Feb. 15th, 2010 at 5:20 AM
Day Number 8 Following the Instructions in "Manifesting Your Soul Mate":
So ... the big "switch your entire apartment around" project was now underway. I soon had cause to vaguely remember the basic set of rules someone once wisely dispensed regarding "Basic Tool Usage Safety Tips": i.e., if you find yourself getting frustrated and tired, put everything down, step away from the sharp tools, take a deep breath … and start drinking heavily." Okay, okay, maybe not that last part.
You'd think I was being asked to build the Winchester mansion from scratch - no, all I needed to do was break down a 6-foot tall bookcase I had actually put together once upon a time - and which was missing all of its shelves, still back in New York. However, it was a good bookcase; I figured it would be useful when I could get all the components in one place. In the meanwhile it was taking up space and needed to be brought back to board state and stored. Simple task, right? I put the thing together; I should be able to take it apart without too much difficulty. Right?
Right.
First I didn't have the proper flat head screwdriver; off to Ace Hardware. Back with the screwdriver; spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get the screwdriver out of Ace's anti-theft (and anti-customer too, apparently) packaging. Finally had to saw through the rubbery plastic tabs anchoring it to the package using a box cutter.
Could now turn the cam bolt locks with the screwdriver, but couldn't pull them out of their recessed holes. Had to crawl back into my closet and rummage through my tool box looking for needle nose pliers. Found them after another 30 minute search, and removed the cam bolt locks. Couldn't figure out how to remove the cam bolts themselves.
Now had to remove the nails out of the back of the bookcase, because I thought I could get to the cam bolts through the back side of the bookshelf shell. Hammer claws were too thick. Back to the needle nose pliers. They worked, but I bashed my elbow at least three times when a nail came loose without warning. I now realized I had to keep all the hardware I was removing in a marked container for the time when I had to put it back together. Spent another 30 minutes looking for a suitable container and a spare label to slap on it, for identification purposes.
It had now been two hours and the bookcase was still laying on its side on the floor, stubbornly stuck together, taunting me. I did some deep breathing and lit a lavender Yankee Candle in the vague hope that calming aromatherapy really DID work. Not quite as well as I'd hoped.
Finally went and poured myself some Spanish Viña Zaco into my new floral etched amber wine glasses, hand crafted for me by Javier and Efren Canteras of Mexico (I love that entire Novica family – really! They’re so nice!) and tossed on a soothing Blake cd. That idea worked so well, I was soon thoroughly buzzed and toasting both the talented Canteras brothers and the awesome Blake boys with tearful, sloppy reverence and pulling the case apart with abandon, using the new screwdriver as a lever. Done! (*hic*!)
The bookshelf corner was eventually doing to be the new computer corner, but I hadn’t called COMCAST yet about moving the cable. I probably should have done that first. I learned a few things:
(1) COMCAST doesn’t do wiring – for that, I had to hire a carpenter and an electrician. (“WHAT??? It’s a friggin’ apartment!”) THEN I had to pay Comcast $30 just to step foot into the apartment and decide what to do; THEN pay them for equipment and service which they would estimate once they were there, forcing me to make a decision while I’m standing there, gasping at the astronomical cost.
The second thing I learned was: (2) COMCAST had just unbundled my service the day before without bothering to tell me, doubling my monthly payment. We had gone through thirty minutes of bundle restructuring when the power blinked on and off, disconnecting the call.
The third thing I learned: (3) COMCAST won’t reconnect you to the person you were just speaking with – you have to start the call all over again, even if you’ve just spent thirty minutes you’ll never get back with the previous so-called “customer service” rep. I couldn’t go through it all again and hung up.
Yup, the ancient Chinese Feng Shui masters had never had an apartment wired for cable – nor they had been forced to deal with the monstrosities of human indignity known as the United States television cable conglomerates, created by the evil forces unknown to kill everyone off slowly using torture by stress and frustration, wearing down once-vibrant human beings into nubs of defeated protoplasm. Too much more of this, when my soul mate walked in the door he’d find me curled up into a fetal position, twitching and mumbling to myself.
This incident caused me to sober up somewhat, and now I took a good look at the wall that had previously been behind the now dismantled 6-foot tall bookcase shell.
“Ugh! Now I have to wash it!”
The corner, by the way, was right in the middle of the “Fame, Illumination and Reputation” portion of the Feng Shui bagua map and, according to the experts, should be decorated in reds and power symbols – regrettably, not the “cobwebs and dust bunnies look” I was apparently going for, in that corner. Come to think of it, why isn’t there a Feng Shui expert somewhere who insists: “Make sure this area is full of cobwebs and dust bunnies!”? If there were, I’d be all set.
Truthfully, I didn’t even know what “fame, illumination and reputation” really meant, in terms of my home and living space. I can’t think of three things I care less about at first glance – “fame” and “reputation” – and “illumination”? I’ll blink on and off like a firefly? I’m automatically inducted into the Illuminati? What?
Let’s check in with the experts, shall we?
“You should strengthen this area when you want to have a good reputation or improve on the one you already have. When you need to summon the courage to do something. When you want to be more respected by people or one specific person. When you want to become well known for something. When you want to get the credit you deserve. This is the spot that can make or break your perceived power. Remove any items that symbolize something you are not or something you don't want to be known for.”
Yeah, I probably don’t want to be known for my cobwebs and dust bunnies. Actually, I have thought so little about my ‘reputation’ I couldn’t even tell you what it was, or what people thought of me, because … well, because I couldn’t really care less what people thought of me. Maybe that’s not a good attitude to have, I don’t know.
Some of their ideas for “activating” this space:
red furniture
sunlight and green plants
photos of famous people you want to be like
letters, awards, certificates
newspaper articles that remind you of your aspirations
electric lights, such as small white Christmas tree strings or lamps that can be safely left on all the time (yeah, right. Apparently, the Feng Shui masters have also never paid an electric bill).
red candles
photos of people who can help you with your goals
red or hot pink rugs, furniture, flowers, cushions, curtains
Well, I had no red or hot pink furniture, cushions or curtains, nor did I anticipate buying any, but I had my diploma. And (now that I thought about it) also a Six Sigma Certification on a plaque. That summed up all of the “awards and certificates” I had on hand and those would have to do – everything else was in the hands of the aforementioned evil ex-relative.
But “photos of famous people I want to be like”? I could think of some famous people I thought were amusing … or talented … or attractive … but that didn’t mean I wanted to be like them … besides, how would I know what they were “like”? I only knew what they did for a living, or what they looked like after hours of air brushing and photo-shopping.
I’m not saying I want to be “LIKE” him – as again, I have no idea what he’s like – but I’ve always admired Viggo Mortensen who uses acting to fund his book publishing ventures; his compassion and love for animals; the fact that he's enormously intelligent … plus those incredible good looks and the ability to sing in Elven tongue! And really, how many men have THAT on their CVs? I wouldn’t mind sticking him on the wall, if it didn’t make me look like a 16-year old girl snipping things out of “Movie Star Magazine” and twittering away on my Barbie® trimline telephone. (Sorry, Viggo … but I just couldn’t bring myself to go there. I hope you understand). I also considered trying to look for a bust of one of the Greek Sophists, but you’d be surprised how few of those are actually around (how few busts of them are around, I mean; I know the Greek Sophists aren't around).
The reference to reputation, though, made me think of one of my favorite historical figures: Cesare Borgia. I wrote an extensive paper on him in college and came to the conclusion that, while he was certainly no saint, he was nowhere near the level of depravity and evil associated with him by the Catholic church and their followers. I thought It was a classic case of distracting people from the evil doings YOU’RE doing by overexaggerating the sins of the guy who just left. Cesare and his family were not so different from other papal examples of the time period – he just did what he did more quickly, thoroughly and efficiently than everyone else.
Charming, enormously intelligent, sensual and handsome, he had admirers from Leonardo da Vinci (who worked for him briefly) to Niccolo Machiavelli to many Italians living under the thumb of tyrants in Tuscany. He was loathed by many powerful families in the Italian peninsula, mostly because he was the only one who managed to break their tyrannical hold on their areas – and a lot of the horrid incidents associated with him seemed to have originated from members of these families, later thoroughly contradicted by historical record - but he was also loved by a lot of people for his fairness, justice and equanimity. He might also have been loathed because powerful men at the time watched their wives and daughters start breathing heavily whenever he passed through town. He was enormously popular with women.
Even today “Christians” perpetuate some of the most horrific – and already disproven – lies about the man … most of them already thoroughly vetted as existing solely in the imagination of his family’s rivals – who later gained the papacy themselves and were just as “unholy” in the role as the Borgias are accused of being. You’d think that if even the Catholic Church backed down from the bovine excrement they were spreading around for centuries, their idiot followers who bought that same fertilizer all these centuries would back down too, but apparently not.
Ironically, Cesare was so handsome he may have been used as the face of Christ in paintings made during the Renaissance – the irony was that the same judgmental Christians who even today use the Borgias as examples of the papacy gone horribly wrong probably have a painting of Cesare Borgia as Jesus hanging on their living room walls somewhere.
Now true, I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to cross the guy while he lived, but that’s true of a lot of powerful men from that time period, not just the Borgias. There’s a few Sforza and della Rovere papal relatives I wouldn’t have wanted to cross either. And I’m not saying I want to be LIKE Cesare Borgia, but he is my favorite example of someone with a largely undeserved excessively rotten reputation – so much so that the Catholic Church didn’t get around to saying “Ooops” and reburying his bones in Spanish consecrated ground until quite recently. He would probably be a good example of someone whose reputation has been somewhat – albeit slightly – redeemed, as time went by.
Hmmm. I respected the Greek sophists even though the Aristotelian and Platonic crowd treated them with derision. I respected Cesare Borgia even though Christians were spreading false rumors and calling him names. I now know which celebrity photo to put up on the wall!!
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