest a visit.
Approaching from the North, of course. We don’t want any plagues of boils.
All this and Lillian Too
At the beginning of this Wood Rabbit month (see the top of the page if you are already flummoxed) in this Earth Rat year, Lillian Too, who is to feng shui what Madonna is to rock’n’roll, unveiled her predictions for the coming year. These Extravaganzas attract thousands in Singapore and Malaysia. This is the first time she has risked one in London.
As it happens, this is my second consecutive day in London with Ms Too. What I mean is that the last time she presented here – over ten years ago – I was also present. I am the only person in the audience of whom this is true. There are perhaps two hundred of us. It’s not Singapore but Lillian’s energy and enthusiasm are undimmed. For six hours or so she whizzes back forth on the stage communicating her uniquely practical take on the year’s probable events, somewhere between a politician on the stump and a stand up comic.
In the lunch break I pick up an email from Monty. He is gay and recovering from the recent end of a long relationship. I surveyed his house a few weeks ago. Money and power were ambitions but relationship was the urgent one, so I gave him some specific instruction for his bedroom. Now he wants me to check out his mother’s business. I guess he must have got lucky.
Lillian is a charming and wise woman. I notice when we meet that she doesn’t really remember me and the realness of her well-managed embarrassment is rather touching.
This is a year lacking fire and metal, she says. That is, it lacks both challenges and intelligence. Wear red and white if you want to win. And the number 8.
She analyses the Flying Stars, the Afflictions and the animal fortunes – topics any true feng shui anorak has been tossing around for months by now (and if you haven’t read my predictions, shame on you. Sit in the naughty chair – facing South – and return to my website immediately.) But Lillian’s take is always valuable and the exuberant simplicity of her presentation of what is actually quite complex information is very expert.
Lillian shares her view of the US Election – dirty and getting dirtier – and a prognosis: it has to be Hillary but the chi is with Obama. I remember how much 2008 shares with 1968; a chilly thought. She doesn’t say it but I do: I just can’t see Obama in the White House.
A Moment Please
The following week I have a free “surgery” at Apache Tears, the Mind Body Spirit Shop in Guildford. Gemma owns and runs it. She teaches Alexander technique and is the single most effortlessly gracious person I know, so I am unsurprised to find a Starbucks take-out venti latte waiting for me on the consultation table. People come and go – a dozen or so at quarter hourly intervals. This is gruelling stuff: people presenting their birth details in return for instant insight. The trick is to balance head and heart. Accurate calculation is important but so is the preparedness to take a risk when I see something I have no right to see. These are often the moments when lives are transformed.
Ben is a guitar player. He is off on his umpteenth tour and his partner Ruth is fed up. She wants to come too, she tells me. He says she distracts him. She looks pretty serious about it.
I see something very special in his ba zi:it is simply the ability to touch hearts. This is not a technical thing but a shamanic quality. We all know it when we feel it but definition is hard. Of guitar players, Neil Young and Carlos Santana are good examples. And Tom Verlaine and Robin Trower; these may be obscure but trust me..
“There is this moment when the audience is in the palm of your hand,” I remind him.
His eyes are wide.
“When they are just with you.”
“I know that moment,” Ben says.
“I know you do.”
Ruth nods. She still looks pretty fierce.
I spent a month in China with Master Howard Choy in 2005. He is close to unique among feng shui masters in that his primary business is architecture, he speaks fluent English (well, Australian) and everything he does is with an awareness of the tao. We discussed this moment in relation to feng shui. He calls the moment “affection.” I forget the Chinese word. He is adamant that feng shui is mere theory without it and he sees it (or its lack) in public buildings all the time. St Pancras is a particular hate of his. This “affection” is the instant a work of art gets to you – like the moment in Four Weddings and a Funeral when John Hannah reads the last line of the Auden poem:
“I thought love would last forever. I was wrong.”
It is the point maybe when art acquires meaning. There is such a moment on “Words between the Lines of Age” on Neil Young’s Harvest when his guitar has been noodling aimlessly for over two minutes and he suddenly hits a discord that comes straight from his gut and then is gone. I once heard Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music do something similar at the Civic Hall in Guildford circa 1974. Ladytron I think. You had to be there.
“You can’t be precious about it,” I say to Ben.
The meaning of what I am saying dawns on him.
“You have to trust. You don’t get it any other way that I know of.”
“It is a kind of talking to God, isn’t it?” he suggests.
I nod: “Higher Mind, Spirit, what-have-you. Goddess is probably more apt.”
He looks at Ruth who is quicker to the mark.
“And you wouldn’t have it without her,” I add.
His face falls and recovers.
“And she can’t get in the way.”
“I know,” he says quietly from deep in his throat.
“So be respectful or she may withdraw it.”
Now Ruth looks a little less fierce.
I’m Oak A, You’re Oak A
On Monday while I am still flush with my cleverness, I visit Sofia who is planning an extension. She knows I am unhappy with her plan. And I tell her I’m unhappy with an oak in her garden.
Following my last visit, she is all set to study NLP (but not coming to my next ba zi Workshop) She has found a teacher who will do the express training midweek. She can fit this around her toddler and baby.
“I just have to do something… gainful,” she says.
There is nothing, no meeting, no deal, no confrontation, more demanding than dealing with a toddler. I know this; I have the scars to prove it.
I tell her that when I became the father of twins, twenty years ago, I moved my office home and gave up all aspiration for a decade. I try to load this intimation up with the fact that they did not sleep until they were five but it is, as Joe Jackson used to say, different for girls. And I can do things to relieve sleeplessness these days.
We return to the tree.
“That tree there?” she asks appalled, pointing out ofa rear window. I survey a lot of houses and the truth is her garden is very similar to at least three others I have looked at recently.
I consult my notes. I have marked the oaks “a” and “b.” One is in the position called Golden Box which as it sounds is a prosperous spot, the other is at Burning Sun which implies short tempers if it is allowed to grow too tall.
“Yes.”
Her face creases.
“You said it was fine last time.”
Oops. I am in danger of looking like the shadiest charlatan in the Home Counties. I look again. I have confused the character zhen (Dragon) with geng (yin metal)
“You were talking to it and everything.”
“It’s the one at the front isn’t it?” I say hesitantly.
I show her how similar the characters are but it doesn’t make me feel any less of a prat. Perhaps I should be consoled by the fact that her husband has gone from financial strength to strength since my survey last year.
A feng shui man with memory loss and no sense of direction. What am I like?
Richard Ashworth © 2008
Names have been changed to protect..uh…me.
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