Cascade

my flaws cascade over the beautiful grand waterfall of my soul
threatening to produce the turmoil of my undoing
by robbing the most beautiful me I can create
with its madness

the vast mist of upheaval
shrouds what is beneath

it is too much to take in

so i bury myself in the vapor
hoping it will bathe me just enough to help me forget
how much i am spinning
how much i hurt
how lost i feel

tumbling over this waterfall
in a barrel i helped create
but no longer feel any part of
i pray that when i come crashing down on the rocks below
i will have what it takes to pick up the pieces
and start my journey anew

no longer tumbling or lost
I now travel in the river i created
when i made the waterfall that could have broken me

© 2011 Clint Piatelli. All Rights Reserved

Scream of Defiance

        Waking myself up at two in the morning by my own scream can’t be called a pleasant experience. But it can be called a necessary experience. It means that something very deep within me is happening, something that quite literally screams for attention. My subconscious is yelling at me. I’m effectively yelling at myself. Who better to pay attention to?
        Luckily, my dream recall is excellent, and I know enough to write the dream down as soon as I wake up because our dream recall fades quickly after waking. It’s also a good idea to title the dream, because our association, and hence our memory of it, is stronger when we have something specific to call it. I called this one “Scream of Defiance”.

I knew that my purple house was going to be invaded by military troops, so I went to this  camp to learn how to defend it. The camp was being run by the very soldiers who were going to be invading. One of the things I was trying to decide at the camp was if we - I was living at the house with others - should defend the place at all.

I knew I had a week to decide. But as I returned home and was walking through my front door, a bunch of troops ambushed us and started shooting. They held me at gunpoint while I heard them go through the house shooting and killing others. Scared shitless, I was thinking how much it was going to hurt getting shot and what it was going to feel like to die. The anticipation was horrible, as the house went dead silent and I waited, for what felt like an hour, for the leader to give the order to shoot me.

The order came, they shot me, and I was sure I was hit and I was sure I was bleeding. But I was still alive. I started to cry, and had a sensation of pain in my stomach, but it wasn’t bad at all. It may have even been imagined.

Then a couple of guys in lab coats came over to me and jabbed needles into my neck. I knew the needles were meant to hurt me and were suppose to either knock me out, render my nervous system inert, or make me talk. But the needles didn’t have any effect on me. The lab coat guys started yelling at me, accusing me of a whole bunch of stuff, and I protested, because what they were saying were all lies. They stuck another needle in my neck, thinking it would make me pass out. But I didn’t.

I could feel myself bleeding. Then I stood up and I could see blood all over me and all over them. After standing, I looked right at the lab coat guys and the remaining soldiers. I made fists, spread out my arms and flexed them, like an animal making himself bigger. Then I screamed, loud and long. I woke up screaming and continued screaming for at least five seconds after I awoke.

        Holly Metaphor, Batman. My next post will go into this much deeper. Please stay tuned. Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.

© 2011 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and Paramilitary Operation of Wrongs) Reserved.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Change...ez

      Change whirls all around me. It churns as a maelstrom of shifting relationships, potential opportunities, changes in my attitude and perspective, physical relocation choices, career options, upheaval of personal issues, and future plans with someone who could be my life partner. I have very little idea what my life will look like six months form now. But I know one thing for certain: it will be very different than it looks today.
      That idea excites me very much. And it scares the crap out of me. My tendency to polarize causes my emotional experience of this whirlwind to vacillate. Wildly. Sometimes I allow myself to get swept up in it like a piece of paper in a wind storm. Other times, I plant myself like a stone and bronze statue in the middle of it, refusing to acknowledge that things are moving all around me. Neither approach is terribly enjoyable. And neither approach is terribly effective at navigating this storm of change.
      Getting caught up in it like paper means I feel out of control and rudderless, without rhyme or reason to my life. Becoming a statue in the middle of it means I just resist everything, effectively saying “No” to life.
      I know I need to create a new paradigm for what feels like a tornado . Because, like it or not, I’m in it, even though sometimes I pretend I’m not. That’s another one of my great character flaws: avoidance.
      An acronym for FEAR is “Fuck Everything And Run”. I’m good at that. Another one is “Face Everything And Recover”. I’m good at that too. But the second option asks a lot more from me than the first. Running means just strapping on the old diversion suit and taking off. Facing myself takes courage and strength and a whole shit load of other stuff. It means experiencing pain and working through it. Ultimately, it means I have to change. It means I have to grow, It means I can’t just run and hope that everything will be okay. It means I have to do something. Lots of somethings, actually.
      Although the change is centered around a piece of property, it’s really about me and my need to grow. To get bigger. To divorce myself from a very sick, dysfunctional, crazy making, morally corrupt, financially lucrative but spiritually bankrupt system (sometimes called my “family”), so that I can create a life that’s completely mine. I see that. I feel that. But I can’t always come from that. My sadness and my anger sometimes get in the way. Those emotions can be opportunities for me to grow and heal and change. If I do the right thing with them. Which is feel them. Then appropriately channel or express them. Which is one big reason I’m writing about it today. Because writing helps. And because expressing how I feel helps.
      I have been reluctant to express how I feel about these changes because I’m scared of where I’ll go if I let the emotions out of the bottle. But keeping the emotions in the bottle fucks me up. Much worse than letting them out. Even if I let them out in a destructive way, and I have (more on that in another post), I at least have the opportunity to learn from that experience. As long as I keep it all inside, I become a giant pressure cooker. And what’s cooking are my insides; scorching my heart, my mind, my spirit.
      So like I did when my heart got shattered, I’m channeling some of my emotional energy into my blog. And hoping you’ll come with me. It’s one of the “somethings” I can do to help myself. And sometimes, I need a lot of help. Sometimes, we all do.


© 2011 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Ziggy Stardust worth of Wrongs) Reserved.

I Hurt, Therefore I Am (part 1)

Note: I wanted to post something again today, just to produce some momentum for my blogging. This piece is still a work in process, but I like the beginning, so I’m posting it as a sort of “teaser”. I hope you’ll come with me on this.

       Just as indifference, not hate, is the opposite of love, so to is numbness, not pain, the opposite of joy. If I am in pain, at least I am feeling. At least I am connected, to something. Being numb is like drifting alone in a void; untethered to anything or anybody. It is absolute disconnection from life.
       Experiencing that sort of life sucking numbness often enough has lead me to know that I would rather feel pain than nothing. That is not so profound, but it’s implications are. Because I can become addicted to pain. As a way of staying connected to life, I sometimes turn to pain like a junkie turns to crack. When joy and love feel fleeting and ethereal, pain is as solid as a rock. And just as easy to score.