Abandonment Part 2: CARDIOPLASTICITY

       Neuroplasticity is a buzz word in the field of neurology. It states that the mind is perfectly capable of creating new neural pathways at any age. At any point in our lives, new experiences can create neural “re-wiring”. Therefore, we are not “hard wired” by adolescence, as previously believed. The mind, both consciously and non-consciously, can learn to think differently. In other words, we can literally change our minds.
        The same holds true for the heart. No matter how old we are, profound experiences can shift us emotionally and spiritually. If the heart was closed but is now open, we literally “feel different”. Our attitude shifts and our emotional experience of life expands. This literal change of heart impacts our lives in amazing ways. It happened to me. It can happen to anybody. So I’m coining a new phrase: Cardioplasticity.
        I used to equate love with pain. Whenever I started falling in love with a woman, the inner turmoil was unbearable. I experienced so much anxiety and fear of abandonment, that I eventually retreated to a place inside myself that was safer. I felt so absolutely out of control emotionally that I had to do something. Because if she knew how out of kilter I was, she wouldn’t like me anymore. I couldn’t let her know how nuts I felt inside. How scared I was. Because nuts and scared is ugly. So to share this with her would be the kiss of death.
        Because all of these fears came true with my first girlfriend. More than once. And that was all the proof I needed, thank you very much. But really, it goes back much further than that. It goes back to my original wound of abandonment. My experience from day one was that to love with all your heart, the only way a child knows how, was synonymous with abandonment. And to be left was to suffer unbearable pain. So don’t ever love with all your heart. It could kill you.
        When I was a kid, feeling and expressing love was a mostly unpleasant experience. I experienced a constant yearning that was met with only sporadic episodes of joy. Or even more rarely, bliss. And when that joy and bliss came, it was so unpredictable and short lived that I learned to expect it to end soon. And it did. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
        In adulthood, I learned how to get love without risking too much. I learned how to give love without leaving my flanks exposed. This wasn’t a conscious plan or a calculated scheme. This was autopilot emotional survival. Which isn’t to say that I’m not responsible for it.
        I honed an ability to pull away emotionally, just enough to stay safe, but not enough to lose her or drive her away. Because abandonment was still the overriding fear. I gave love, but I never gave it all. It was a psycho-emotional tight rope that I walked so that I could love, be loved, be safe, be in control, and not be abandoned. And like anything practiced, I got good at it.
        I never grasped the truism that love is something you get more of, the more you give away. The key was to give more. Not try to get more.
        That formula got lost on me. Because I was getting what I wanted: love, sex, and companionship, without giving away the store. And because I was coming from my head most of the time then. “Give to get” just didn’t make any sense from there.
        The only place that I gave everything I had was in the bedroom. That was the only place I felt safe. That was the only place I really knew who I was and what I was doing. Because my guard was down between the sheets, all of me came out there. All the love, all the passion, all the wonder, intensity, playfulness, and excitement. I just couldn’t carry that over into the rest of my relationship.
        Until we become conscious of what we’re doing, we keep repeating ourselves. We develop coping skills and strategies to minimize the fear and the pain. But we’re always missing something. We’re missing true intimacy. That was me.
        Operative word there is “was”. Thanks to cardioplasticity, I’m not there anymore. I still struggle with abandonment, but I’m aware of it now. More importantly, I know, not just intellectually but in my heart, that the way out of that abandonment pain is to go through it. Not around it. Or over it. Or past it. The way out is always through.

©2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a stupifying amount of Wrongs) Reserved.

My Sparkly Belt

       I’ve got this sparkly belt. The kind you get at those teeny-bopper earring and accessory shops at the mall. In fact, that’s where I bought mine. It’s leather, has a simple silver buckle, and it’s covered in those highly reflective, prismatic sparkles. It was cheap too. I think it cost me about fourteen bucks.
        When I first saw the belt, I didn’t think of it in terms of masculine or feminine. To me, it was just shiny and bright and sparkling and colorful. I’m drawn to such items, whether it be clothing or cars or music equipment or whatever else. Bright, shiny, colorful things always grab my attention. They excite me, stir something in me, give me joy. Just because they’re shiny and colorful and bright. Very much like a child who finds a shiny marble. It’s an automatic, pre-cognitive, visceral response. I can’t help it. Nor do I want to.
        In one of my first blogs, I talked about wearing clothing that reflects who you are on the inside. If you do this, then you look good in those clothes, regardless of what the clothes are. There is nothing in my wardrobe that better exemplifies this point than this cheap, sparkly belt that was designed to be worn by teenage girls.
        I can pull this belt off. Because I like it. Because I’m not self conscious about it. Because I connect to things that are sparkly and bright. So therefore this silly little belt reflects something that’s alive in me. If any of that wasn’t true, I’d look uncomfortable wearing that belt, and I wouldn’t be able to get away with it, so to speak. If you put me in a pair of khakis with a sweater, you would see a man at odds with himself. The way somebody else might be if they wore that belt.
        It’s got nothing to do with masculinity or femininity. Those are subjective labels that vary from person to person. I don’t find the belt feminine. I don’t look at it and go “That’s girly”. Somebody else might, and that’s fine. I look at the belt and go “That’s cool. I like that belt”. And that’s all I need to buy it. And to wear it.
        I haven’t worn this belt in over two years. I wasn’t even aware of that until this morning when I looked at it, grabbed it, and decided to wear it. The moment I threaded it through my jeans, an epiphany revealed itself to me. The last time I wore the belt was just before my dad died. Then I realized that when he passed away, something bright and shiny and colorful inside of me went away too. Just like he did.
        That something has been missing from my life since then. This past summer, when I experienced a great opening of my heart, that something started to make it’s way back to me. Through the last several months, that bright and shiny and sparkly and colorful something inside of me has been rediscovered. A major reason for that is because I’ve finally allowed myself to grieve the death of my dad, feel that pain, and thus invite this bright and sparkly something back. Pain was blocking this shiny something, and most of the other light in my life, from reaching me. Letting go of the darkness has opened me up to light again. I’m wearing the belt now because of what’s inside me again. Something bright and shiny and colorful.
        Who would have ever thought that a cheap sparkly belt made for teenage girls could teach a man so much?

© 2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a colorful amount of Wrongs) Reserved.

Mind Crisis

        Bringing down the recyclables this morning, two women walked by me and said hello. I said hello back, and one of them slowed down. Maybe the screaming florescent lime green sweat pants I was wearing emboldened her to ask “Do you live in this purple house?”. “Sure do” I replied. By this time her friend had stopped as well and smiled at me. I smiled back. There was a friendly, immediate sense of ease between the three of us, the kind you often get when you see people just after sunrise. That feeling that the whole world belongs to you at that early hour of the day fosters an instant, impermanent bond. The first woman then said “Can I ask you a question?”. I replied “You already have, but you can ask another one”. All three of us laughed. She continued, “Were you in an eighties hair band or something?”.
        The rumor that has persisted around my little town is that I was a drummer in an eighties hair band, went a little crazy, bought this house, and painted it purple. Well who the hell am I to get in the way of a good rumor? I don’t go around propagating this nonsense, but I’ve never actively dissuaded it either. And I wasn’t going to start now. It’s a great story, a harmless bit of misinformation, and lots of fun to play with.
        So I said to the women “Yes, I was. I was in a band called Mind Crisis.” Sometimes I’ll say that I was a member of “Whitesnake” if I’m approached by people who look like they know something about heavy metal. This is because Whitesnake is a real band, and they’ve had lots of drummers. And very few people know who those drummers were. I do, and now you will too: Ian Paice, Cozy Powell, Ansley Dunbar, Tommy Aldridge, and Denny Carmassi. All incredible players. My only twinge of guilt when I bullshit about this is that I am absolutely not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as those monsters. But if I ever met one of them, I think they would find the whole story amusing and forgive my indiscretion.
        I’m aware that this may all appear hypocritical. After all, I’m pontificating about the values of being yourself, and here I am pretty much lying about who I am. That’s one way to look at it, and not necessarily wrong. But I make this distinction: sometimes being myself means playing a part, just for a little while, just for fun. I’m not kidding myself, and all I’m gaining is a good story. I would never manipulate somebody into believing this tripe in order to get something. And if I got to know these women at all, I would ‘fess up to this little charade as soon the joke had run it’s course.
        Anyway, I went with “Mind Crisis” because that’s a fictitious band that sounds like a hair band from the eighties. The woman nodded and said “Oh wow.” Probably because we had developed a rapport, she blurted out “Why did you paint your house purple?”. I get this a lot, and my response is always the same. Without skipping a beat I said “For the only reason that matters when it comes to what color to paint your house. Because I wanted to.” No jesting there. That’s as authentic as it gets. She looked at me, wearing these florescent lime green sweat pants, standing in front of a purple house, laughed, and said with no malice in her voice whatsoever “That’s not what we heard!” I replied, smiling from ear to ear, “I know what you heard.” She laughed even harder.
        Sometimes my life is a lot of fun.

 © 2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and Wrongs) Reserved

Musex

Today is the second anniversary of my dad's death. Although I've written much about him, I decided that today's post would be a celebration of love and music. If he were still alive, my dad would be horrified to see me post something so graphic, sexual, and revealing as this. And he would have told me so. But secretly, he would would have smiled and said "Jesus Christ, John" (my dad called me John, not Clint. And he loved taking the lord's name in vain). Dad was a huge fan of music. And of love.

      Don’t try this at home. Actually, absolutely try this at home.
      One night, she creates a play list of songs. The next night, he does. For the next two evenings, this will be the music you play while you’re having sex. Here’s the twist: As you make love to all these various pieces of music, consciously notice how the music impacts you and your experience.
       The difference here is that you’re paying attention to what song is playing. It’s not just background music. You’re aware of what the song is, what it brings up, and how it makes you feel. It’s not distracting you. It’s guiding you. It’s shaping the event, enhancing it, right along with the two of you. Specific music becomes another active element, like scent, that co-creates the experience.
       Give the atmosphere a chance to develop. Choose songs that evokes similar emotions, setting a particular overall mood. To that end, you wouldn’t mix “Vicarious” by Tool with “Wild Horses” by The Stones. Unless you want some crazy, psychotically charged sex. Which is perfectly cool.
        Think about choosing the song “Love Gun” by Kiss. It’s a raunchy, sexist, absurdly macho, testosterone dripping, aggressive piece of music. Chances are, that’s what the sex will be like. Be aware of what the song is bringing up in you while it’s happening. Now put on “Something In The Way She Moves” by James Taylor. Soft, beautiful, tender, loving. An absolute musical temple for the woman.
        No matter what you choose, become actively aware of what the music is saying to you, doing to you, and evoking in you. Call it conspicuously conscious sex. If you like to talk while you’re making love, jackpot. Tell your lover what you’re experiencing as each song brings up different nuances and sensations and feelings. While keeping the motor running, of course.
        Sometimes, I've taken it a step further. I sing to my lover while we’re having sex. It’s more of a whisper type of singing, but it’s still melodic, and I get all the words right. More importantly, I really get into it. More more importantly, she really gets into it. Now, I don’t have a trained voice, but it doesn’t matter. Anybody can sing in this situation and sound just dandy. And when a woman sings to me, forget it. I died and went to heaven. And that’s before my orgasm. The absolute apex is to sing to your lover while you’re looking into each other’s eyes. One word for that: Magic.
        Singing to someone while beholding their glassy gaze, however, does takes some chutzpah. Remember the last time you played DJ at a party and nobody liked your choice of music? Musical rejection can hurt. You’re out on a limb a bit with this one. But it is so worth it.
        No matter what music you choose, make sure there’s nothing but love behind it. It can be a tender, soft, gentle kind of love. It can be a madly passionate, lustful kind of love. It can be a controlling kind of love. As in “Honey, where are the handcuffs?”. That’s fine. Actually that’s more than fine. That’s fantastic. Anyway, maybe it’ll help you work through something. With her. With him. Maybe without even talking about it. Most guys like that last part.
        Music can be the third in a beautiful menage a trois. And unlike the real thing, there’s never any radioactive emotional fallout. I’ve sung entire CD’s to woman just during foreplay. Then again, I have a tremendous capacity for remembering lyrics. And for foreplay.

© 2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and oh so many Wrongs) Reserved.

Cycle Chant

       Recently, I took up chanting. Whilst riding my bike. Whenever I pass a fellow exerciser, even though I’m chanting, I smile and wave. This induces a bewildered look from most people. The audio-visual dynamic of a man chanting while cycling as he waves at you is probably a little strange. Maybe people aren't used to a guy on a bike being friendly. Or chanting. Or both.
        For some reason, cyclist, the kind who dress like they’re doing the Tour de France through your neighborhood, can come off as the unfriendliest exercisers ever to break a sweat. “Unfriendly Cyclist Syndrome”, or U.C.S., afflicts thousands of people around the country, especially in affluent areas like mine. Cyclists with U.C.S. rarely acknowledge any sort of greeting. They don’t even grunt at you. Why the attitude? Is this because they’re in “The Zone” and can’t come out of it? Are they resentful of people who drive and take that out on everybody, even pedestrians? This is not a rhetorical question. Any avid cyclists out there who can help me with this, please respond. I want to understand.
        Cyclist rarely smile at me when I’m riding because they probably think I’m completely bastardizing the sport by combining chanting with bike riding. Or maybe it’s because I never wear a helmet. Ever. I hate the damn things. Yes, a helmet could save my life if I fell. Yes, it’s foolish not to wear one. So I’m a fool. A dangerous fool. I’m okay with that.
        Chanting as I cycle gets me my cardio while I practice a spiritual pursuit. Eventually, I want the chanting to help me quiet my mind, which is one of it’s benefits. I haven’t gotten there yet.
        Maybe when I do, I’ll become one of those Unfriendly Cyclist because I’ll be in a place where I don’t know there’s anybody else on the planet, never mind somebody coming the other way waving at me. If that’s the case, I’d better get a helmet as well. Because if I’m that out of it, my chances of being hit by a car increase from unlikely to unavoidable.
        No. I can’t accept that. I trust that, when I get to the point where the chanting quiets my mind while I’m biking, I’ll still be aware enough to be friendly and appropriately alert. That has to be way. Because I’m always going to smile and wave. And I’m not wearing a helmet.

© 2008 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a cataclysmic amount of Wrongs) Reserved