It Wasn't My Time

        Last Saturday, I was biking back from Falmouth. It was a nice ride, pleasant and uneventful, save for one thing. I got hit by a truck.
        Most of my trek was on the fabulous new bike path extension that runs practically to my front door, give or take a few miles. But some of my travel was on open road. When this is the case, I bike on the sidewalk if at all possible, making sure to give pedestrians the room they need to get by. This usually means hopping off the sidewalk and onto the road for a few moments while they pass. So as the two walkers approached me this day, I made my plan to give them room. I was going against the traffic, on what was my left side of the street.
        Checking to make sure there were no oncoming cars, and biking over the sidewalk curb and onto the road, I hit a puddle. Apparently, a pretty wet one. I go through puddles all the time, without ever having a problem. This time, however, because of the angle I hit the puddle at, the extreme wetness of the water, and the phase of the moon in Gemini, I started to skid.
        As I turned to control the bike, I knew if I jerked too hard to the left, I’d hit the bulky curb of the sidewalk and go flying. So I turned right, aware that there were no cars coming towards me. But as I rapidly shifted my weight and turned the handlebars, I skidded once more, most likely because of, once again, the water being far wetter than normal (and possibly because Saturn was in Virgo). This skid was more precarious, however, because I skidded across the road and into the other lane, where a landscaping truck, coming from behind, was headed straight towards me.
        He had already started slowing down and pulling as far over to his right as he could to avoid me. The guy wasn’t speeding, and he was paying attention to the road, which was very fortunate for me. If he had been driving too fast or asleep at the wheel, I would have been toast.
        All of a sudden, I’m in danger of being hit by a truck. What I remember most vividly is that, despite suddenly faced with potential disaster, I was amazingly calm. I didn’t yell. I didn’t panic. And if I was afraid, I certainly didn’t consciously feel it. My mind was incredibly clear and focused. My survival instinct kicked in and determined my best shot for staying alive was not to lose it. I figured out what I needed to do and did it, instantaneously, before I knew I was doing it.
        I instinctively knew my best shot was to avoid hitting the truck broadside, or else I’d suffer the same fate a small boat does when it hits a massive wave facing sideways. So I steered left as hard as I could while still keeping control of the bike and tried to ride alongside the truck. At the same time, I extended my right arm as the truck approached. I wanted to stave off the truck hitting my bike for as long as possible, because every second, his speed decreased. And I knew once my bike got hit, as opposed to my arm or even my shoulder, I would be thrown off the bike, and that was where I could suffer the most damage. The longer I stayed vertical, the better my chances of avoiding serious injury.
        I figured all of this out within a few seconds, and my body was able to execute exactly what I needed to do, instantly. I don’t believe that my brain or my body normally work quite that fast. Or that precisely. But then again, this situation was far from normal. Something else had kicked into gear.
        The first thing that hit the truck was my hand at the end of my outstretched right arm. I pushed off once, then a few more times, as my bike stayed out of the line of fire and I kept my balance, now on a tangent course with the truck. Finally, part if his cab hit my bike, and I was thrown off. This was the moment of truth.
        As I fell, I turned and tucked in my arms, again, instinctively, so that I wouldn’t brace my fall with my hands. What had saved me a moment ago would have resulted in a broken bone now, so in came my arms. As I headed towards the ground, my head came up so it wouldn’t hit the pavement, and I turned and rolled my shoulder, knowing that the most heavily muscled part of my torso, my upper back and shoulder area, was best equipped to deal with the fall. As I hit the ground, I rolled with the blow, further dissipating the impact.
I got up off the ground with nothing but a few scratches on my right upper back. No blood. I wasn’t even shook up. As soon as I got up, I came over to the dude driving the truck and said “I’m fine. Completely. And it was my fault. Don’t worry about it.” He looked more upset than I probably did, even though I was the one who got knocked to the ground. I reassured him several more times that I was completely okay and that the accident was my fault, shook hands with the guy, and biked off.
        The last time I felt my life threatened, I was seventeen. Skiing down Wildcat mountain, I wiped out at high speed and went careening, completely out of control, into a ravine full of trees. I instinctively covered my head, some part of me knowing that if I ever hit my noggin against a tree at this velocity, it would be lights out. Permanently. I also yelled, knowing somewhere in me that if I needed help, yelling sooner rather than later may prove crucial. I didn’t yell when I went skidding into the truck, because yelling at that point wouldn’t do any good. I knew the guy already saw me, and using my voice at all would just redirect energy that I desperately needed elsewhere.
        In my skiing accident, I ended up sideways, slamming against a pine tree, knocking the wind out of me and breaking a rib. My brother and my first cousin, who I was skiing with, wanted to call the ski patrol, but there was no way I was going down the mountain in a stretcher unless I could not physically stand up. Only pussies go down a mountain in a ski patrol stretcher (oh the idiocy of teenage machismo). So I climbed out of the ravine, snow up to my waist, using my skis like hiking sticks, and skied down the rest of the mountain, bent to one side and trying not to wince too noticeably.
        Fear remains a perverse phenomenon. It can save our lives, and it can ruin them as well. The fear of getting hit by a truck is what triggered my survival instinct, or whatever you want to call the physical, emotional, and psychological zone that I was in for those few seconds that I needed focus, strength, coordination, and inner peace to stay alive. But my fear of abandonment, or rejection, can take me out of my life completely.
        Actually, it’s my response to fear that determines how my life gets lived. Or not lived. My response to fear in the face of a true life threatening situation was to focus my mind and body in order to increase my chances of survival. This was an automatic, mostly unconscious response. But then again, so is my reaction to fear of abandonment. It’s mostly unconscious. My growth comes when I make that unconscious fear and automatic emotional reaction conscious, so I can look at it and employ tools to change it. The fear is still there, and may always be. But my response is what I can alter with awareness, acceptance, and action.

Please join me again for part two.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and an instinctual number of Wrongs) Reserved.

Three Pairs of Shoes

        One night out, I noticed three women sitting at a table next to me. They all had on great looking shoes. The specificities escape me, but all three pairs were different from each other, and very stylish. I walked over to their table and said, with a smile on my face, “Excuse me. I wanted to tell you ladies that you’ve all got on killer shoes.”
        It was a sincere compliment, with the potential to be an ice breaker. But even if these were three women who were obviously unavailable, I would have said something to them about their shoes. They were flat out cool, the shoes I mean, and I compliment people I don’t know often.
        After the compliment, there was silence. The woman directly across from me looked at me and, after a few seconds, uttered the most sarcastic and insincere “thanks” I had ever heard that hadn’t come from a member of my family. The one to her left just looked at me without saying anything, and the other woman, who’s back was more or less to me, didn’t even bother to turn around. I said “Your welcome” and left.
        There were a few people with me back at my table, and when I returned, they asked me what happened. I told them, we all laughed about it, and went back to watching the Bruins game.
        The internal roadblocks that we construct to do something as simple as an honest compliment to someone we don’t know can be very formidable. Taking the risk to say something genuinely kind and positive to a stranger means pushing past very entrenched, partially unconscious fears of rejection, shame, and judgement, to name a few.
        The receiver of your kindness has their own shit going on, and getting past that to respond with genuine appreciation, say with a sincere “thank you” or a smile, posses its challenges as well. Most of us walk around fairly guarded unless we’re surrounded by people we know. Lowering that guard to allow a compliment in can be tricky. Hearing somebody say “That’s a great color on you!” is one thing. Truly receiving that compliment is another.
        Immediately, we often believe that the person dolling out the compliment has an agenda, so we’re suspicious. We figure they want something from us, so they’re only saying something nice as a means to an end. They don’t really mean it. Many of us have experienced this to be true often enough so that we have reason not to trust kindness from strangers, or sometimes even from people we know. After all, everybody has had experiences where somebody we know, and possibly loved, told us something nice just to get something from us. And that hurts. Sometimes very much and very deeply. Those scars can stay with us our whole lives unless we actively try to heal them.
       My own phobia with compliments hasn’t got to do with thinking that the other person wants something from me, but that they’re fucking with me. That they’re being sarcastic, snickering behind my back, complimenting me on one hand and throwing me under a bus with the other. If I go nuts with this line of mis-reasoning, I imagine that the person’s friends are watching from afar, laughing their ass off while their buddy “compliments” me.
        I know where this comes from and what it’s about. A sarcastic compliment is just a lie. It’s a lie designed to set me up on a precarious pedestal so that I’ll have farther to fall, and thus hurt myself more, when I realize that I’ve been duped. It’s cruel, designed to have a joke at my expense, designed to cause me pain. It happened to me enough as a kid for me to be suspicious of any kind word from anybody. Even today, unless I’m mindful and present, my immediate internal knee jerk to a compliment from a stranger is “They are fucking with me. They are bullshitting me so that they can make me look bad.”
        That’s a very old tape, and one that I’ve worked hard to turn the volume down on. It’s a constant challenge, but it’s getting easier to do the more I learn to love myself and the longer I stay open instead of closed. Today, that old tape still plays immediately, but the volume on my internal stereo for this particular song is much softer than it used to be. I hear other tapes now that are louder. Tapes of gratitude and appreciation. A steely guarded cautious suspicion for the person has been largely replaced by feelings of warmth and connection.
        And if they are fucking with me, which sometimes still happens, I can actually see that much more easily now. We think that hyper-vigilance is our best defense against whatever we’re trying to protect ourselves from, but actually, it’s the worst mindset we can have. Because we’re always assuming it, we’re actually drawing it to us, not repelling it. And because we’re always on the lookout for it, we lose the ability to discern when it’s really happening. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true. The more open I am, the easier it is to gauge intent.
        So if the intent is to fuck with me, because I’m open to all experience, I can smell that easier. And I can tell if it’s really meant to hurt me, or just good humored ribbing, or simple praise, or anywhere on that continuum. More importantly, because I’m more in touch with how I feel and because I’m happier with who I am, I can choose a response that’s appropriate for me.
        Recently, I was at a Boston Red Sox game, sporting a very blonde quasi-mohawk hairdo, and wearing a tank top and a pair of board shorts. This guy was standing with his girlfriend, and he said to me, completely out of the blue, “Hey, where’s your surfboard?”. Because I’m so much more in touch with the real me these days, I was able to respond, quickly and without much thought, in a way that reflected more of who I am. I’m more joyful, much less angry. I’m more loving, and not so guarded. I’m more out there, willing to take more risks. I’m more conscious and more heart centered. I’m more myself. So my response matched where I was at, not where he was coming from.
        “My surfboard is at home. Where’s yours?” I said. He responded “I don’t have one.” So I looked at him up and down quickly and said “Yeah. I can tell.” We both laughed. For a brief moment, me and this other guy connected and shared a moment together.
        I encourage you to get in touch with that place inside you that loves to connect to people. We all have it in there, and it’s more powerful than many of us know. It’s part of our life force that drives us to interact with one another and to love. Just getting in touch with that place and trying to come from there can make simple encounters with everybody and anybody not only pleasurable, but inspiring and life affirming. We can walk away from an interaction feeling more alive and uplifted, even if it’s just for a few minutes. We can build on those and string them together throughout the course of our days and suddenly we’re a little more ourselves and a little more open to connecting to one another. Maybe then life doesn’t seem so hostile. And neither does the person who compliments you on your shoes.


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

Confessions Of A Topless Jackass

        The other day, I was biking to the beach. It was a sunny day, not particularly hot, probably in the low seventies. Less than a mile from the beach, a truck passed me, and as it did, the passenger stuck his head out of the window. A skinny teenager yelled “Put your fuckin’ shirt on you $@#*%!!”. I knew it was an insult, but I couldn’t make out the last phrase. Being a teenager, his articulation was less than stellar.
        I reacted instinctively by smiling broadly and flipping him the finger. It was a knee jerk reaction, because I was in a great mood, and I could have just as easily ignored him. On another day, at another time, maybe I would have. But that day, in that moment, I didn’t.
        There was a part of me that hoped the truck would stop and the kid would get out. Then I would pull a James Bond move on him by leaping off my bike and taking him down to the ground. Where I would make him eat my bicycle chain.
        The part of me that wanted to throttle the kid is not a very evolved or enlightened part of me, but he does exist. His metaphysical body is fueled by whatever unreleased anger is still inside of me. Some of it going back to when I was a little kid. This part of me is the garbage container for all the shit I’ve ever eaten and haven’t let go of. He’s an eye for an eye kind of guy, and sometimes his voice is loud and he has lots to say. That day, he flared up for a moment and then went away.
        What this incident brought up for me was how, occasionally, when I do something unconventional, express myself, or just simply be me, people have reactions that are less than positive. I’m not unusual or unique in that regards by any means. That happens to everybody. For those of us who are different, it happens more frequently. It goes with the territory.
        Making peace with that reality is a process that I sometimes struggle with. The primitive, neanderthal part of me that wants to settle everything mano a mano, and the inner garbage can of unreleased anger, want to scream at the other person; “What the fuck is wrong with you?! Do you have to actually insult me? Attack my character? Demean my actions? I’m not affecting you in the least. My not wearing a shirt doesn’t impact your life at all. So shut the fuck up.” These parts would love to do that. Or just bash their face in.
        Of course, those parts of me don’t get that, by not wearing a shirt, I am impacting those people who choose to insult me. If I wasn’t, they wouldn’t react like that. But what it’s affecting is something on their insides, not their outsides. And if those being affected don’t know that they are being triggered, if they aren’t self aware or introspective or somewhat enlightened to that process, then they lash out. They make it about me. It’s easy to do that. Much easier than going inside and trying to figure out what the hell is going on in there.
        The not wearing a shirt thing is just one example, but it’s a good one because I don’t like to wear a shirt in the summer. I mean not when I don’t have to. Obviously, for work and when I’m in buildings where going topless would be against policy or simply inappropriate, I wear a shirt. But in my home, or driving around, or whenever I’m outside, the chances are that I will be shirtless. So there’s plenty of opportunity for getting flack. I actually don’t get much. At least not that I know of. But who knows? Maybe more people inaudibly call me a topless jackass than I could possibly fathom.
        I do ask the question why I like to go topless. I’ve gone within, and keep going back, to discover more about myself. This is a good one to look at too. Because going shirtless is something I do frequently, something I like to do, something that some people don’t get but makes perfect sense to me, and it has to do directly with my body, which means it is intimately connected to my heart and mind. So I gain insights into what I think and what I feel by going through my body.
        Part of it is unbridled vanity. No question about that. I only go shirtless if I look the way I want to. If I think I’m too heavy, the shirt stays on. That’s telling me something. And I like how I look without a shirt. There is a part of me that is into looking good and attracting attention to myself. Going shirtless and exposing a lean, muscular torso is one way of doing that.
        But it’s certainly more complicated than that. I work very hard on my body, and it’s not all vanity. I feel so much different about myself, and about my life, when I’m really fit. Like I’m experiencing my life through a different lens. There’s definitely a je ne sais quoi to that part that I haven't figured out.
        When I work out religiously, the endorphins are really cranking every day, which definitely effects my mood. Looking the way I want means that I’ve set a goal and achieved it. Automatically, that sets me up for another goal, an ongoing one, of maintaining what I’ve achieved. That gives me satisfaction the same way the achievement of any goal does. And at the end of each day, if I’ve exercised and eaten right, I feel good about that. If I’ve had an otherwise difficult day, maybe a day where I didn’t get much done, or a day where I beat the shit out of myself, I can go to bed at least feeling that I did something good and positive for myself. And that helps me have better days ahead.
        I’m proud of the body I’ve been able to build, the same way you would be if you built a beautiful house, maybe with your own hands. I try not to be too proud, because I understand the pitfalls of pride. I work just as hard at keeping myself in check as I do keeping myself fit.
        If you designed and actually made your own line of clothing, and it fit you really well, made you look good, and you put lots of work into making it, wouldn’t you wear it all the time? Well that’s how I think about my body. If you wear your own line of kick ass clothing, nobody would fault you for it. I suppose going shirtless is my equivalent of that.
        Maybe because of all of the shame we attach to our bodies, not wearing a shirt just brings up so much stuff for people. I understand that. I used to be a chubby kid. I didn’t like how I looked, and I got lots of teasing from other kids. I know what it’s like to have a very poor self image. Which I’m sure is a major reason why I’m such a fanatic about it today. The scars go deep, and now that I have the ability to control, to a degree, certain aspects of how I look, I’m very driven to do so. It’s helped me heal. We’re not encouraged to love our bodies. Working out is one way of showing love for my body.
        But I’ll admit, it’s not unconditional love. That’s where I stumble. I don’t love my body no matter what. But I also know that there’s a center in me that doesn’t care how I look. My soul doesn’t care what my waistline is. The more I develop that center, the more in touch I get with my own soul, the more unconditionally I’ll be able to love my body. And if I always have this part of me that wants to look good and is willing to drive me to do so, that’s not a bad thing. That will help keep me fit. If I can keep that part in check, it can help me raise my quality of life. Getting and staying physically fit to me is just as important as getting and staying emotionally and mentally fit.
        David Lee Roth once said that every minute you’re up on stage, you’re flipping off everybody who ever tried to stomp on your dream, or told you that you’d never make it, or otherwise attempted to thwart your hopes of success. And let’s face it, there are plenty of people out there like that. People who are unconscious and hurtful and want to see you go down in flames so that they can feel better about themselves. They may be the same type of individual who would find perverse pleasure in insulting somebody or attacking their character because of what they were wearing. Or not wearing.
        Maybe going shirtless is one way of flipping off anybody who ever called me fat, or beat me up because I didn’t look right, or insulted me because I was different, or otherwise shamed me for being myself. Not the most mature attitude, but I'm aware of that. And I think we all need a little “Fuck You” in us. And not wearing a shirt is a pretty harmless way of saying that.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a no shirt of Wrongs) Reserved.

Love At Last Sight

        Many people fantasize about love at first sight. Human relationships are so diverse, complex, fascinating, mysterious, and wonderful that I believe virtually anything is possible. I can’t speak from experience about love at first sight. But I can speak from experience about love at last sight.
        Love at last sight is when you look at somebody you already know, maybe intimately, and for the first time feel the true depth of your emotions for them. It may not actually be the last time you look at them, but it could be. Something inside of you pops, and everything that was already in there, but for some reason you couldn’t feel, suddenly becomes available to you. Like an internal flash flood of love, you get swept away by something that you didn’t even know was there a second ago.
        At once beautiful and debilitating, it happened to me. We had gone out for ten months. Spent lots of time together. Went through quite a bit in that short time. I loved her, but I was not in love with her. Or so I thought. When I saw her that night, it was as though I suddenly saw her with new eyes. Actually, what I was doing was looking at her with a new heart. An open heart. In the time it took me to raise my head, cognitively recognize who I was looking at, and acknowledge her presence, my heart opened. I don’t know exactly how. I don’t know exactly why. But I do know it happened. Because I felt it. It was unmistakable. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before.
        It wasn’t so much an emotion as an awareness. A sensation. A deep knowing. A sudden awareness that there was something inside of me that I had forgotten about. I always knew it was in there, but it had hidden from me so effectively, for so long, that it had become a stranger. And for many, many years before it went into hibernation, it hadn’t dared show the scope and magnitude of it’s true presence to me except in short, evocative bursts. Because that was all I would allow.
        That something was my heart. When I say “my heart”, I’m referring to a life spring of positive, powerful energy. My heart represents the best of who I am. It is the center of all my passion for life. For all my hopes and all my dreams. For all my compassion and tenderness and gratitude. My heart is the holding space for that definitive nebulosity that makes me different from anybody else who is alive or who has ever lived. My heart holds all my capability to give and receive love, in all of it’s infinite forms and shapes. My heart is a vital part of myself. My heart is a huge part of who I am. And my heart had been in exile. Until that moment.
        In the flash of an adoring gaze, my heart came out of hiding and made itself known to me for the first time in almost two years. With an intensity that I was completely unprepared for. So I did what I knew how to do. I left.
        Immediately after looking at this woman and experiencing this epiphany, she walked towards me, opened her arms, and invited me to hug and kiss her hello. I remember looking at her doing so, and I remember walking towards her. But I don’t remember hugging her or kissing her. Because just before I did so, I went away. My body was there, I’m sure, doing the hugging and the kissing, but the rest of me had gone. Clint had heft the building. Clint had checked out.
        I disappeared. I had disappeared plenty of times before. It’s a coping mechanism I developed as a kid when things got too emotionally intense for me to handle. I would leave my body and not remember what happened. My memory of the event would have a big hole in it, where I remember something before and after, but not during. I still do it today. It’s involuntary. I don’t consciously choose it or even know I’m doing it. It’s only afterwards upon reflection that I realize it’s happened.
        It happened then. I know why. In the moment that I saw her for the first time with an open heart, I instantly became aware, for the first time, of how much I cared for her, how much I wanted to be with her, and how much I loved her. And I also knew that I wasn’t with her. An explosion of one’s heart is a big enough event in itself. Throwing that, along with the crushing truth that I was no longer with a woman I was in love with, into the emotional mixing bowl just overwhelmed my internal mix master. So I just bolted.
        But whether I was there or not, my heart had exploded open. And the consequences of that moment literally changed my life.
        My heart had been in lock down since my father died. I know myself to be a sensitive, emotional, demonstrative, emotive, outgoing, loving, artistic person. Having my heart shut down is like restricting the oxygen flow to a runner; he can function, but only in a limited capacity. That was me for a year and a half. Functioning, but at a fraction of my self.
        In truth, my heart had been hiding for a lot longer than a year and a half. Throughout my adult life, my heart had been poking itself out here and there. Some periods more than others. But I rarely came from my heart. I was in my head almost all the time. I wasn’t communicating with my heart. I wasn’t integrating how I felt into my life. And integration is essential.
        My mind is a wonderful tool. It’s very analytical and insatiably curious. It sees things in a unique way, and it’s usually very open. But it’s a tool. It’s not me. And like a chain saw that develops mobility and a mind of it’s own, it can wreak havoc if it’s not manned. My heart just wasn’t in my mix enough. I was living in my head. I was trying to do everything with nothing more than my body taking orders from my mind. And there’s a lot of shit in my mind that doesn’t belong there. My mind, just like everybody else’s, has some twisted ideas about who I am and about how my life should be lived.
        My mind is like the world we live in: there’s an amazing amount of great in it and there’s an amazing amount of shit in it as well. Undirected, it can lead itself very much astray. I need to be telling my mind where to go, not my mind telling me where to go. But for the longest time, I wasn’t doing that. I was letting my mind lead me everywhere. Like a puppet on a string, I followed. Like a power crazy general who thinks he knows it all, my mind wants to completely control me, all of me, all of the time. And just like a power crazy general running a country, that doesn’t work too well. The general needs to be an instrument of the state, not the other way around. My mind needs to be an instrument of my self.
        Not digging that role, however, my mind fights constantly to keep control. It’s always trying to run the show, twenty-four-seven, and sometimes it still does. But I have another voice now. A voice that I pay much more attention to. The voice of my heart. The song of my emotions. The power of my feelings. The energetic nothingness that’s responsible for the tears I cry, the laughter I expound, the sadness I no longer hide from, and the boundless child-like joy that I indulge myself in. My heart is the indescribable circle of energy, residing in the center of my chest, that holds the essence of who I really am.
        That energy is incredibly powerful and positively beautiful. I’ve found it again. And I’m integrating it into the very fabric of my life.
        And it all began one otherwise unexceptional evening, just about a year ago. When I looked at a girl. Felt something happen. And never turned back.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Boston Design Center full of Wrongs) Reserved.

June 12, 2008: Z-Day

        Why “Z-Day”? Because “D-Day” was already taken. An alternative explanation could simply be, paraphrasing a burping, drunken brother Blutarsky from Delta Tau Chi: “Why not!?”
        Actually, I just like the ring of Z-Day. And although the moniker is silly and arbitrary, the day that it denotes is not. Not for me anyway.
        It was a year ago today that I literally felt something inside of me move. A little explosion happening just in the space of my being that rearranged my mind and altered how I felt, about almost everything, in the course of a single moment.
        I didn’t know it in that moment, but my heart had exploded. Shut down and hiding in isolation within the darkness of my pain since my dad had died twenty months before, my heart finally allowed some light to enter the prison that it had walled itself inside of. And that light caused a blast. A big blast.
        Just like in a real explosion, the second before it happens, things look and feel one way. And the moment after it happens, everything is different.
        Inside of me, I could feel that something big had occurred. But I could not fathom how big. Nor could I grasp how drastically it’s consequences would change my life. I just knew I was different. I just knew that my life had somehow changed from what it was just a second before.
        The heart explosion happened so fast and so powerfully that my mind and body immediately went into a kind of shock. I actually felt myself disappear for a minute, just after it happened. I felt a rush sweep over me, a massive wave of feeling crashing against my insides, and then I was gone. I came back a minute later.
        In a flash too bright for the rest of me to see, my heart was now once again alive. My heart could now once again allow itself to feel. My path had just changed. Drastically.
        The catalyst for this explosion that was to alter my life was my heart’s blinding realization that I was madly in love with the woman I was looking at. And I had been for a long time.
        Please join me on my next post for more gut wrenching honesty and all the gory details....


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and five emotional beach fronts of wrongs) Reserved.