At the moment my new house is only an eight-foot-deep hole lined with concrete. But over the next two months, as the wooden frame goes up, I’ll be asked, after 43 years of apartment life, to make decisions about such things as sillcocks, gas lines, light valances, backsplashes, sizzle strips, upgraded padding, and 42-inch-high cabinets. So, I figured, in the interest of good fortune and well-being, why not invest in the Latin School’s two-hour course in feng shui, the 3,000-year-old Chinese philosophy that says the floor plan of a dwelling, the layout of a room, and even the arrangement of furniture can affect one’s career, wealth, reputation, and family?
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Here’s why: Feng shui practitioners analyze the layout of a house or apartment or room by superimposing an octagonal guide called a Ba-gua over the floor plan. Each of the sides represents an aspect of life (i.e., money, kids, fame). Parts of the dwelling that don’t overlap with the Ba-gua mean trouble for the aspects of life represented by the empty part of the octagon. The more unusual your domicile’s configuration, the more parts of it aren’t going to overlap with the Ba-gua.
Trouble having kids? Looking into your house from the front door, check out the right and left middle sides of the building, which correlate with the family and children sections of the Ba-gua. Is there an unusually shaped room in this spot? One with ceiling beams? (More about this later.) Just general bad planning? If you’re having marital problems, check the back right of the house, the part having to do with marriage and partnership. The middle of the back of the house is to blame if your reputation goes to hell, and the left front if you’re having trouble with self-cultivation.
McCloud also told us about qi (pronounced “chee”), a life force that moves through a house. It’s not good if it moves too fast or too slow. Qi moves through hallways quickly, for instance, so placing an office at the end of a long hall could turn its user into a workaholic. Crystal balls slow it down; so do those curtains made of hanging beads.
McCloud passed out nine little red envelopes with Chinese characters on the front to each participant, and at the end of the class she asked everyone to put a coin into each one of them and turn them in. She explained it’s not appropriate to explain the mysteries of feng shui for free. (Thank goodness the Reader is paying me for this story.) The $20 tuition fee went to the Latin School’s scholarship fund, so McCloud kept the little-red-envelope take: anywhere from nine cents to nine half-dollars per person.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Charles Eshelman.
