Buboni, Lost In The Woods, parts 248 - 251

Richard Britell June 15, 2012

248. Bernice explained that if the refrigerator was placed where it was it meant that one was facing west when one opened the door.  West is the direction of the setting of the sun, so obviously opening the refrigerator door was inviting death into the kitchen. The object had to be placed so that one looked east when the door was opened.

249. The contents of the refrigerator, on view to Bernice's inquiring eye only confirmed her diagnosis. The thing had to be moved, but it also had to be emptied and steam cleaned. No more baloney, no more Miracle Whip, no more bacon and eggs, iceberg lettuce or Pepsi.  All that seems so long ago now, that period of starvation, and the inconvenience of having to put the refrigerator down in the cellar so it faced in the correct direction.

250. All of those changes did not make things better at home for me. I tried my best to go along with the changes in my diet. I also began to exercise regularly, for the first time in my life.  I would go for a long walk after dinner, sometimes for up to two hours. At first I went out about seven, but I took to going out later and later for my constitutional, and toward the end I would be out from two till six in the morning.

251. I had retired, I had nothing to do. I was sixty-four, and was living like a tortured  prisoner in my own house. I thought to myself, "What if I live to be eighty-eight?  My God, twenty four years of watching television and eating sprouts and tofu?" For the first time in my life I began to hate living, and then I started taking the sculpture class. Mrs. Festini, she was my salvation. But you don't want to know about all this, I'm sure.

Buboni, Lost In The Woods, parts 244 - 247

Richard Britell June 14, 2012

244. The reason I was acquainted with Feng Shui is because of my wife's friend Bernice, she is an expert, and teaches a course in it at the Museum where I was taking the sculpture class from Mrs. Festini. My wife invited Bernice over to the house to have a look at the layout.  She felt that the bad Feng Shui of the house was the reason my wife and I were not getting along.

245. Bernice did not come right out and say it was the reason for the trouble between me and my wife, and as far as I know, there wasn't any trouble except for her objecting to my taking the sculpture classes on Saturday, from Mrs. Festini. She went through our house from top to bottom and her suggestions amounted to nothing short of tearing the whole house down and starting from scratch. 

246.  It was very odd the way that Bernice did not seem to understand that reconstruction was not an option. She felt the problems were so obvious, and the solutions so beneficial, that only an ignoramus would be raising objections.  First of all the house faced the wrong way and was not tall enough for its width.  Her husband had torn down their house twice already, so perhaps that is why she did not view it as an obstacle.

247. When I finally was able to convince her that I could not tear down the house, she said there were some things I had to do to get things going in the right direction. First was the front door, it had to be painted blue immediately, this was no problem. Then we had to find a different place for the refrigerator. The refrigerator was set in such a way that one was facing west when one opened the door.  

Buboni, Lost In The Woods, parts 240 - 243

Richard Britell, June 13, 2012

240. Having finished his preamble, he looked down at the cast on his foot, as did everyone else. "Imagine for a moment", he went on, "a flight of stairs ending at a closed door. Now, further imagine you have just rung the door bell. The door opens out, and pushes you backwards so that you fall down the stairs! Do you not see," Buboni went on, "That the door in question is in the wrong place, and opens the wrong way? Isn't it obvious? This is an example of very bad Feng Shui."

241. "Now consider the door to your bathroom on the second floor of the Monastery dormitory.  If one were about to open that door, and instead the door were to open because someone else was coming out, then the door in question would give you a shove right down the staircase, as happened to me in the middle of the night."

242. It was just like him to turn his misfortune into a lecture on architecture and spatial arrangement, but I could see the point he was trying to make.  Just the simple rebuilding of the dormitory, or the rearrangement of the plumbing of the 400 year old building would surely solve the problem of the door opening the wrong way.

243. The Abbot offered no apology for the Feng Shui of his building and the expression on his face told me that he was not very sympathetic to old Buboni's complaints. I understood Buboni's point, but I could also sympathize with the Abbot.  I too had the same experience about the Feng Shui of my house, because of my wife's friend Bernice, the Feng Shui expert.

Buboni, Lost In The Woods, 236 - 239

Richard Britell June 12, 2012

236. I neglected to mention, Buboni was not with us at breakfast with the Abbot.  He was indisposed because of a series of misfortunes that seemed to have attacked him during the night. Something he ate disagreed with him, and he was up over and over again with trips to the bathroom in the dormitory.

237. On his fifth trip to the bathroom there was a commotion at the top of the stairs, and then a sound for a few seconds like someone drying cinder blocks in a clothes drier. The sound, apparently, was Buboni falling down the dormitory stairs. After that he seemed to be able to get some sleep, but in the morning he went off to the Monastery's infirmary. 

238. When we were coming out of the shrine Buboni caught up with us, hobbling up with his foot in a cast, and using a crutch.  "Look here", he said, accosting the Abbot in an aggressive way, "are you, or anyone else at the Monastery aware of the science of Feng Shui?"  Even with his foot in a cast, and being awake half the night, Buboni was going to launch into one of his lectures about art, there was no stopping him.

239. The Duck, getting out his ipad, quickly looked up Feng Shui, but he was unable to come up with anything specific, all he said was, "It is quite complicated, to say the least.  "Put simply", said Buboni, barging in, "It is the study of how to arrange things, especially architecture and furniture and such, so that it exerts the greatest possible force for good in one's life.  It involves also studying how to avoid certain clumsy, inappropriate arrangements of doors windows, mirrors and or furniture, in order to avoid mishaps and disasters."