SledgeHammerHeart

        I dug up this poem that I wrote a year ago next week. Back then, it was the first truly emotive piece of writing that I had shared with another person in years. I wrote it a few days after my heart exploded, and I sent it to the woman who blew it up.
        When I read it today, many things come up for me. I can recall exactly how I felt a year ago. The intense power of such heartache isn’t there now, but it’s memory shall always remain.
        That’s not a bad thing at all. It helps remind me of how far I’ve come in a year. How much I’ve grown. How much I’ve changed. It helps remind me that today, love is a vibrant, living, breathing, feeling, spirit that pervades all of my life. It reminds me that I really have made a quantum emotional shift. And that shift has allowed me to become so much more of myself.
        This poem represents the beginning of the finest year of writing of my life.


SledgeHammerHeart

why did my heart have to break to be opened up?

was my heart like a geode? a rock that housed a beautiful crystal on the inside. but the only way you could get to the crystal was to break the rock wide open?

i did everything i could to not have my heart broken. and it still happened. so what does that tell me?

maybe that to hide your heart is a waste of time. and energy. and love.

how could she break my heart if there was nothing there to break? she couldn’t have. so there was something there. or i wouldn’t feel this way. i just couldn’t get to it. and i couldn’t let her get to it either.

but she did. and i didn’t even know it. and i spent all that time hiding when i could have been seeking. for something. with her.

why does it take so much pain to be able to feel something that was there all the time?

why does it take a sledge hammer to smash a beautiful soft heart?

because it was a heart disguised as a rock.

you tap on what looks like a rock, what feels like a rock, and nothing appears to be happening. but something is happening. because the rock is really a soft heart. so finally you get tired of tapping and smash it open. and only then does the illusion of the rock disappear.

only then do you see that it’s not a rock at all. it’s not hard and cold. it’s soft and warm.

and it’s splattered all over my life.

and i played just as much a part in splattering my heart as she did. i can’t be mad at her, and i’m not. i can’t be mad at me. and i’m not.

but i am so sad.

sad that i couldn’t remove the illusion of the rock.

and the heart is really who i am.

it’s big and soft and warm and beautiful.

but i just couldn’t let her see that.

and now that’s all i want her to see.

we were both great illusionists. i created the illusion that i didn’t care that much. she created the illusion that things were okay.

i wonder how it would be with no illusions?

she reached my heart.

and she didn’t even know it.

because i didn’t even know it.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Flintstone quarry of Wrongs) Reserved.

Thank You Hope

        On the fourteenth of June, in the year of our lord two-thousand-and eight (that sounds so official, doesn’t it?), I spent the evening with a woman I was madly in love with at Plymouth beach. As wonderful as that sounds, and it was, there’s a lot more to it than that.
        While sitting on the beach just before sunset, she mentioned the title of a book that for some reason stuck with me. We covered so much ground that night, it wouldn’t have surprised me if I didn’t remember it. But I did. Because that night, I was truly present. I was fully engaged in the moment, and more myself, than I had been in months, possibly years. That night seemed to go by in slow motion. It was as though every word that we spoke, every feeling that we had, every moment that we shared, was painted on a giant canvas, right in front of us. Like watching a painting being created right before our eyes. All we had to do to see exactly what had happened was look up. It was all right there. The totality of our shared experience preserved like a landscape scene on this constantly evolving painting.
        I felt completely different that night than I had in years. Since my father had died, almost nineteen months before, my life had not gone well. For the majority of that troubled year and a half, I felt like a spectator of my own life. It was as though my life wasn’t real, but just a movie that played in front of me, all of the time. A movie in which I was supposed to be starring, but actually, was not even in. Right before my eyes, alone in this vast theatre of self, I was watching my life happen. And I was alone. I was an audience of one. Lonely. Scared. Hurt. Overwhelmed with despair.
        “How much longer can I stand this?”, I would ask myself. “How much longer before I jump up on screen and start creating this movie - MY movie - instead of just watching it? How long will I suffer in this isolated, cavernous, lonely place?”. I didn’t have a clue. It felt like it might be forever. But I knew I couldn’t last that long. Eventually, I would choose the path of self-destruction over the path of disengagement. At some point, when it got as bad as it could get, I would engage in the movie the only way I would be capable of: I would destroy it. I would jump up on the screen and start wreaking as much havoc as I could. If the only thing I knew how to do was self-destruct, then that’s what I would do. I would go down in a tragic, self-indulgent blaze of false glory. Because that would be better than just dying alone in this theatre, wasting away to nothing as I helplessly watch my life fade to black.
        But this night with principessa on Plymouth beach was unlike any other I had experienced since I returned from California, almost two years ago, just before my father died. I came back form the golden state full of energy and promise and hope and optimism. But within a few months, circumstances completely derailed me. Actually, it was my response to those circumstances that derailed me. The circumstances were indeed bad, but if I had responded differently to those circumstances, they wouldn’t have affected me like they did. The death of my father was incredibly painful, and the actions of certain people around me were completely detestable, but I take full responsibility for how I responded. Once my father got hurt and began his slow demise, my world started to unravel, mostly because I let it. After his death, things in my family, and things in my life, got exponentially worse. And so did I.
        But as I said, this night on Plymouth beach, I felt different. I was softer. Much more open and not so guarded. More vulnerable. Days before, I had the first of many subsequent awakenings. I realized how I had disappeared over the previous year and a half. And I began to grieve all the loss I had experienced in that short time. Like a flower that had been closed for ages in fear, withering in pain and anger, I slowly began to open. The world literally looked and felt differently to me. And thus so did this woman who I had been with for almost a year. She had just broken up with me a few weeks before, but I had just recently allowed myself to feel it.
        That night ended with both of us in tears. A little over a month later, my friend and writing teacher from UCLA was in town with her husband. They’re both huge Red sox fans, and we went to a game together. During the course of the game, I mentioned to my friend the title of this book that principessa had told me about. To my surprise, my friend said she knew the author personally. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind getting the author to sign a copy of the book and send it to principessa. My friend said she’d be happy to. I was thrilled. She wouldn’t be seeing the author for a while, so I would have to be patient.
        I’ve never thought of myself as a patient person, but I’ve re-assessed that belief. I’ve come to understand that patience is simply a mind set, or more accurately, a spirit set. That is, if I have faith and confidence that I can somehow manifest whatever I’m needing patience for; if what I need to be patient about is deemed important enough to be worth waiting for; then I can exhibit the quality of patience. So if I have faith in myself to create, faith in the universe to give me what I need, and the belief that I’m worth it, then patience is simply giving my life the space it needs to manifest. That’s a way of being, which is not only a frame of mind but a frame of heart and a frame of spirit. It’s a mental, emotional, and spiritual pursuit. When I put patience in that framework, it doesn’t seem like a tortuous waiting game, but merely a cog in the soft machine of the process.
        So lo and behold, here we are in May, almost a year later, and this book is signed, sealed, and I had it delivered. I hope she likes it. I hope she can truly receive it. But whether she can or not, I’m happy I did it. It was a gift from my heart, with no expectations attached. I give it unconditionally, simply because it feels good to do so. It was a loving act who’s genesis began on a beach in Plymouth almost a year ago, on a very special night in my life. A night that signified my awareness of an open door that I willingly walked through. When I took that tenuous first step, I started down a different path. A path of light, not darkness. A path of openness, not protection. A path of engagement, not isolation. A path of vulnerability, not defense. A path of hope, not despair.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a hopelessly optimistic amount of Wrongs) Reserved.

The CVS of Broken Hearts

        Saturday, I was at a local CVS picking up a prescription for my sister. In front of the store, there stood a couple having a discussion. From the look on their faces, and their body language, it looked pretty intense. I had to walk past them on my way into the store, and I really didn’t want to hear what they were saying. But it was impossible not to, unless I pulled the old third grade audible denial technique of putting my hands over my ears and making loud, inhuman sounds with my mouth. I knew how to do that, physically and metaphysically. I’ve watched people in my family do it for decades.
        I heard a little as I walked by. “Relationship”. “Love”. “Lies”. The rest of what they were saying was a blur, and that’s the way I wanted it. But those powerful words leapt out at me like frogs from a lily pad. And right before I got past them, the guy walked away, and the woman turned into the store. Without knowing anything else, it appeared there was some serious hurt going on. I felt this energy as I walked through their collective space, and it literally plucked a heart string that resonated in the key of pain.
        The woman was in front of me, and happened to be going towards the back of the store, just like I was. In another life, I stopped her and asked her what was wrong. Sensing my infinite empathy, compassion, and healing abilities, she broke down, opened up, and told me everything. I held her, wiped away her tears, put my hand on her chest, and instantly mended her broken heart. She walked away smiling from ear to ear, now crying tears of joy.
       That was in another life. In this one, I said a silent prayer for both of them and kept walking.
        It was now official. This was The CVS of Broken Hearts. Eight months ago, my heart got broken there too. Even now, every time I go by the place, I think of that night. God knows how many more hearts have been shattered within the negative love zone of that seemingly innocent pharmaceutical and beauty supply store.
        Last summer, the night before the Falmouth Road Race, which I was running, I had gotten together with my ex-girlfriend, principessa. During the course of the evening, I drove her to this same CVS to fill a prescription for her because she wasn’t feeling well. On the way to the store, I said how madly in love with her I was, even though we had been broken up for two and a half months. I hadn’t been in the situation of being in love with somebody I wasn’t with since I was twenty years old. And just like then, this discussion wasn’t exactly flooding me with dopamine.
        This conversation on the way to CVS was probably the most painful discussion of my life. It continued on into the store, where she started to cry. I tried to comfort her, and then through her tears she said the worse six words I’ve ever heard: “I’m not in love with you.” Actually, it was the worse twelve words I’ve ever heard. She said it twice.
        As I reeled from this machete through my heart, I turned away, the look on her face burned indelibly into whatever area of grey matter is responsible for the storage of devastatingly painful memories. That area’s retention ability was pushing maximum density by now, having received trillions of synapse shattering neurotransmissions within the past hour. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I wish I could say that I was able to find humor in the moment and respond with “Oh Yeah?!” But no, I couldn’t. I had to process what I just heard. It was the first time she had ever said that to me.
        All of sudden, my whole insides caught fire, and I felt like I was being cooked from the inside by the flames of agony and despair. I walked around the store because I had to keep moving or I would have burned to a crisp right there in the make-up isle. Nothing I had ever felt hurt like this. I would have preferred the pain of a white hot, razor studded catheter jammed through a raging erection.
        Previously, throughout the course of the evening, no matter what she said to me, even if it hurt like hell, I didn’t shut down. I didn’t resort to my normal protective M.O. I didn’t get defensive or put up a wall. In fact, I returned whatever she threw at me with words of love. With understanding. With kindness. With nakedly vulnerable honesty. And I have to admit, it felt good to do that. It was different. I was different. And that was wonderful. Even if everything else about that night totally sucked ass.
        So as I walked and burned, my course of action became clear. Just go back and tell her the truth. So I walked up to her, pushed her soft hair away from her head, and whispered in her ear “I still love you. Whether you love me or not doesn’t affect how I feel about you.” Now those were some words that I had never said to any woman before. Ever. Even if it was how I felt.
        That’s all I could do. I was done with not showing how I felt. I tried that, thinking it would save me from heartache. It didn’t. It just kept me further away from whoever I was with. I had nothing to loose now anyway. Even if she was lying about how she felt, what good was it going to do if I lied about how I felt? Then all you’ve got is even more space between us. And if I was ever going to pole vault over this emotional chasm, I’d rather do it over a shorter distance. I had no control over how far she’s going to push me away. But I didn’t have to do the same just because she hurt me. I had done that before too. It didn’t make me happy either.
        So I kept her close, even if it was just in my heart. That was a lot more difficult than putting up a wall, or staying mad at her, or any number of defense mechanisms that I got good at. More difficult, but it didn't suck energy from me. It gave it. It’s like working out. Going for a run is harder than staying on the couch, but it fills me with an energy that affirms my life. Not diminishes it.
      I got absolutely no sleep that night last August, but I still ran the Falmouth Road Race the next day. All 7.1 miles of it. Like I said, life affirming energy.
        But I still don’t like going into that CVS.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and, you guessed it, a CVS full of Wrongs) Reserved.

The Warrior Lover

        The impetus for this website stemmed from a powerful desire to share what I was feeling. I had kept so much in for so long that I felt a tangible pressure pushing against me from the inside. Some force wanted to burn through me and into the world, like light through my pores. My whole body ached for release. I had teetered past that emotional equilibrium; that point where the pain of holding it in was greater than the fear of expressing it.
        It became clear to me that the way I was dealing with my feelings wasn’t working. I had to do it differently. But how?
        My options were many. I had kept a journal for over fifteen years. I was so shut down, however, that I rarely ever wrote in it anymore. When I started opening up last summer, I not so surprisingly started writing in my journal again. I went from writing virtually nothing for years to writing pages and pages every day. I emotionally exploded onto the page.
        Very few people had ever seen these most private outpourings. I could have kept it that way. But that wasn’t cutting it anymore. Some voice inside was telling me to share what I was writing. If I was going to listen to that voice, though, I wanted to know why. Why share? So I asked. And I listened.
        The voice that was telling me to share my writing was the same voice that was telling me to go after the woman who just broke up with me. I hadn’t gone after a girl since I was a teenager. What I mean is, if I expressed an interest in a woman and she didn’t respond, I didn’t spend much time pursuing her. I just moved on and found somebody else I liked.
        But this was different. My heart had opened up. I realized how much I cared about her, and I wasn’t just going to drop the ball. Especially given the circumstances and the emotions that surrounded the way she left me, which I won’t get into because that would be a disservice to her, even though she doesn’t care about me or read my blog. The bottom line was that I wanted her, and if I had any chance of getting her back, I  had to put myself out there. Way out there. I had to go after her.
        My creativity in overdrive, I came up with all sorts of imaginative ways to show her how much I loved her. First, I simply told her, in person, in emails, in letters. I sent flowers. While we were going out, despite my inner emotional turmoil, I had paid attention. I knew her. So I sent her a package that was all about her. I bought her a basket, and in the basket put things that I knew she liked. A bottle of her favorite champagne. Her brand of shampoo. A scented candle. Food, like chocolate, Nutella, and these organic pop tarts that I turned her onto. Toenail polish in a sexy shade of hot pink. A CD of a favorite band. A few magazines that she was into. Then I covered the contents with soft, fresh rose petals from a dozen red roses, and FedExed the package overnight so that when she opened the box, the rose petals would still be soft and smell sweet.
        I wrote her poems. I wrote her a song. I even created a video for that song using pictures and footage that I had of her. I bought her a few more creative, personal gifts. But I never sent her any of that. I never got the chance.
        My overtures didn’t work. She wasn’t coming back.
        If I had the chance to do it again, though, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because I knew that no matter what, I had to do this. I had to take this risk. I had to put myself out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit was. Even if she didn’t come back, what I would gain from laying it all on the line would be worth it. To risk my heart meant to come out of fear and into faith. Out of hiding, and into my truth. I loved her, and regardless of whether she loved me or not, regardless of if she even believed me, it was the truth. I was more sure of that than I had been of anything in an awful long time. So I had to go with it. I couldn’t worry about the results. I had to follow my heart.
        That voice that I talked about, the one that was telling me to share my writing; the one that told me to go after my ex-girlfriend; the one that if I listened to, I had to know why. Well I suddenly knew why; the course of my life had shifted. My future no longer lay in keeping my heart hidden. Whatever was in store for me was going to come out of opening myself up and sharing what was inside.
        The voice told me that from following my heart would come growth. Growth I needed. Even if that scared the crap out of me. Expressing how I felt about her was the stepping stone for sharing more of myself with the world. Whatever gifts I had, I wasn’t sharing enough of them, and I wasn’t sharing them with enough people. I was being stingy, because I was afraid.
        What better way to get over this fear than to share myself with....the world. A website. On the world wide web.
        And within the decision to start this blog, there also lay the seed of hope that maybe she would listen. Maybe she would see my true self. Maybe she would know that this is real for me, and not some ego driven game. I’m pouring my heart out. This is what I feel. This is who I am.
        A piece of what motivated me to blog was indeed the desire to win back my ex-girlfriend. How could it not be? She opened up my heart. I wanted to share it with her.
        Here I am, approaching my sixth month doing this. I’m happy to say that, even though she hasn’t paid any attention to me, I’m still writing. I’m still posting. I haven’t become cynical about love. I don’t dislike her, even though she’s repeatedly hurt me. In fact, a part of me still loves her. I continue to share what’s inside of me, even though a piece of what pushed me into this isn’t there anymore. I continue to grow, to feel, to struggle with my emotions and with my thoughts.
        My voice was right. The course of my life has shifted. I don’t know what my future holds, but I know I’m on the right path. The path of feeling. Of openness and unbridled self expression. The path of loving. The path of sharing more of myself with the world. Living out on a limb.
        This is the path of The Warrior Lover. The Warrior Lover that’s in all of us.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and an open heart full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Mistress Music Part 2 - The Glory of Table Drumming

         A simple but revealing insight came to me not long after I began coming out of My Dark Ages. It occurred to me one day, like a flash of sunlight reflecting off a passing boat, that for almost two years I had not been humorously chastised for table drumming. This is because, for almost two years, I had not done any table drumming.
         Often enough (some would say obsessively enough), my fingers and hands are in rhythmic motion, tapping out beats and fills across counters, desks, tables, walls, doors, and people’s bodies. Whether music is playing or not. But I could not remember the last time somebody made a joke about it at my expense. Because for the longest time, I didn’t do it. It’s a silly little observation, but quite revealing.
         The music wasn’t alive in me during those difficult times. Not only was I not quasi-obsessively table drumming, but I was not responding emotionally to music at all. Usually, several times a week at least, a song will move me either to tears, to head banging, to singing, to air guitaring or air drumming, or to dancing. During My Dark Ages, which lasted over a year and a half, I hardly did any if that at all. Maybe only once or twice, and that’s it. When I realized that, I was astounded. It made me realize just how out of sorts I was during that time. A basic staple of my personality had not shown up for almost one hundred weeks. It was as though I hadn’t eaten in almost two years.
         I wasn’t letting music, or anything else for that matter, in. When I’m so walled off that not even music can reach me, well that’s only happened for one period in my entire life since I discovered, in my early teens, the magic of music and how it affected me.
         I wasn’t even in a band during My Dark Ages, and that’s the first time since I started playing at thirteen that I had gone more than six months without being in a group or having a live performance. That may be the most telling emotional statistic of all.
         Every girlfriend I’ve ever had has made light hearted, amorous comments about my table drumming. Every girlfriend that is, except my last one, principessa. She rarely saw me at anything remotely close to my best. She never got to experience more than a fraction of all of me, because I was incapable of giving anything more than that. If I had the opportunity to ask her if she ever remembers me going nuts over a piece of music, be it table drumming, singing aloud, wailing on my air guitar, or spontaneously shaking my groove thang, she’d say “Yes, once”. And I’d know exactly what time she was talking about. It was right before the moment I fell in love with her.
         She had come down to my house on the cape with a mutual friend. We had met about a month before, and I hadn’t seen her since. When she came into the kitchen, I was busy air drumming to a live version of “I Shot The Sheriff” by Eric Clapton. I was way into it. Musically Possessed, you might even say. Eyes closed, my hands and feet moved all over my imaginary drum set in syncopated motions, with a focused reckless abandon. I was oblivious to the rest of the world. Because in those moments, this was the world. I didn’t even know she had walked into the room. For about a minute, she and two others watched me in this trance like state before our mutual friend screamed “Hello Clint!”. I looked up, and saw my future girlfriend there. I had forgotten how pretty she was. I walked over to her, grabbed her gently by the shoulders, and kissed her softly on the lips, saying it was nice to see her.
         Looking back, I know now that it was precisely then that I fell for her. It was a moment of clarity during a time of great confusion and turmoil. It’s also when I got scared stiff. My mind started running away as fast as my heart had tumbled towards. I was coming from my head back then, so I wasn’t in touch with what I felt, even though my higher self knew what was happening.
         These days, things are different. I come from my heart, and music moves me all the time. I’m letting it reach me once more. Actually, because my heart is so much more open now, it’s reaching me deeper and more often than ever. It’s really beautiful, but sometimes kind of disruptive. This extreme openness is still relatively new to me, and I try not to squelch it. Which means that it’s not unusual for me to start crying in the car when I hear a piece of music that moves me. Or air drumming in between sets at the gym. Or singing the song on the radio quietly, but audibly, in public. Or dancing in my bedroom. By myself. It feels good, hurts no one, and makes me happy. It may look (and sound) a little strange to those in my line of sight or in earshot, but it’s harmless. I’m even grateful for the tears, because it means I’m feeling something, when for so long I was unable to.
         Besides everything else it’s given me, music also serves as a barometer for how much I’m letting in, how much I’m letting out, how much I’m feeling. I table drum like mad now because the music is back in me. Even in my darkest moments, I can turn to music to help me. I’ve let her back in. She feels good. And if she feels that good to me, I feel that good to her. It’s a marvelous relationship.
         I’m forty-six, and I’ve never proposed to a woman. But I’ve been married for over thirty years. Married to music.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a loud screaming amplifier of Wrongs) Reserved.