breathe deep

I read something once by Deepak Chopra about how there's no direct input mechanism from the outside world to the human mind. As far as I could comprehend the explanation from a non-medical perspective, we interact with the world using our senses, which are then interpreted by our brains. Much of the activity that occurs is unconscious and automatic in our brains, and the sundry mechanisms then form some sort of a picture of the outside world in our minds based on the input that was taken in via the senses. Chopra, (who is a doctor), of course explained it much better than I, but his main point was that our sensations all go through our brain's filter before we can experience them consciously.

Chopra's conclusion was that your world is inside of you. The world that you see and experience is inside of you, so you are, in a way, creating your world.
Take that fascinating souffle of weirdness, then add the fact that certain other animals have different senses from us, and you get an awesomely perplexing situation that always makes me look at that sunset a little differently. ;)

The Adventures of Penny Part II

Thanks to Jon and Adam for great suggestions on part "deux"! I have to credit Jon for dreaming up such a crazy and awesome turn of events! This has become an awesomely bizarre story! Enjoy, and any suggestions for the conclusion to Penny's adventures are greatly anticipated. :)

While Penny was standing in the middle of the room, stunned, she heard an inhuman groan emanating from Hazel. The sound of it sent chills down Penny’s spine. Hazel’s face was still buried in the pillow, but now she was writhing as though in deep agony! Her groaning voice was low and loud, reverberating all through the room. “uuuuuuuuggggggh” Hazel bellowed into the pillow.
Penny felt her heart rate speed up, beating uncomfortably in her throat.Somehow, she sensed a threat; but how could sweet, beautiful Hazel be a threat to her? She had never ever hurt a fly! Penny ignored her instinct to be wary of Hazel, and instead approached the bed slowly, preparing to stroke Hazel’s back to comfort her.
“What’s wrong, Haz—NO!” Just as Penny reached her hand out to Hazel, Hazel grabbed her wrist with a grip that would have rivaled that of a well-trained Bumpkin Bellows Brawler. Hazel stared at Penny and continued the eerie groaning sound. Penny felt something inside of her flip, and the combat training that she had received so long ago and had almost forgotten kicked in at just the right moment.
“hi-YA!” Penny kicked Hazel square in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Hazel flopped down onto the bed, trying to catch her breath. Penny went into the “revolting monkey” Kung Fu stance in preparation to continue her fight with Hazel. Instead, though, Hazel just started to cry and whimper on the bed.
“Oooooh, Penny!” she whimpered helplessly. “What have I done? How could I have attacked you?” She turned her head and looked at Penny, with tears in her eyes. Her expression had completely transformed, and now she looked like the same small and delicate (although more pathetic) Hazel she had always been.Penny took her fists down and approached Hazel. She cautiously sat down next to her.
“Hazel, tell me what happened. Why are you crying?”
“Oh, Penny. Skippy might be dead!” Hazel blurted out.
“What? Why? How?”
Hazel let out a big sigh, preparing to open the floodgates and let it all out.“There’s a reason that I’m the star of Master Greenhorn’s class, Penny.” Hazel admitted. “In the beginning, I just had a few lucky breaks when I answered all of his questions right. But then, Master Greenhorn started expecting me to be the star of the class. Well, I didn’t want to let him down, Penny! I didn’t want to look like a failure!”
Penny was afraid that she could see where this was going, but she asked Hazel to continue.“Well, I smuggled some of the ingredients for the cure for Prickly Pear Syndrome home with me, not to mention all of the other extracts and chemicals I’ve taken from Greenhorn’s lab before that.”
“ Oh my ---! … And… did you do anything with those extracts? Did you use them?” Penny was afraid to know the answer, but she had asked too much now. She might as well just hear the whole story.
“Well, I tried to make the solutions and concoctions that Master Greenhorn told us about. I knew that if I did that, I would be way ahead of the rest of the class. It was too dangerous, though, Penny. I shouldn’t have done it! I got carried away with it. I felt so powerful, being able to create potions that could cure diseases, and certain concoctions that could alter moods and states of mind.”
“But, Penny!” Hazel interjected. “We aren’t supposed to even learn how to make those unless we pass the Crafts of Concoctions exam in our 8th year! This is so dangerous!”
“I know, Penny. I think that’s why I liked to do it. I never intended it to go this far, but I just couldn’t stop! Eventually, I didn’t have time to sleep anymore. I had to stay up all night just to concoct my concoctions and do my readings in a 24-hour day. Up until now, I’ve just been drinking gallons of Carabona Coffee. But, then I decided I needed something more. So, I found a recipe for Nutty Neurosa Nectar. I tried to extract something called 3,7-dimethylxanthine from a chocolate bar using just a candle, a razor blade and good wishes. I thought that I had managed to extract it, and I made the Nectar. All of a sudden, though, I got nervous. I had never made something before that I was going to drink myself. I got really really scared and I just wanted to get rid of it. Just then, Skippy ran into the room. He must have thought that the Nutty Neurosa Nectar smelled good, because he was jumping up on me and begging for it. I kept telling him ‘no! no!’, but it was like he went crazy for the Nectar! He went completely nutty! Eventually, he jumped up on me and knocked me down. I dropped the petrie dish with the Nectar in it, and he lapped it up right away. Ever since then, though, Skippy has been passed out with his mouth open and tongue lolling out. I can’t even wake him by putting cinder sausage under his nose! Oh, Penny!”
Penny just shook her head and sighed in response. The shock of these developments was overwhelming.
“That’s why I snapped at you just a moment ago and grabbed your wrist like that, Hazel. I must have inhaled some of the fumes from the Nutty Neurosa Nectar. It must be way too strong! Instead of making me alert, it made me rage! After Skippy passed out, I quickly looked in my “Unforgettable Formulas” manual to see if Neurosa Nectar has side effects.” As Hazel began to continue her sentence, another tear formed in the corner of her eye.
“Penny, dogs are allergic to chocolate. The chemical I extracted from the chocolate was a concentrated form of the drug that dogs are allergic to. The manual warned against giving the Nectar to dogs!”
“Oh, Hazel!” exclaimed Penny. “What are we going to do?!”
“Well, before we do anything, we have to go to my house and get Skippy before my mom gets home and calls Master Greenhorn. Do you have any idea how much trouble I could get in, Penny?”
“But….” Penny didn’t know what to do anymore. Hazel was like a sister to her, but protecting her meant breaking so many rules.Whatever decision she made would deeply affect her life as well as Skippy’s life and Hazel’s future.
“You know,” said Hazel, “I might be able to concoct the antidote and save Skippy. But I’ll need your help.”

The Adventures of Penny, Part I

I wrote this story to entertain myself during class (yes, it's true!). It's extremely simple, but it might be fun to get suggestions on what should happen next, and I'll write based on your suggestions! Enjoy!

Penny Padfoot was very very bored. She simply could not listen to Master Greenhorn drone on and on about prickly pear syndrome for one more second! Penny looked around the classroom and saw all 25 of her classmates diligently taking notes, nodding their heads and asking questions. “Master Greenhorn!” shrieked Penny’s classmate Hazel, “is it possible to use heather wort as a treatment for prickly pear syndrome symptoms?”
“Very good, Hazel! That’s what I was just about to teach the class…” Master Greenhorn redoubled his efforts to convey the importance of cures for the syndrome, and Penny looked over at Hazel, jealously noticing her shiny brown hair and the golden glow that seemed to surround her like an angelic aura. Yet, it was impossible for Penny to dislike Hazel. In fact, everyone loved Hazel. She was just so… sweet… and beautiful. Every day, she walked the long stairway up to Wobbly Warlocks Academy’s front entrance with a big smile on her face. She greeted everyone she passed with a big sparkly smile. She said “Hi, sweetie!” to the girls, and “Hi, Handsome!” to all the boys.

Surprisingly, Hazel and Penny were best friends, and they told each other everything. They grew up right next door to each other on Little Loblaw Lane so they were playmates even before they could crawl! Nonetheless, Penny had one wish: that once, just once, she could be better than Hazel at something!

As Penny walked home with Hazel that afternoon, everyone they passed waved and smiled to Hazel, ignoring Penny. “Bye Hazel. See you tomorrow! I’ll save you a seat at the lunch table!” said Billy Bluebottom as he walked past Penny and Hazel. Hazel smiled and waved in acknowledgment as he nervously walked past, tripping on his own feet.
“Where am I gonna sit if you sit with him?” whined Penny. “Oh, hon’, you’ll sit with me and Billy and his friends… or I can sit with you instead in our usual spot if you want! That’s no problem!” Penny felt a little relieved, but a little embarassed.

When Penny got home, she had a quick cup of tea with her mother, and ran up to her room and shut the heavy oak door quietly. She walked over to her bookshelf and got prepared to do the thing she had been looking forward to all day. She got her fancy parchment paper, paintbrushes, and paints and spread them all out on the floor in front of her. She could see all of the blues, greens, purples, yellows, and reds in front of her on the floor, and it was exciting and dazzling. Slowly, meditatively, Penny sat down on the floor and lifted her brush, dipped it into some orange paint, and began painting. Before long, though, there was a violent tapping on her window. This had never happened before. How would anyone get up here? Penny turned her head, and at once she realized that she was looking at Hazel.
Hazel was all red in the face and her hair was messed up. She banged violently on Penny’s window again, insisting on getting in. Forcing herself out of her shock, Penny rose to her feet and ran to the window, knocking over some red paint on her way that promptly stained the light blue carpet. As Penny opened the window, Hazel said “let me in, Penny!”
“Of course! But what happened?!”
“I’ve done something, Penny.” Said Hazel. “But you’ll never understand. I can never tell you. Just let me lie down for a second.”
Without saying another word, Penny pointed to her bed, allowing Hazel to lie down. Hazel began to cry uncontrollably, but Penny didn’t do anything. She was too shocked. She had never seen Hazel upset before; something really, really bad must have happened.

We live in a fast-paced world. We eat fast, we walk fast, we drive fast. We're rushing toward deadlines... often self-imposed ones.
Living by a clock is hard work, and one of the most stressful things to impose on the human psyche. Yet, how often do you look at your watch each day? How often does a voice inside your head tell you to "hurry up"? How often do you look at your calendar, reminding yourself "only X more days until Y"?
I've seen too many people my age with wrinkles... and I, myself, have had close calls with speed-induced franticism. I've been lucky enough to learn to breathe deep into my toes, or with my eyes (ever heard of pranyama?: http://www.yogasite.com/pranayama.htm). I've even had the opportunity to sit in at a buddhist temple. Although I found myself squirming from discomfort after sitting lotus-style for half an hour (my apologies to the resident priest if my squirming disrupted his inner peace), I learnt a lesson about the power of the "now".
Excitement is fun... and I live in varied states of excitement quite often. Agitation, however, is different. It's a state of being unable to sit still or calm oneself. Thoughts are flying through your head willy-nilly and your breath is far up in your chest or even in your throat.
I don't have a lot of wisdom. I just want to make my lucky breaks obvious to others: take tai chi, do yoga, meditate, or take some deep breaths. It certainly can't hurt to calm your mind at least for a couple of minutes a day, and you'll see some wonderful things.

what was lost... and what was gained

It’s a wonder that law students ever survived before the advent of wireless internet. As I got out my laptop in preparation for another long and dolorous class of (sorry, but the class must go without being named for purposes of protecting the identities of myself and classmates, but we'll just call it "Law and Basket Weaving"), I looked around the room and saw all of my classmates doing the same.
True, on the first day of class, all the professors admonish us to never use the internet during class. “It’s distracting to others!”, they told us. Others said “It’s disrespectful!” We all knew what they really meant, though. They wanted to be the center of attention. They didn’t want modern technological advances to detract from our full and complete focus on them... and their jokes.
As 1Ls, we delighted in setting up chat rooms and writing emails during class. We secretly snickered at jokes that we passed over instant messenger, trying not to laugh out loud and draw attention to ourselves. So, you can only imagine our horror when one by one we booted up our laptops on that fateful day of "Law and Basket weaving" and nobody’s wireless internet functioned properly. I subtly scanned the room around me to see if everyone else was experiencing the same horror that I was: no internet.
I saw the looks on their faces. Mouths gaped open, hands cradled crestfallen drooping heads, classmates gave each other looks of encouragement and silent winks. We’ll get through this. We’ve just got to. Hang in there! The looks communicated. The girl sitting next to me gave me a prolonged gaze, maintaining eye contact with me, bit her bottom lip, winked at me and nodded. It’s OK, she nodded. Stunned, I nodded back at her. I reached into my purse and pulled out a bottle of aspirin. I handed her one and took one for myself. Our friendship was sealed.
After that day, I heard the stories of other friendships and romances that began during that class.
Never forget, just like that fateful day in "Law and Basket weaving", the most heartbreaking tragedies are known to bring people together.