feng shui & Wendell Berry

I've been feeling a bit claustrophobic lately. Sometimes I feel as is I am being smothered by things. You'd think with the moving of the past years that we would have cut down on the things we've accumulated, and we did, but maybe not enough. I think part of this feeling came from finally getting all my project stuff out of the dining room, which has been it's temporary place for the summer, as the studio has been over 100 degrees. It felt so good to get it out of the way and to finally be able to see the surface of the dining room table and potentially eat there. However, the feeling began to fade as I faced my studio, which now has piles of things that need a place to be. Moving a mess from one place to another is not the same as eliminating a mess, nor is it as satisfying.

I've been reading a book of essays on the life and work of Wendell Berry.One of the essays, called The Art of Buying Nothing, is by Barbara Kingsolver. In it, she paraphrases Berry's standards for technological innovation.
1. The new tool should cost less than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small as the one it replaces.
3. It should do better work.
4. It should use less energy.
5. Ideally it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small shop that will take it back for repair.
9. It should not replace ot disrupt anything good that already exists, and thins includes family and community relationships.
I realize that many of these guidelines are easier said than done for those of us in the modern world. Berry, who writes his books without a computer saying, " I would hate to think that my work as a writer could not be done without direct dependence on strip mined coal." But it does make me think about all that STUFF we accumulate and spend so much time organizing, buying more stuff to facilitate the organizational process.

In the new Domino there is an article detailing a writer's experience with feng shui. Looking at the diagram of the 8 point feng shui system, I realized that our refrigerator was in our money space, and that I have been avoiding some seriously sketchy glass yogurt containers in there for a long time. Next to the fridge is a badly placed trashcan. Kind of as a joke, and kind of because you have to face those yogurt containers sometime, I cleaned out the fridge and rearranged some things in the kitchen. I also cleaned off the bookshelf that had becaome the landing ground for bills and mail (our career corner- it could use some help). There were quite a few other jobs that I'd been avoiding, but finally tackled filling bags with things to donate. We've been making jokes about how that clean freezer will help our prosperity. More than that, I think is that doing these things, maintaining order, eliminating things, makes me feel so much lighter. Whether you believe in the powers of feng shui or regard it as new age hype, I think that lightness sure counts for a lot.