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Jewish World Review July 21, 2005 / 14 Tammuz, 5765 When feng shui gets in your way By David Grimes
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If you visit the new Disneyland in Hong Kong (and I am in no way recommending that you do), you may notice that the whole place is tilted somewhat and that the park faces water with mountains behind.
(My guess is that you will not notice any of that stuff. If you are like most Disney park visitors, all you will notice is that it is beastly hot, the lines are mind-numbingly long and the ticket prices add up to what you might have better spent on a nice, new kitchen appliance. But, please, bear with me here.)
These modifications were made because Hong Kong Disneyland officials consulted feng shui experts before building the park. For those of you who are "out of the loop" on this sort of stuff, "feng" is the Chinese word for "ancient Asian," while "shui," loosely translated, means "loaf of baloney."
An alternative definition of feng shui is that harmonious energy, otherwise known as good luck, can be achieved by the correct positioning of furniture and other objects.
In other words, if you position your bed so that you can look out a window, your neighbors will get a free show, but if you arrange your easy chair so that it faces the TV, you may be exposed to "Fear Factor."
My wife currently is painting my home office, so my personal feng shui is rather mixed. On the one hand, it's positive because I didn't have to (or, more accurately, didn't volunteer to) help, but, on the other hand, it's negative because I am, at this moment, facing a jumble of books and puzzles and an old Hoover vacuum cleaner with a broken belt.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with a broken vacuum cleaner (it's the ones that work that can be dispiriting), it is a standout element in what can only be described as a room in disarray. All of the essential office accessories that allow me to perform my job at maximum efficiency — my Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, my Cal Ripken bobble-head doll and my Three Stooges talking bottle opener (You really have to hear this baby for yourself. Someone asks Curly if he'd like a beer and he says, "Soytenly!" and then there's the sound of a beer being poured and then Curly goes "Nyuk nyuk nyuk" and then ... well, let's just say that you could read all of "War and Peace" and not find dialogue that remotely compares to this) — are stashed away in boxes or piled up in teetering heaps on the file cabinet or orbiting somewhere in feng shui hell, it's really hard to say.
This seems like a lot of trouble to me. Why not just invest in a fire extinguisher?
Ours is hanging right next to the stove, in case there's a repeat of the time I was cooking bacon on high and then starting yapping on the phone and forgot about it.
The smoke alarm went off and everyone's running around screaming and yelling and basically acting like the house's going to burn down, which for a minute or two it seemed like it might, and the smell lingered for months and months.
Which has got to be classified as an extremely bad feng shui episode.
Except for the fact that my wife does most of the cooking now.
Which is not only good feng shui, but also a whole lot safer.
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JWR contributor David Grimes is a columnist for The Sarasota Herald Tribune. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Sarasota Herald Tribune |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
