Feng Shui 7
Experimenting in the realm of the Brave, a pear, and discipline is difficult...
Hello to all of you beautiful people! A kilt on the rise as he heads to the gym! Of course you knew that… But away we go!..
He sat in the car outside the gym, trying to put a bunch of stuff together… There was his original situation, and thoughts about Feng Shui; things he knew, but things he did not, there were these consistently-odd dreams, there was his wife, and the whacky-situation he was in now, which seemed to be getting better, there was his past fading, his future on the horizon… But that was hazy.
And there was more; he knew to do good, to keep doing the good stuff; bringing gravitas, being brave, staying heads-up, heading toward excellence etc., But there was going to have to be a leap onto a ride that he did not know how to run. Getting himself in-line with Satchmo. Or any guy like that… Would he be able to execute his performance without laughing? Jesus, that would suck…
Was there maybe a Feng Shui agency?.. He’d have to look.
It was getting-on to ten. The gym was right there. He knew that it was time.
He got out of the car with his bag, and suddenly felt like hell. One more time to try to put this beast together. Shit.
He wanted to continue sitting undisturbed with his thoughts, but knew that ‘action’ was what needed to happen next… ‘Time to GO Bill,’ he said to himself.
But he really didn’t want to go.
He could feel the flab. He sensed the weakness. He dreaded that itchy-muscle pain that was bound to rise as he got to it.
He’d have to sign-up with that crappy credit-card vice-lock they did. They always screwed him on that; they’d close his location, and refuse to stop his membership because there was a facility EIGHTY miles away. Bastards.
Mostly the idea of having to figure-out a program… he let that slide-off as he realized the heat of his attitude… Huh, there was a sudden reflection of his face in the glass entrance. He smiled and calmed himself.
‘No, take it slow and peaceful. Build a solid house…’
‘This is just part of the process. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you cut down on the food. This is just the next step. You’re doing great…’
He was surprised that he was able to intrude so quickly onto the bad-vibe.
He thought on how to mitigate it more thoroughly.
‘How will you BE like the ways of wind and water?’
‘Get through that door, and if you gotta quit, so it will be. But get through that door…’
He got up to the door, took a breath, and went in.
It was pretty quiet. OK.
He saw a vivacious girl at the desk, so he strolled over and asked was there someone who could help him to sign-up?
She perked then with: “Oh! I can! My name is Cindy!”
Whereupon she produced some few papers, a pen, and got him rolling.
What was amazing was that it was month-to-month cash!
Yes! He signed-up happily, and handed her a hundred bucks to pay for the first two months.
“I’m all set?”
“Yer all set! unless you need a tour.”
He wondered if he should ask for help, but then decided to just go for it.
“No, I’m good! Thank you Cindy!”
As he looked at some of the equipment he started to get a little excited; it could be the manifestation of the next-step if he put it to that purpose... It could, it could! Yeeessss…
He continued past all of the weights, and machines, further-on to a back-room with mats, jump-ropes, lighter weights, and a couple heavy-bags. Something told him to start there.
He got a mat down onto the floor, and slowly began to do every stretch that he could remember, along with some ab-work, and the three pathetic planks that he was able to get-up-to. He was pretty stiff, and sucking wind.
He was done with that inside of ten minutes, and got the idea to do it again. But first he’d try some jump-rope. A minute of jumping wore him down, and so he laid back on the mat sooner than he’d expected to get to that next set of stretches.
He laid there a minute, and sifted through the hard-feelings of his weakness.
His mind was firing full-blast about being a loser, and how pointless it all was, and how old he was getting, and what the hell was Feng Shui anyhow?!
He tried to get back to the slow-and-peaceful: just breathe and be grateful that you have this opportunity to feel alive.
He was feeling tired and worked. Good.
He went brave, and thought: ‘Build the house slowly. Make it solid. You are better than yesterday.’
He finished on the floor, did five minutes of rowing-machine, fifteen-reps on the Roman chair, and spent a few minutes on the machine that helps you get up to doing pull-ups. That was it. It was fine. But damn was he weak..!
He caught a quick shower, and prepared to leave.
He thought: ‘Go get Brussel sprouts.’ Yeah. He would.
He couldn’t deny that just that little bit that he’d done at the gym made him feel great, and notched his determination to keep it up. He gave a nod, and ‘thanks’ to Cindy on the way out.
Feng Shui is: ‘the way of wind and water’ literally translated, but just now he was feeling it exactly like that. He was wind and water meeting the confines of his own existence, and free to flow, when and where he was able… If he was able!..
Even though everything was whirling in his life, that is, that the chaos-of-the-unknown was running throughout; he was nonetheless balancing-on-a-ball, and dancing it along; still able to find solace at his core. Maybe happier with all of it than he’d ever been.
He found himself at the market picking up the Brussels sprouts, and feeling the endorphin-high of the workout.
He got some pears and some spinach. Not really knowing how he’d do them, but sure that they were good for him, and that he’d find something… Some way to do them… Hey, it wasn’t cheeseburgers… All was well.
In a moment it came to him that last-nights-dream had had wind, and crazy storm-water, and that he’d been carving her name into his body without blood… Could it mean that their love was extrinsic to the wind and water? Or that his quest was wrongly set: More attention paid to bleeding for Betty than attention to the wind and water?
And then he realized that dying for Betty or making blood sacrifices, was not what Betty wanted… Huuuump-uff..!
… Maybe the wind and water had been calling him, even as he was caught-up in a self-destructive, though committed, moment… He resolved to try to look past his own plans and into a more flowing representation of… What?.. Feng Shui? Himself? Of Now? Of all of it..?
It was getting a bit past noon, as he realized that he was confusing himself, yeah, he’d have to remedy that; get his head straight…
Just then he remembered that there was an old man named McCorkle who used to wear a kilt into the bar now and then… Bill could ask him!
Where would he be these days? Where do you get a kilt? He thought about the Irish pub, but knew that kilts were Scottish. He didn’t want to piss anyone off…
‘No. Stop!’ He thought: To go buy a kilt would be impulsive…
And then he realized that thinking about going to get a kilt really did seem to beat the hell out of trying to meaningfully-decipher your dreams! Discipline was difficult. So it was…
He decided then, to wait, consider, and move more slowly on it.
But man, he was sold with the authority of a guy who shows-up in a kilt! Hell yeah!
He thought best to get over to the library to sort-things-out.
He arrived, and got a decent parking space. Just walking into the library was wonderful.
He thought he could feel his blood-pressure dropping as he searched for the ‘perfect seat.’
He began to think about those basic-precepts of Feng shui; ‘commanding position’ suddenly stood out… The idea is, roughly, to enhance your sense of safety, and control by having the command-position in any space. Like seeing where the door is without being directly in its line of fire… OK…
He wanted to see how it would turn-out if he ‘winged it.’
And so, he wandered-around looking for what he thought would be the most ‘Shui.’
There were a few small-tables by a window, but there were hard-chairs on them. There were some couch-y looking things, but it looked like somebody set up his old Aunt’s den, right there in the library.
Around a corner there was a room with a bit of natural-light and a few big recliner-type chairs. They looked good, but they were taken.
In the end, deciding that you can’t always get what you want, he went with Aunt Emma’s den.
It was funny, and he chuckled. It dawned on him that he was happy, and that things were fun. Maybe ‘fun’ was the best Shui, and how difficult is it to figure out where you feel best, if you’re paying attention to how yer feeling?
That seemed like a truth, and so he spoke it, formulated as well as he could: “Feng Shui… is displayed… to one who is paying attention. And… moving peacefully with the… the… flow of the surroundings…?” Was that right?
He thought about it and repeated it with a couple little changes: “Feng Shui is displayed to one who is paying attention, and moving peacefully within the flow of one’s surroundings…”
It seemed pretty right. Right? Huh.
He was out of the lines of anyone’s sight, so he closed his eyes and took some deep breaths that were his idea of some kind of meditation.
With his eyes closed, he considered what was amiss? What was he leaving-out of the mix? He considered: Satchiko. More study. How he’d be able to bill for his time…
An answer of sorts came to his mind: Clean your world…
What did that mean? ‘Clean your world..?’
But then it began to come clear that to ‘clean your world’ meant that Bill was to do the cleaning… That he’d have to be clean to present himself legitimately… Wow. What a concept.
OK. OK. He took a note that he would spend Wednesday, his sacred day-three, in cleaning-up the house after the gym. OK.
But he had to face-up that there was something unclean about the lie he’d told his wife… It made him sort of sick in the stomach. True.
As he began to get down to the work of the day… And the work of the day was…? Easily it came: To ferret out more about the Properties of the Shui… He realized that he was not far-enough-along to just call it: ‘The Shui.’ In fact that particular-kind of flippancy was exactly the kind of shallow-foolishness he was trying to excise from his life.
He had to remember WHY he had made the plans that he had, indeed, made.
Why bring gravitas? Why watch your physicality? Why try to bring-in this ancient-tradition?
He felt like a fraud for a moment. He remembered that he had begun this thing as, like, a ruse to make money. However, it was working-out to be tangibly-useful, but in ways that he hadn’t considered.
He felt something rising in him. It was something about being honest, and about bringing reverence, care, honor, depth, and respect to whatever he was doing.
HE, personally, would stand as the integritous-departure from any phony, or inauthentic representations. He would bring the power of the beauty. It would be worth the depth of his expression- the deeper and more-real, then the more it would be revered. But “sell it?” Hell. No… It just couldn’t be…
It would have to be his own noble-jewel to share with others: authentically represented by esteem, and love for himself.
He began to doubt his thought, this new-feeling, when his eyes fell on a line from the book:
“Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese traditional-practice which claims to use energy-forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment…”
Suddenly the words came to his mind; Aye, Mylee, and Leelya…
Those were real, not just claims: true natural-energy. He knew it. He could do precisely as he had conceived the vision, and never let himself down, with tangible-ethics while harmonizing people with beauty, love, strength, and care.
He reeled from this heady moment. There was some reality coming to light, right before him…
Then suddenly he was ready to go home, and eager to have that talk; because he knew then that he had something to say.
Still he needed more time before he revealed that damn lie to Bet. Man, it was all a risk one way and the other. When’s a good time to tell somebody that you were lying?..
He was home early.
He knew he had a little more than an hour-and-a-half before she got home.
He looked around the front-yard and tried to focus on how he was flowing with the surrounds.
What was it? There was something that did not flow. No, no, there was a whole lot of shit that didn’t flow- The overgrown-grass under the oleander; he’d let it grow long because he didn’t want to cut it, but justified his lack of effort with “it looks more natural.” What a crock. It was unkempt.
The two bikes under the tarp by the side of the garage… No. It was messy. He knew that he should either ride those bikes or get them out of there.
There was also some garbage in a hole under the edge of the garage that their old dog had dug up. Hell, he couldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to get down into that…
He could see that he had plenty to work on. Well, good. That was fine.
He decided to flow with it.
It didn’t feel very flow-y, but he wanted to keep the positive-good-vibe that he’d had down at the library.
He turned his attention to the order of things.
Dinner; the Brussels, spinach and pears. Almost automatically his mind was able to couch it: He’d use one piece of chopped-bacon to fry the Brussels up, with some tiny apple-bits, add a pinch of cayenne- maybe a little bit of brown-sugar-and-vinegar to get a sort of glaze-y thing going at the finish. That would be the entree.
But then the spinach… Just a salad with a tangy, light-garlic dressing, or he had some of that Caesar stuff from last night if she wanted; a couple thin slices of Manchego on the side. There were a lot of Brussels, so they were gonna have enough to eat; he was trying to lay off the bread. Aw but hell, if she asked for some, he could chop-and-toast some baguette that was in the freezer.
Then he remembered that he had told her ‘biscuits.’
Well. How about shortbread with poached pears on top?
Yes. It could, and would be done!
The talk…
The talk.
He thought about that.
He felt a little twinge in his stomach. What was it going to be about?
OK! Gameplan: Do not take any speaking-forays beyond the lovely-evening, and dinner with your delightful-wife… Unless she brings something up; and whatever happens: stay smooth-and-cool. Consider it. Do not talk immediately. Hold-off and listen. Be decent, and tell the truth. Rub her shoulders.
That was how he’d play it. Smooth-and-cool whatever she was saying… And keep those shoulders rubbing! Yeah… Oh yeah…
It sort of felt overwhelming…
“Be brave. Be brave…” He half-whispered…
OK! Be brave kids! Big lesson there! Be Brave… Bill brave, YOU brave! Huh? Whaddya say?! Have a beautiful week.