Death 101.A

It's' autumn and a perfect time to think about dying.

As a student of Buddhism and a writer of detective novels, giving death a comfortable place to stay in my mind where I can visit it frequently has a certain macabre relevance. My hope is that if I get used to visiting death it won't be a shock when death comes to visit me. He will be an old friend.

Why is death always personified as male? You could say that a skeleton in a robe with a scythe is genderless, but I've always thought of it as a male skeleton. Apparently 100% of children do as well, when asked. Maybe it is the power that death holds - it is ultimate. You cannot escape, evade or avoid death; you will die. Emotions do not sway death from taking his due. Nor does fairness. There is no comfort. No kindness. And death often comes at the hands of men.

And then there is the pain. When people say that death was "a release," we are all reminded of the pain that often accompanies death. And we fear pain.

Or suddenness - a car accident, typhoon, lightening bolt, heat attack, a fall. Most people who die do not expect to do so when they wake up on the morning of their last day. We should be starting each day with the thought, "Today is the last day of the rest of my life." Maybe we would be our best selves more of the time.

Death keeps poor company and is associated with misery: famine, war, pestilence, plague, poverty.

Death takes children before their time, annihilates those who would live, create, love. It is not selective.

I've sat with both of my parents as they died and it was a labor for each of them. Their bodies' becoming unreliable: an enemy. Breathing is hard, talking an ordeal, moving an impossibility. The knowledge that any action they performed would probably be for the last time. There is a poignancy and at the same time a desire to get it over with - it's too hard, just get it over with, let me go.

You breathe out, you breathe in, you breath out, you don't breathe in. It's that simple.

How to use feng shui to get out of house work

My house is a mess. I am trying to convert my dining room into a studio: a place to write, create and think. As I a result it is no longer a dining room and not yet a studio and I am eating twice as much in twice as many rooms, usually undercooked (the food) and usually standing up (me). So not a huge success so far. But I can sit down and type!


In an effort to inspire house cleaning, i did buy houseplants today to bring "chi" to the space in the hopes that by placing them I would have to move stuff out of the way and in that process continue to the natural next step and actually put stuff away. Oh how I make myself laugh!


One of the plants is a maiden's hair fern, a finicky favorite. I killed one once in less than the 10 minutes it took me to drive from the nursery to my house, but it was a hot day. Today it was foggy, as it has been since time immemorial, and the plant made it home and into a jade green Chinese cricket pot, previously used for cricket fighting. Fortunes were made and lives were lost within the confines of the pot now holding my fern. Now put to peaceful use, the pot sits in the South side of my office above the hearth, where, according to the laws of success according to feng shui, I am meant to emphasize Fire. Plants are supposed to be on the East area of the room in the Wood section but that would be behind me where I can't see them so what's the point?


 I do have an old farm table behind me holding my printer so I think I have the Wood area covered.


Metal is in front of me to the West in the guise of bronze curtain tie-backs and an outdoor space heater that I can see through the window and therefore counts as far as I'm concerned. I've decided to add the garden outside my window as part of my studio footprint. Seeing it certainly counts as psychological space.


I should have Water represented to my right in the North section and hanging black and white photos seems to be allowed as an alternate to a fountain. Easier said than done as I have intricate wainscoting to 7' above the floor topped with a plate rail that juts out 8" and this is an earthquake area. To be continued.


The fifth element is Earth and the instructions start to get a bit vague as it breaks away from the four cardinal directions. Earth is represented in the North East and South West of the room. So I put a rock in each corner. I knew having a few spare rocks around the house would come in handy some day.


So that is the current feng shui layout of my studio.

Cricket fighting arena and implements