After having some trouble sleeping, I decided to forgo the suggestions most had given me — sleeping pills, exercise, fewer all-nighters — in favor of one I thought I could more realistically take on: feng shui.
Feng shui, from what I gathered from its Wikipedia article, is the ancient Chinese practice of orienting space to bolster a positive energy called qi — basically, baby-proofing your house. Except instead of protecting an infant, you're protecting an invisible life force that's both part of you and not part of you, loosely translating into English as "air."
Thus began my mission to turn my living space into an airtight, Zen paradise and get my sleep back — temporarily skipping over the feng shui desk organization manual my housemate had given me, as it allotted two-ninths of the desk to traditional desk items and the rest to plants and candles.
On to wall color. It would be easier to adapt my personality and life circumstances to my existing wall color than repaint, I decided, so I browsed through a feng shui color manual, fingers crossed that green would make an appearance. Lo and behold, green is the perfect color to sustain the qi of both those who are distinctly NOT looking for companionship and babies. Score.
The rest of my task, however, required more effort than simply adopting a misanthropic, infantile personality. I was frantic upon learning that with my bed so close to a window, my qi could easily escape through it at any time; it was entirely possible I no longer even HAD a qi.
Set on winning it back, I read on about bed placement: far away from windows but not cramped against a wall; far from the door but definitely not in view of a mirror, worst of all one at the foot of the bed; not in the path of the qi-killing draft that runs between the door and the windows, but the door must been seen from a sleeping position. I was doomed. My many-windowed room was an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle. The bed was now stranded in the center of the room not knowing how to nurture its own qi after being flung around in all directions.
And as if I hadn't done enough to alienate my qi, the sharp corners of my night table have allegedly been impaling it this whole time! Not only had I flunked baby proofing, I had done the equivalent of stabbing the baby. Then there was the matter of waking up to a beautiful and inspiring image; I currently woke up to my heater, a crowded extension cord and the collection of used mugs I had compiled throughout the preceding day. No wonder my qi had booked it out the window.
I finally settled on a reconfiguration that was satisfactory save for the mirror in which I could see myself if I slept in most natural positions, but I resolved to simply inch up and down the bed at night until I disappeared. In addition, after much thought about which inspiring image I should like to wake up to, I decided to tap into my household's living room collection and bring in the life-sized Elvis cutout, unwitting courtesy of Leonard Carmichael Society's Las Vegas Night. (Before and after shots available online.)
Yes, my room is now something I wouldn't altogether associate with hideousness. But I learned a few things — like those sharing a bed should always call the outside to leave their qis feeling freer. And while my green walls may bar that piece of advice from ever pertaining to me, I wouldn't trade in my newly misanthropic disposition for anything after sleeping the way I did last night and waking up to the King at the foot of my bed.
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Romy Oltuski is a senior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.Oltuski@tufts.edu.
