What about Me?

NO matter how old we get, we all can still find our inner child, that child buried under all the layers of adulthood stressors and all that comes with the package. We all have so many parts to us, like a family within. But the child you just can’t always ignore.

ON my Thanksgiving trip I decided to treat my inner child. After all the crazy college work, work itself and life at home, well, it was time to play a little. So I went to the Disney store and bought the “child” Simba the lion cub. I, my child, was so thrilled when I found Simba. I’d always wanted Simba the cub as a kid when The Lion King was popular but Mom never thought it important. We also found Bambi’s Thumper the rabit, and my friend who was shopping with me, had her own inward child breaking away from her middle-aged self. She wanted to buy Thumper as a Christmas gift for me. So I agreed, and then we paid for the stuffed animals.

Even the clerk, a young guy, was all smiley when he saw Mr. Thumper. He asked the girl helping him out if she liked thumper, and she said, “Of course. Everyone loves Thumper.”
“What about Simba?” my child asked silently, but no one heard it. My child found that unanswered question puzzling.
Still not quite satisfied, my friend and me headed for the Build-a-Bear store, where I took a few minutes to figure out what animal I wanted to make. I’d never made a bear there and was pretty eager about the whole idea. Finally after browsing around, I chose a quadropad polar bear with a smiely face, kind of like the Cococola bear on TV.

A young woman working there helped me stuff it, and when it came to the part where I had to kiss the red heart to stuff into the animal, I felt so innocent, pressing it against my heart and making a silent wish with my eyes closed. Then I gave it a big kiss and felt really happy after placing it into the bear.

I named the bear blizzard, and bought it a scarf and hat. I was feeling so good about my new friend, Blizardl, as I left the store. I didn’t feel ashamed or silly at all as I left the mall with my Disney bag in one hand and the Build-A-Bear box in the other. My inner child was beaming.

ON one hand, I feel our inner child is the immature parts of us who become irresponsible at times, or feel we need to indulge in big bowls of icecream or dive into the bag of mini candy bars. The adult side would say something like, “YOU shouldn’t be doing this. Why are you eating like this?” and the kid in us insists, “I want it, and I want it now.” Instant gradification, something I took a while to learn even as a teenager, and discovered it’s more rewarding when you hold out on that special want, rather than if you got it right away.

Maybe I’m looking too deep into this. It’s only my observation, after all, and nothing’s written in stone.

Yet I feel it’s safe and healthy to say that acknowledging your inner child is an essential key for finding a temporary escape from this demanding adult world.

WE are Many Parts

There’s a hymn entitled, “We are Many Parts” and continues on: WE Are Many Parts. We are all one body. And the gifts we have, we are given to share….
Think only the people with multiple personalities are the only ones who are able to branch off their minds into all those people inside? NO, I don’t think so. For one thing, as psychological texts claim as being true, those with DID, (Disassociative identity disorder), can fragment parts of their minds into actual individuals from a core persona, why couldn’t we with seemingly one solid identity be as fluid? Isn’t it true we have alter egos, as psychology like to put it so neatly, that makes us feel differently from moment to moment? Like right now, I feel my creative, thoughtful and intelligent college student ego coming forth. When I bought my stuffed animals at the mall the other day I was my inner child. When I’m angry, I feel dark and associate with tortured-souled superheroes bent on revenge. When I feel generous and very kind I’ll feel like some kind of saint, and go to bed feeling so light and good about everything, when the next day I wake up the biggest grouch and that dark side of me comes up again.

When I was going through my depression, that dark side, that crazed person inside me, scared the gentler, calm part of me who couldn’t reason with the raging angry side. That night in bed while feeling all dark inside, open to every evil lurking in this world, I wondered if this was the end of the good in me. I felt that mean, that cold and edgy that I feared I’d turn bad. All very unrealistic I know, but the dark side blocked off that reasoning at the time. I told my therapist about this persistent darkness in me, and how it made me feel. How I thought I’d become a villain or monster and hurt someone. She said we’re all like a wheel with many colored spokes, some ugly and others beautiful and some in between. But never will one part of us last, and never can the hub of light, the good light of God we were born with, can ever change. Can ever be touched in any way. Sure, we can choose to live wrongly or immorally due to our free will, but those shifting spokes on that inner wheel within us all is constantly spinning. Spinning everyday with every situation, and I feel we even create new spokes as we go along and change. Each of those parts of us possesses gifts and talents as well, and, yes, even vices. None of us are without flaw but we are born, all of us, with both good and bad.

Statistics say there are more good people in the world than bad. I feel that’s true, since many times the bad people end up creating their own end to their existence in some way. Their good, in them choosing their way of life has been forgotten, though not snuffed out totally. They just let the black spokes of their inner wheel take over their lives. Yes, I know I contradicted myself a bit by saying the darkness within us cant destroy the inward light, the good in us, but maybe it’s possible it could. However, I’m no expert and it’s just my idea. There are so many opinions on such an issue, and it’s only fair I keep it open for your own speculation.

The point here is, we are complex, amazing creatures, more complex than science will ever prove. WE are all made up of many parts, all one body, and must share the gifts of those parts to others around us.

We’re not Alone: speculations on life on other planets

Our universe is immense–so much soit takes literally countless EArth years to reach beyond our own solar system. My friend and me believe aliens do exist–and not the slimy, raygun shooting type, either. I mean, what’s up with HOllywood and aliens wanting to take our planet? What’s so great about what we have compared to what they have, when they, ironically enough, have higher technology than us? HOw illogical is that? I feel there aren’t actual other humans out there, but perhaps microscopic life, living in organized civilizations or perhaps whole other animal-like species. And who came up with the idea these aliens are all technologically advanced? Okay, so maybe some are, but I don’t believe they all are. IT depends on the natural resources their planet provides. There easily could be a planet similar to EARth, and in fact, I’m pretty sure one far off planet like EARth has recently been discovered near a star? I don’t know what it’s called, thoghthogh. It’s marked by a numbering system. NOw, to address the idea of aliens watching us, studying our culture could be an actual truth. I mean, all those claims about UFO sightings could very well be real, or all space junk entering into our atmosphere. Someone told me about how her grandmother claims to have witnessed an alien encounter. IT was late afternoon and her grandmother and the girl’s mom drove out to the drugstore before it closed at six o’clock. IT was about four-thirty as they drove along the road when suddenly, and the girl who told me this swears to it by her grandmother, a beam of white light from the sky came bouncing down alongside the car. Just a lightbeam. My sceptical mind thought about the government messing around, but the girl didn’t think so. Her grandmother got to the store–only to find it closed and three hours later. They didn’t get home till eight-thirty that evening! I’ve heard stories about alien abductions and how victims say it felt like only a few minutes had gone by when, in fact, like with the girl’s grandmother, three hours had past. Could these so-called “alien abductions” interfere with time itself? OR perhaps the biologicaltime clock of the victim? IT’s all under speculation, sadly. I wish there was more research into these laps in time. Maybe one day we’ll know the truth whether aliens really do exist. Some Christians argue that life on other worlds can’t exist because Jesus Christ would have to save their souls by dying on a cross. NOw, let’s be real here. God, Jesus son of God, three persons in one, could very well have somehow saved even the souls of these unknown lifeforms/civilizations. WE don’t know. God, Jesus Christ, wouldn’t die on a cross, for one, on these worlds, because of course, (1) culture and way of ,life for these beings would differ from our own, fro from the standard Roman way of death and (2) Jesus would have another method, most likely, for the salvation of souls. I feel most Christians are too narrow-minded in focusing way too literally on the Bible, our own evidence here on our planet to compare such an event happenign on another world. ONe has to think out of the box in order to realize it wouldn’t happen the way the Christian knows Jesus redemed us. Personally, I feel Jesus very well could have come in any form during any time on any of the unknown worlds with sentient life and saved them in some way. Meanwhile, HOllywood will continue to send invaders to destroy humankind and humankind to destroy the alien invaders on their home planets.

Great MInds LInk Alike

I really don’t feel our minds are confined to our physical bodies. I feel we have the ability to link to others’ minds. Sounds New AGy? NOt really, when you think of it. I mean, how many times have you thought of something, a word most often, and another person in the room happens to say that word? LIke the time I was thinking about the word “Shut up” when I was getting agitated on the school bus over some kid swearing his head off. Then th next moment some other kid shouts, “shut up!” Another time I was on the bus and, I swear this happened, read his mind. OR maybe he sent his thoughts unintentionally to me. All I know was that I wa ssitting there really bored and I heard in my mind in his voice, “Man, I”m hungry.” A minute later he says out loud, “I’m hungry.” You got to take my word for it. I wouldn’t make this up if I remember it from two years ago. I just wouldn’t. I really feel our minds connected somehow at that moment. OR when I’m talking to my friend and he’s about to tell me about something and I somehow know what he’s going to say the instant he takes his next breath to speak. A girl atcollege was telling me about a trip she’d planning on going on, someplace overseas. AFter I asked her where she was going, and the moment before she told me the place, my mind knew the anser. Ireland. Then she said, “Ireland,” and it shocked me that I knew this. Apparently our minds had linked to one another’s at that moment. ESP? I believe it exists for sure. IT just shows we as humans aren’t limited to our physical boundaries here on Earth. I mean, we’re made up of energy as well as the physical matter, but that energy creates a living electricity. Well,those were just a few thoughts.

Dogs Bark in Yellow and your Voice is Violet:Synesthesia

AS you know, I have synesthesia, (read Rainbow of Sound: Synesthesia), and I have the unique ability to actually see music and sounds as I hear them. When I took drum lesssons during the summertime, my drum teacher was always so amazed how well I could keep on beat and remember the rudiments we went over each week in an almost perfect rhythm. LIttle did he know,along with a dash of the natural gift to play music by ear, I could actually see the individual beats my instructor played out on the drum set. IT’s a little hard to describe how I see them. But I’ll try. The bass drum is a single large red dot in my mind, the snare a blotch of whitish, pale pink, (weird I know), and the high hat ticking a light matalic green that seems to expand in size if sizzled. Everything becomes a complex pattern when all is combined. NOw, as for actual music, I find the Narnia, (2005 original score), soundtrack really pretty to “watch” as I listen. The music is so bright in my inner eyeand grows brighter as if a light were being shown on it when the music gets louder. Techno music is really cool, because it’s just so filled with many electronic sounds that look almost too wild in their intensity to seem real. I can’t choose the colors. They just form themselves. I find particular voices have color patterns to them, too. MOst male voices are brown, varying in shades depending on its deepness. Men with very low voices have a rich chocolate brown color, and sometimes a golden color without the sheen. HIgher voices are lighter, tannish usually. My dad has a tanned-colored to beige voice. MOst women have very light-colored voices, mostly white and even blue for some. One neighbor of mine has a violet voice, but sometimes it crosses between that and a deep blue. My cat meows blue and purs a crreamy color, sometimes edging into the yellow zone, like the color of noodels. I find even people have certain color schemes to themselves, usually associating the schemes with the colors of the letters that make up their names. My sister has many red colored letters in her name, and she appears red to me in my mind when I think of her or see her in person. My own name remids me of green and so I have a green scheme to myself. These schemes are like someone waring particular colored clothes, or distinct colored outlines around their bodies. It’s odd, but it’s what I know. The city bus has arusty orange engine sound and even smells associated with their colors have been added to my range of synesthetic perceptions. Today the greasy smell of yellow French fries wafted outside the pizza place and someone at the college Academic Support Center had an undefined reddish-orange soup that I caught on my way out the door. The dogs at the pet store where I work have yellow barks that change as the pitch alters with it. MOvies are kind of fun with the synesthetic perceptions. LIke in real life, I identify the characters’ voices with colors and the sounds with their own colors. I sure wish the annoying blue squeaking of the refridgerator door would stop, and the silver jangling of the bell over the door would be removed. OH, and that white wavering ringing of the phone is just so bright in my mind it startles me sometimes out of nowhere. I’m glad the beige mooing of our bull is gone, now that Buttons the bull is in the freezer. The crimson crowing of the rooster during the summer just irritates me out of my sleep! What can I say? It’s a colorful crazy world out there.

I Shared Michael J. Fox’s Memory: a psychic phenomena

AS you know, I have a strong soulbond with our hero, MIchael J. Fox–(read A Million Different People: Soulbonding)–and a few years back something extraordinaryly weird happened to me rlated to him. Perhaps my mind was more open to energies of others around me at that time, but nevertheless, it happened and it was real. My first experience was when I got really into thinking one day about MIchael and him discovering that he had Parkinson’s Disease. How did he feel about it and how did TRacy, his wife, take it? WEll, this is the strangest part of all. I truly believe that somehow my mind received a mental image of his memory of that afternoon when he broke the news to TRace that sad day. IN my mind I saw both of them, MIke and Tracy, in their bedroom. It was a pretty grainy image, as if it were from an old worn out videotaype. Yet it was colored and Isaw it as if standing in the doorway watching. They held one another, had been sitting down but wer half hunched over in one another’s arms, and crying. The tears. The immense disbelief and sadness pouring out of them. Just that little piece, and I wondered where it’d come from. Two years later I read Lucky Man, and when I came to the chapter where MIke came home that day and told Tracy the news, I sat there on my bed as I listened with amazed and stunned ears to the audio book read in Mike’s own voice, as he described the scene of him and TRacy going into their room and crying in each other’s arms. IT’d really happened! How I ever picked up such a memory from so far away from a person I don’t even know personally is just an incredible mystery to me. This memory came the summer of 2003 and I read LUcky Man in 2005. The actual event of Mike telling Tracy about the diagnosis was in the early nineties, 1993 I believe, if my mind remembers correctly. ONe other true phenomena related to my soulbonding with Mike had to do with Tracy herself. During my SB time, my mind focused a lot on Tracy and could actually see her in my mind. NOw, I’m legally blind and in the past had never seen Tracy Polan in my life. I had no clue what she looked like. I saw Tracy, or rather MIke in my soulbond, always envisioned her as having beautiful blond hair past her shoulders and bright, inteligent blue eyes. Her actual figure was lean and very proportionate, and when I/MIke saw her, she’d smile as if so happy to see me/MIke. I’m not kidding.Finally one day I asked a friend of mine, another Fox fan, what Tracy looked like. “She has blue eyes and really pretty blond hair,” she told methrough an email, and I just sat there wanting to run in crazy circles at the accuracy. INstead I just sat there saying something liek, “NO way! How did I know that?” strangest of all in the past as I got more into Mike, who didn’t address his wife by name, I somehow came up with her name. Tracy. That simple. I never had any second thoughts or previous names selected as possible ones, either. Then one afternoon I read a news article on MIke and Tracy Polan was mentioned at the bottom page, and it was his wife! IS it possible to be psychically linked to someone you feel strongly connected to? I know it sounds insane and outrageous, bit ut it really happened to me. I can’t prove it, of course, but it was real, and because none of these ideas burned into my permanent memory have altered in any waysince then, I know they are true. IT was just so bizarre since in physical distance we are hundreds of miles apart, me six hours away from New York City, his hometown, and have no relations at all. My mind seemed to leap across the boundary someplace unknown to have linked to MIke’s mind.

Only in your Wildest Dreams

DReams are the most mysterious and fascinating part ofthe brain. EVen animals dream. Just watch your cat’s paws twitch in her sleep. She’s racing over the lawn just to beat you to the door before you slam it shut in her face. Your dog waving his paws around, and rolling with a soft whimpering may be going after that scent of the rabit in the field. The idea is, dream researchers still don’t really know why we dream. My dad says it’s recordings filed away from your daily experiences all jumbled in the dream, while others have said it’s cleansing the mind. Some even have said it’s to keep you entertained while you sleep, otherwise, you just will get so bored, I guess, and just stay awake instead. A new, and nutty theory a girl from school this week came up with a new one I’d never heard before. That what we dream is our other half of us while we are awake during the daytime. IT made no sense, but nonetheless intriguing, don’t you think? I said to the girl that maybe that meant our dreams at night were sort of the mental recordings of what our other selves had done during our waking hours, so what you drempt, in other words, was all the things that your other half while you the awakened half in boring real life, had done in the meantime. Crazy, I know. Well, lucid dreaming sure crosses over that line in some sense. I mean, lucid dreams are so realistic, having the control you have as if in reality sometimes makes me wonder ifI’ve visited some other place or time, or had really met that particular person. And I also wonder at times if people can share the same lucid dream. I wonder if unfamiliar, yet seemingly real people, who’ve met me were having the same dream. Like one I had a few weeks ago where I was in this barn with squealing pigs and horses anall the real things you’d find in a barn, and came face to face with an older couple, the farmer and his wife, coming in to feed the piglets. The farmer looked at me very suspiciously, since I’d shown up in his barn for no reason. WEll, the actual reason was that I’d come on the back of a dragon that had landed me there and two teenage guys who’d been drinking beer from bottles had thrown the bottle across the floor where it shattered. The boys had vanished before the farmer and his wife camcame in. The farmer wasn’t real thrilled at all when he spotted me and the broken beer bottle. HE demanded I pick it up, but my vision went weird and I couldn’t find it, to my embarrassment. So the wife helped me pick it up. IT was really strange and so vivid. I’ve learned a secret, too, to remaining in a lucid dream longer than perhaps anyone should. I read that if you, in your dream, rub your dream hands together and watch as you do this, it’ll give you more control over the dream. Well, I did that when I was aware of being within the controlled dream, and recalled this info, so I rubbed my hands together. I was in the passenger’s seat of a woman’s car as I did this, and I remember as I rubbed my hands together her rambling on without me paying attention to her words, as in reality when you are deeply focused on a particular thing. I rubbed my hands as the dream got blurry and then it came shooting back into clarity, the sound of the car’s engine as it moved down a suburban street and the solidity of the sidewalk as I got out of the car. I walked up to an unfamiliar house with my extended dream time I’d created and entered the house, where a young woman invited me in, as if expecting me, and she showed me all sorts of crazy, rather bad, modern art paintings all in rows in her living room. She asked if I liked them and I didn’t know what to say as the dream blurred and I suddenly found myself being forced awake. My body was unable to stay asleep. Still, I’d gained at least five minutes or so more than I would have if I’d woke up. I was amazed. REally I was. I’d never been able to do it since, though, because I’m out of practice with my lucid dreaming techniques. STill, wouldn’t it be a fascinating thing to meet someone who shared the same fantastical dream as you the night before? AFter all, dreams cross over and beyond physical limits, so why couldn’t we encounter others through the dream realm? I’m talking about two people, me and that other somebody also dreaming, and interacting within the dream simaltaniously. I know, lots of speculations, but after all, dreaming is what I should be doing after one a.m tonight, but because I can’t sleep, I’m here rambling on about such, well, dreamy ideas. DReam on , right? Alright, enough with the bad puns!

All Dressed up and Somewhere to HOwl!

Well, tonight I revisited my inner child of Halloween past. I got some friends of mine, Katie and Kasy, to go around town–yeah, sounds lame at our age–to trick-or-treat. REally it wasn’t the candy part i cared about. I really didn’t. I just used tonight as an excuse to get out and do something fun–and, yeah, dress up. IT was so much fun! I went as my werewolf as planned. The werewolf hands I ordered, though, were terrible quality. They were latex clawed hands attached to the top of really thin slippery black gloves with that faux fur attached at the wrists, and worrst of all, the fur went against its grain! I wanted my money bakc. “they’re cheesy,” Katie said laughing when we got downtown and parked in the store’s parkign lot. “Cheesy?” I ehcoed, not happy with the hands but not willing to go without them, since I paid enough money for them. Luckily they were on sale. “WEll, they’re cool. Cheesy cool,” Katie added. Okay. cheesy cool was fine. So we went off for our first few houses, me as a werewolf with silver face paint straeked in my hair–it looked gray!–ears, a latex wolf nose, and a really cool tail I’m so proud of. Kaite was a pirate and Kasy, who was in a horrible mood, was a ninja. A really gloomy Eore version of Ninja. “Should we go to that house?” Katie wondered as we went along. “I’m not going anywhere,” Kasy mumbled from behind us. “I”m the driver.” (HE drove us into town). “Oh, c’mon, Kasy,” I cried, annoyed by his boringness. “Where’s the wolf in ya?” then I let out a beautiful shrill wolf howl that echoed across the street. Cool. “See? She’s in the spirit?” Katie said, smiling. WE hit some houses for candy. Katie had to drop my candy in my bag for me, since the cheesy cool wolf gloves were really unflexible. Paws are, I guess. I said I had no hands that night to one of the people handing out candy. They laughed. I added I wouldn’t have to eat them, since I got candy. But nex time, I added darkly. AT one guy I growled when he said he knew me. I didn’t know him. He thought it was funny and laughed. I felt really good, just having fun that way. Two people commented on my taill. One lady said, “Nice tail,” as if she really admired it. Then, in a crazy way, I turned to Katie with an excited, “She likes my tail!” WE wandered all over the places we knew, and Kasy, in his boring mood, was timing us on when we’d have to leave town for home. AT eight o’clock. We just got started! He was being a baby. Katie and I managed to convince him to let us keep going till eight-thirty. WE went to one house with spooky sound effects playing on the porch and a bowl of candy next to a sutured bloody faced scarecrow looking dummy with straw legs beside the bowl. “Should we just take the candy?” Katie wondered uncertainly. “Yeah, some houses let you do that,” I said. Kasy was too wimpy and wouldn’t get close to the bowl. So Katie and I did. Katie went ahead of me, and sudddenly…Raaa! The scarecrow guy grabbed Katie by the arm, and made sinister laughter behind the mask. Feeling very werewolvian then, I hunched over, came forward at the guy with my cheesy cool paws and dug the latex finger claws into his chest as I growled. The scarecrow guy just laughed in his pretty good sinister way, and I felt really awesome after we left with our candy. Katie and us juts laughed, Kasy stepping on the end, my tail dragging down the steps and Kasy, last in line, stepping on its end. LUckily I have no feeling in that tail. But the fur suffered. WE were growing tired, hot, and most of the houses had less candy by that time. One teenage guy asked why we weren’t raising hell like he had at our age. WE didn’t know what to say. WE felt like idiots as we got our candy from him. Other people said our costumes were original, which they were. Two pitbulls chained to a porch at one house barked at me. They’d seen my erect, pointed ears. Jeez. Am I that convincing? Pretty darn cool, I guess. WE made it back to the car and I was driven home. My parents and sister actually liked my wolf costume. I was so nervous about showing them. I’d never told them about having the costume all this time. I’d had it for a year. The tail and ears were commitioned by Lion of the Sun Productions. HE specializes in fantasy fursuiting and animal mask-making, electronic enhancement for costumes, and creating weapons for LARP games. Custom orders are all the design you ask for. REal cool, and not real expensive (www.lionofthesun.com). Nice guy. Check him out. So, now I’m sitting here, spirit gum nose scrubbed nearly skinless and showered hair so I don’t look old tomorrow in college. That would be weird. Wel, that was my big adventure tonight trick-or-treating.