Senior Citizen Sucker Punch

       I can’t remember the last time I was punched in the face. Actually, I can. It was last Thursday night.
       It began as a classic case of mistaken driveway identity. But as I’m turning around to exit this address in search of the right one, a guy walking his dog suddenly appears in front of my car, and he won’t move. Choosing not to run him over, even though he appeared to be wearing a New York Giants windbreaker, I put the car in park. The guy starts yelling at me. Illuminated by the halogen glow of my head lights, the bright redness of his face and the blueness of his neck popping veins were particularly striking, especially as they clashed with his swath of silver hair. The guy looked about seventy.
       He walked around and stood in front of my open driver side window. “What the hell are you doing?!!!”, he screamed. This appeared to be a horribly rhetorical question. From where he was just standing, it was obvious he saw the entire nine seconds of action. For a moment, I considered a wise ass remark, but figured maybe the old guy was partially blind or something. So I played it straight. “I pulled into the wrong driveway”, I said, firmly, but hardly matching his eye-bulging rage. “Well you ran over my lawn!”, he screamed. I immediately doubted the validity of that accusation, but again, chose the high road. “That was an accident. I apologize.”, I said. There was a pause, as if the guy’s rage ridden brain couldn’t process any words of contrition. So stumped did he appear, that I half expected him to come back with an “Oh Yeah!”, or some other equally witty retort. Instead, he called me an asshole. Then he punched me in the eye. And walked away from the car.
       Now, I’ve poked myself in the eye putting on sunglasses harder than the punch that just hit me, but I have to say, I was stunned. I mean, did that just happen? Did an old guy actually punch me, in the face, after I apologized for allegedly running over his lawn? The absurdity of the incident momentarily stupefied me. Kind of like when you’re at the circus, and the clown drops his pants. And he’s got a boner. Except I wasn’t laughing.
       About a second later, after the initial shock wore off, lots of stuff came up inside of me. Anger, first and foremost. But also mitigating voices of reason. And these voices were having a little discussion in my head. Kind of the way intelligent lawyers in a courtroom do.  
       I knew that, technically, the guy had just assaulted me. So, if I got out of my car and hit him, it could be argued as self defense. However, I was pretty pissed, and if I hit the guy with even a fraction of everything I had, I could have broken his entire face, maybe even killed him. That just didn’t seem worth it. And the fallout of hitting a senior citizen, even though he had it coming, would in the long run not sit well with me. Plus, he had walked away, and thus I was no longer in any imminent danger (not that I ever was, frankly, judging by the feebleness of his left cross). To clock him at this point would have been purely out of revenge, and that’s an energy I don’t want to operate from. Bottom Line: his “assault” felt more like a punch LINE than a punch, and I certainly wasn’t hurt, or in fear of any further bad jokes. I surmised that hitting the guy at this point could have landed me in a boat load of trouble. So that was off the table.
       I considered letting the whole thing go and driving on to my destination, really no worse the ware, except for what amounted to a mosquito bite under my eye. But that didn’t feel right either. Plus, I had some energy to discharge.   
       What did I do? Tune in for part two.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Fall In Love

       Autumn is the most romantic season. Many will sight spring as the ultimate time of year for love in the air, but not me. Especially since I don’t like the spring. Spring for me is Limbo. It’s too warm to snow anymore (and I’m a snow junkie), but it’s not warm enough to go to the beach. It rains a lot, and mud is omnipresent. And look, I’m not complaining. Nor am I trying to put the kibosh on anybody’s love affair with spring. If you dig that season, more power to you and your daffodils. I’m just not into that time of year. But I digress.
       The romance of Fall in New England starts with the explosion of color that makes my heart sing. Scream, actually. The entire landscape comes alive with a most fiery palette. Autumn means weekend road trips to the mountains with your lover to immerse yourselves in the foliage. It's the first time of year you light a fire, and fire is a symbol of passion, of ignition. At some point, you make love in front of the flames, stoking your own burning heart for the person you’re with. That works for me.
       Fall means All Things Pumpkin. And pumpkins are just the coolest veggies going (even though they're technically a fruit). They’re big, bright, unique looking, and each one seems to have its own personality. I can’t say that about peppers. Or oranges for that matter. What other fruit or vegetable so defines a season? Pumpkins are to autumn what Santa Claus is to Christmas: a mythical symbol that embodies everything that’s magic about a particular time of year. Pumpkin hunting, pumpkin carving, pumpkin tossing, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie, pumpkin everything. I can’t get enough of them.
       By October, the holidays are right around the corner, starting with Halloween. And I love any ritual where you get to put on a costume and act weirder than normal. Girls in tight leggings and high boots come out of the preverbial woodwork, and man, is that sexy. The air is cool and crisp, yet, there is a particular loving warmth in it, a palpable comforting spirit.
       Summer is all about heat and sunshine, about spending as much time outside as you possibly can. Thus, summer is all about putting yourself out there, almost to the edge of being outside yourself. And now, fall is the start of a sweet embrace. Of yourself. Of who you are, and of of what you love. Of the people you love. It’s a time of year that encourages us to go within, and to spend as much time inside ourselves as we do in the great outdoors. Fall to me is like a big giant metaphysical hug from the universe that invites us to wrap ourselves around our own spirit, our own lives, and around the people in our life who really matter to us. That’s part of why I love the fall so much.
       That and all the pumpkins.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.  

The Screaming Maples of Kripalu

Sounds like a good name for a band.........

The Last Time I Saw Him

       The last time I saw him, I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. He. Squeezed. Back. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. He’s not supposed to be able to hear me.
       It was just me and my sister Cheryl by then. Everyone else had gone back to our sister Pam’s house to sleep. But Cheryl and I couldn't fathom not sleeping at the hospital, next to him, in his room. A room full of more pain and sorrow and heartache than I knew was possible.
       After doing my best to fall asleep in a chair, I went to the small chapel down the hall. There was a bench in there I could stretch out on. And it was a good place to pray.
       A few days before, from his hospital bed, he had been asking where I was. Although I wasn’t there to hear him say “Where’s John”, I can hear those words echoing in me so loud and dissonant that they strike my heart, plucking it like a string. And then everything I am inside vibrates the most haunting of tones.   
       I should have been there for him more. I should have lived at the hospital. But I didn't get how bad it was. None of us did. And I took some comfort knowing that the worst two nights he had, I was there with him, in the ICU, lying next to him in a cot rolled in by the nurses. If he could have stepped out of his delirium long enough to realize what was happening, it would have made him happy to know that it was me spending the night. I know he would have wanted it to be me in there with him.  
       What I didn’t know was how to handle his sickness. So I made myself sick by self medicating. It took my pain away for a while. It was the only thing that did. So I kept doing it.   
       The heaviness I sometimes get when I think about those last few weeks of October still makes my head tilt a little forward; still makes breathing a little harder; still weighs my heart like an anchor; still puts something in my throat that has no substance but chokes me nonetheless; still either causes a numbness or a welling up behind my eyes. Even now. Eight years later.
       In the chapel down the hall, I actually dozed off for a few minutes on the couch when Cheryl came in and said “John, he’s doing real bad”. His heart had gone into arrhythmia. So now on top of the tubes up his nose and down his throat, he had pads on his chest shooting electricity through him. His body spasmed in a most horrific, unnatural way after the nurse repeatedly cried “Clear!”. I held Cheryl’s hand. And we held his hands. And we didn’t let go.  
       This was it. There would be no miracle. There would be no more baseball games. No more long, philosophical discussions. No more watching World War Two documentaries together and discussing the impact of that war on the history of humankind. No more corny jokes I had heard a thousand times before but still laughed at. No more watching him lean back in his chair, stare off towards a distant target, and pick his lip when I posed an inquiry that he had to think deeply about. No more dropping by his office just to say hi. No more of him coming up to me, spontaneously hugging me, and asking me.....“Who loves ya, John?”………and me replying…….“You do, Dad. You do.”


©2104 John Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved

Soul Nudge

       I stared, gawked, and marveled at The Berkshire mountains, ablaze with the hues of orange, yellow, red, auburn, burnt umber, and dozens of other gradients only found in the palette of autumn foliage. Color is like a lover to me, and I adore my very personal and intimate relationship with her. Like music, she indeed stimulates my intellect, but, far more profoundly, she reaches directly into my heart and magically touches it. Color excites and ignites me. And on this particular October afternoon at Kripalu, it felt as though the deeper I looked into the colorful hills, the deeper I was looking into my own soul.
       The grandeur and beauty of this natural spectacle created a timeless sense of awe, and an experience of intense presence. And yet, as true as that may have been, I was aware of something else going on inside of me. As involved in this deeply moving experience as I was, something else stirred in me. There was a yearning, underneath the bright, beautiful, explosive colors bursting within my heart. Something else, besides the countless burning shades of yellow, orange, and red, was calling to me.
       The deeper I felt myself sinking into the experience of foliage, the deeper I connected to this yearning. So I stayed with it until the nature of its depth revealed itself to me. What I came to was a powerful and sensual longing to know this experience deeper; to understand it more completely. And to share it. With the rest of the world.
       Over the course of the weekend, with the help of David Harshada Wagner, who lead the workshop I attended, I came to know that this deep longing is like a nudge from my soul. It reminds me of what is most important to me. It reminds me of what I need to continue to build my life around. This yearning reminds me that, as much as I may be doing that now, I need to be doing it even more. With greater commitment, fierceness, persistence, and intensity. The yearning is there to remind me that, as well as I may think I’m doing, I’m still not doing it enough. Hence the yearning.   
       The soul nudge alerts me to that which stirs deepest inside, and is as yet unfulfilled. The longing illuminates the work yet to be done, the dreams that need to be more deeply ventured into, of the gifts yet to be given, or perhaps just given more of. My soul is calling out to me that whatever I’m giving to my life, I need to be giving more. Lots more. Because this yearning I felt was like a hunger I’ve never experienced. Whatever I think I’m feeding my soul, it is not enough.  
       Experiences like these are like a spiritual GPS, directing me where my path lays, pointing to the very nature of my contributions, and showing me what I am here to do. And what I am here to do is delve ever deeper into the essence of my own life experiences and share that. Through my own exploration, through my own commitment to more fully know, more fully understand, and more fully honor the truest and deepest nature of myself and my life experience, and through all the delicious, creative ways I share that, I know that I am here to move people, to impact people, to touch people, to serve people. To paraphrase a song, “That Is How I Do It”.  
       And the more full throttle I live my own unique purpose, the greater chance I have at empowering others to do the same for themselves. I more I live my life doing what I am here to do, the more I encourage people to know the depth and power and life force of their truest selves, of their own unique experiences, and to more vibrantly and passionately express that, share that, live that.
       Anyway, that was my weekend. How was yours?

 ©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.