Ms. Understood

        One of my biggest fears is that of being misunderstood. Knowing, in my heart, what my intent was, but then the impact of my actions creating undesirable emotions and/or consequences. For someone else and for me. It’s unavoidable that this will happen from time to time. For me, though, it pushes very big, very painful buttons.
        The installation of these buttons began in childhood. Even as a kid, I was aware, arguably hyper-aware, of my intent. That was probably a product of Catholicism (the old “god knows what you’re thinking and is always watching” spiel) and a natural introspection that I’ve always had. I could bullshit myself as much as the next boy, but I instinctively always knew when I was doing so, and I would usually cop to it if I were called on it. Unusual for a ten year old, but that’s how I was.
        While this attribute of intense self awareness and introspection has served me very well as an adult, possessing it as a kid made being a child much less....childlike. It contributed a lot to my less-than-care-free attitude as a kid. That and being told that if I wasn’t constantly careful, life as I know it could be over any second.
        My folks, god bless them, employed the Scare The Living Crap Out Of The Kid With Potential Dire Consequences technique of teaching me to be careful. It worked, but the price was awfully fuckin’ high. I could have used some more reckless abandonment as a kid. In some ways, I’ve made up for it as an adult, but it would have been a much less anxious childhood if I wasn’t constantly reminded that certain doom awaited me should I ever take my eye off the ball.
        Here’s a perfect example. We all know that kids have to be careful handling knives. Even butter knives. But in my family, the warning went something like this: “Be careful with that knife. If it slips out of your hand, you could poke both eyes out, blinding you for the rest of your life.” When it came to climbing trees, this was heard more than once: “Watch out climbing that tree. If you fall, you might break your neck and end up in a wheelchair. Permanently.” To a kid, the fear of being blind or completely immobile was about as bad as it got. I’m surprised I didn’t develop acute cases of aichmophobia (fear of knives) or dendrophobia (fear of trees) as an adult. I do, however, have spinomalophobia, which is a fear of wheelchairs. I’m kidding. I made that word up.
        Let me come off this tangent and get back to being misunderstood. If I combine my hyper-awareness of my intent with the reality that, being “bad” or making mistakes of judgement (which kids often do) often meant being mercilessly shamed, I can see why this is such a big button for me. It was bad enough being shamed and feeling worthless. It’s even worse, though, when a kid is aware that his intent was indeed pure and good, but is being persecuted into the ground for something he never meant.
        Most kids aren’t able to understand how trying to be good can sometimes end up with them being severely punished and feeling really bad. And if that’s never explained to them, this mystery of life that we label “misunderstood” becomes a total mind fuck, which it was for me.
        Most kids don’t have the tools to separate the act of being shamed from who they are, so they take it on and feel completely worthless. Enough of these incidents following a kid’s innocent fucks up, and a child can equate making a mistake with worthlessness. To throw salt into the already festering wound, if the kid’s actions came from a good, loving place, and the results are emotionally catastrophic, then the fear of being misunderstood takes on almost phobic proportions.
        So being misunderstood becomes synonymous with shame, which is synonymous with worthlessness, which is synonymous with feeling completely suck-ass-what-the-fuck-is-the-point-I’m-no-good-even-when-I-try-to-be-let-me-jump-off-a-fuckin’-bridge. At least that’s where I can go.
        This is an old tape that still plays in my head sometimes when I’m misunderstood. It’s my responsibility to work this out, and I don’t blame anybody but myself for where this sends me. It is, however, a very dark, painful place inside of me that hasn’t seen much light. I still need plenty of work on it. The misunderstood madness is up for me right now, and I’m struggling with what it’s bringing up for me.
        I’ve done enough work on myself so that I know not to get into victim mode when I’m misunderstood. And I take full responsibility for the fact that my actions create certain impacts, even unintended ones. But I also know that whoever misinterprets my actions has some responsibility in the misinterpretation. Like most communication, it’s a combination of sender and receiver.
        What I’ve also come to realize is that a man who comes from his heart is probably more likely to be misunderstood than one who comes from his head. At some point, maybe I’ll do a whole post on that, but for now I’ll just say that that potential fact doesn’t make coming from my heart any less desirable. Maybe it just comes with the territory. People aren’t use to a man coming from there, and therefore his words and actions could often be looked upon somewhat suspiciously, and need to be explained away using more common reasoning.
        “It couldn’t be that the guy is just coming from his heart. Nah. Most guys don’t do that. Could love really be what's behind his actions? There’s no hidden agenda? I don’t know if I can really trust that. He’s probably full of shit.” Who’s problem is that? If any of us have any hope of being better understood, it’s all of ours.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a completely misunderstood amount of wrongs) Reserved.

Wooden Warrior

Note: This is an essay about drumming that I wrote while I attended UCLA in the summer of 2006. It's a bit of a departure from what I usually blog about, but I really like the piece and it's fun to mix it up once in a while. Hope you dig it.

        Long and slender, honed from a hickory tree somewhere in upstate Vermont, bearing the scars of a hundred thousand collisions, a single drumstick lies in repose next to it’s partner. The pair are identical twins, but like all identical twins, upon closer inspection, they reveal glaring dissimilarities. Both sticks are of the same make and model. But the one on the left is new, and hasn’t been used. No marks mar its perfectly smooth surface. The one on the right, though, has seen many nights of battle.
        The grizzled warrior and the green wanna-be. They were both created precisely the same for the exact same purpose. But one is a seasoned veteran, a go-to guy with the strength and the guts to get the job done, with the wounds to prove it. The other is as yet untested, unscathed, and absent of any je ne sais quoi. It has yet to fulfill its purpose. Its only purpose. The two wait together, alone, on the head of a drum.
        The responsibility of a drumstick is seldom appreciated, and that is because of its perceived transience; that is, if one breaks or slips out of hand, there’s another one to replace it. While that remains true, it doesn’t take more than a small shift in perspective to awaken you to a stick’s importance. Simply imagine a drummer trying to play without them. No sticks, no drums. No drums, no band. No band, no music. No music, no nothin’. A new definition in Webster’s New Dictionary of Modern Music should read: “Drumstick; the simplest piece of equipment that will, should it permanently fail, bring an entire evening of musical expression to its knees.”
        A drumstick endures a tremendous amount of constant abuse yet remains functional. Particularly in the genre of rock and roll, where volume, power, and intensity, dictate, to a substantial degree, the music’s appeal. And nowhere are power, volume, and intensity more sinisterly demanded than in the role of the drumstick.
        From the moment a stick is set into motion, it enters the strange and marvelous musical battlefield of rock drumming; one part creative expression, one part exhausting workout, one part psychotherapy, one part focused aggression. Playing the drums in this environment is as physically, mentally, and creatively challenging as any performance art form. Constantly in motion, a drummer’s limbs act as the conduit for his energy; energy born in his heart, focused by his mind, stored in his body, and explosively released through his arms and legs. And the only thing between a drummer’s hands and his instrument are his sticks.
        Hitting a drum demands plenty from a stick. But the true brutality comes from hitting the cymbals. Built like weapons, cymbals are sharp, heavy disks of metal, and they’re made to be hit hard. No other musical apparatus shares these attributes. They are the only instruments that can be thrown with any accuracy from fifty feet and kill you if they hit you. They’re like sharp, giant metal Frisbees.
        Many drummers tilt their cymbals towards them, and hit them with glancing blows. Cymbal manufacturers and technicians alike recommend this, for this method supposedly produces the best sound and also prolongs the life of the cymbal. But like some drummers, especially rock drummers, I am of a different school. My cymbals do not have much appreciable tilt; they face me pretty much edge on, so I hit them pretty much edge on. Music snobs will sometimes remind me that striking a cymbal in this fashion does not necessarily produce the most volume or the best sound from the instrument. The self-appointed musical aristocracy will occasionally go so far as to frown upon the practice. My retort to such drivel is that there’s no right or wrong way hit a cymbal, because how you hit is part of what gives you your own sound, your own style, indeed your individuality. How you hit a drum or cymbal is one of those intangibles that remain outside the parameters of technique and form. And besides, it feels great to hit a cymbal edge on. And that’s why we play music. Because of how it feels. That usually shuts them up.
        When a cymbal is tilted towards the drummer, the blow of the stick is deflected over a relatively wide area. More of the stick hits more of the cymbal, like the palm of your hand coming down flat on a table. When the cymbal lays edge on, however, the physics are quite different.
        Imagine taking the table, tilting it on its side so that the top is perpendicular to the floor, and now hitting the edge of it with the palm of your hand. Very little of your hand hits the table, and very little of the table gets hit. But the force is the same. This focusing of force into a smaller area causes much greater stress on both the table (the cymbal) and your hand (the stick).
        The majority of this force is brunted by the stick. With each blow, the stick receives a small battle scar, a proud symbol of its strength and purpose. After many of these hits, and many scars, the structural integrity of the stick begins to weaken. But like a secretly injured quarterback who’s in pain but still performs at the top of his game, the stick plays on. Many thousands of hits later, the stick is splintering with every blow, minute shards of wood flying off of it like the spurting blood of a pummeled boxer. Around the drums lies a splattering of sawdust, more silent evidence of countless brutal assaults. The casual observer might surmise that I had spent my time cutting planks of wood with a circular power saw, where sawdust is an inevitable by-product, instead of creating music.
        Cymbals are struck tens of thousands of times in a night’s performance, from a variety of angles and through the entire range of force; from glancing blows to heavy handed hits. I like to employ a fair amount of theatrics in my playing. A technically simple but visually effective maneuver is to raise one or both arms high above my head en route to executing a cymbal crash. Raising the arms high over the head is largely for dramatic purposes, because I don’t strike through the cymbal. Instead, as the arms are coming down, the elbows bend and the energy gets transferred to the wrists. The motion is similar to cracking a whip. The power comes from the whipping motion through the elbow and wrist, not the shoulder. But it looks good. And it feels great.
        Given the choice, I’ll always pick up a used stick as opposed to a brand new one. There’s something comforting about using a stick that’s seen some action, like an old pair of running sneakers that are past their peak but not yet over the hump of decline, and still feel great on your feet. When I look at one of my sticks that’s adorned with the remnants of battle, I see all the hits, I feel all the action, and I connect.
        My stick is an old friend who I’ve been through a lot with. It reminds me why I do this. It makes me feel proud that I’ve created so much music and moved people with nothing more than my sweat, my imagination, my creativity, my drums, my cymbals, and this old piece of wood.


©2006 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and hundreds of thousands of brutally aggressive collisions between drumsticks and cymbals) Reserved.

Hello Cleveland

        In the middle of Buzzard’s Bay, on Cape Cod, there sits the last commissioned light house in New England. Built in 1943, Cleveland Ledge Lighthouse was part of a plan to guide major shipping traffic through the Cape Cod Canal, which opened in 1914.
        The lighthouse houses a very bright rotating white light and a very loud fog horn. Years ago, both these features were necessities if ships were going to navigate the relatively narrow, shallow bay that was often shrouded in fog.
        With the advent of global positioning systems, and changes in maritime technologies and politics, Cleveland Ledge Light House went from being a manned dwelling to an automated one in 1978. Now decommissioned, the light house stands abandoned, like a lonely sentinel. It’s fog horn now rarely heard, as ships count on GPS and other sophisticated technology to navigate their way through the bay.
        But to those of us who grew up on and around Buzzard’s Bay, especially in the North and West Falmouth area, where the light house sits only three miles offshore, and is easily visible from land, Cleveland Ledge Light House represents a part of our history, our heritage, and indeed our folklore.
        As a kid, the ominous foghorn sounded often. It’s low, distinctive wail both scary and comforting. Even though it could only be heard vaguely and softly from land, it’s unmistakable drone was somehow omnipresent. Nothing else sounded remotely like it, and it’s consistency and persistence made it clear that it was not created by a human or an animal. It therefore sounded otherworldly, a constant reminder on dark, foggy nights that something was out there. Something huge and loud. Something in the middle of the ocean, that made this eerie sound, audible for miles away, all by itself. It was the raw material of nightmares.
        I remember what it was like being a boy and approaching the structure by boat; as you got closer, its daunting, looming presence began taking up more and more of not only your physical space, but your psychic space as well. When you you were within a few hundred feet, it’s all you could think about. Almost like it grabbed your mind and took control of it. It was positively mesmerizing. To a kid, this giant monolith in the middle of the ocean seemed somehow alive, like a motionless monster that may just decide to move if you got too close. It’s chipped paint, rusting round lower section, and semi-dilapidated appearance suggested that it could easily be haunted by the ghosts of mariners who long ago perished in these waters before the light house was there to aid them. Seeing it’s hulking mass rise out of the middle of the water, seemingly from nowhere, gave it an ethereal, supernatural aura. Did people actually build this thing, or did it just one day appear mysteriously from the depths? You could never be quite sure. In a word, it was spooky.
        Even today, when I jet ski out to Cleveland Ledge Light House, I can feel the hair on the back of my neck rise and my goose bumps flair. I approach it with the reverence of one worshiping a temple, making sure to never take my eyes off of it. When I’m that close to it, I remember what it felt like to be simultaneously terrified and gleefully awe struck as a boy. The light house is like a piece of giant frozen childhood. It ignites a unique atmospheric sensation that I first experienced when I was a kid. Like a living entity, like a childhood friend, the light house can trigger something inside me that nothing else can. Only when I'm physically close to it, and still somewhat creeped out as an adult, can I bring myself back to that place I left when I grew up.
        I hold Cleveland Ledge Light House as a sort of temple to my childhood. When I’m next to it now, I forgo the logic and reason of adulthood, and instead embrace the wonder, awe, fright, imagination, and mystery of boyhood. I can achieve this state only if I let go, allow the power of the light house to once again overwhelm me, and just go along for the ride.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a massive, monolithic light house full of Wrongs) Reserved

Bike Path Thugs

        There’s a new bike path in Falmouth. Actually, it’s an extension of the pre-existing bike path that runs from the middle of Falmouth to the edge of Woods Hole, thirteen miles away. The new part of the path extends it all the way from Falmouth to my town of North Falmouth. That means that I can bike from practically my own back yard all the way to Woods Hole, twenty-three mikes away, and only hit two miles of road (from my house to the path). The remaining twenty-three miles is all beautiful, pristine, smooth, relatively flat, scenic bike path, that travels through cranberry bogs, marshes, and forest, and by beaches and the ocean. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
        But there is a major problem that the bike path has created. A problem that could turn this spectacular new gem into nothing more than an oozing, puss infested shanker on the face of Cape Cod.
        I witnessed the origins of this festering pustule weeks ago when I first started biking on the path. I’m a very friendly dude when I’m out and about, and when I’m biking, I say hello or wave to everybody I come across. On the bike path, I noticed that about half of the people I said hello to said something back. The other half did not. This didn’t seem unusual to me, because as I’ve written before on this very blog, cyclists can be some of the most unfriendly exercisers on earth. It seems the more serious they dress, the more serious they are. I understand that exercise can be serious business, but let’s put this in perspective. You’re biking on a flat, straight, very public path, full of people, dogs, birds, and magnificent scenery. Is your game face really necessary?
        Anyway, as I said, getting the cold shoulder from over half the cyclist I encountered has always been de rigeur. But a few weeks ago, I noticed something else. Some of these cyclists were starting to stop and congregate in small groups at certain points along the new bike path. When I passed these groups of cycle enthusiasts, they not only didn’t say hello back to me, they stared at me. All of them. The first time it happened, I thought maybe I had a massive snot hanging from my nose, that, like a horrible car accident, they just couldn’t turn away from. But then it happened again, several times. A gaggle of neon-spandex clad, helmet-wearing, wrap-around-sunglass donning cyclists would literally stare me down as I rode past. They would all turn my way, and glare at me with hostile, sour puss expressions that I hadn’t seen since the eighth grade.
        Even for cyclists, this was unfriendly. Was it because I wasn’t wearing a helmet, therefore desecrating their ancient, sacred rules of safety? Was it because I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and they saw this primitive display of skin as a mocking of their strict dress code? These questions remained unanswered until the other morning, when one group actually waived me down and stopped me. Actually, they set up a wall of bikes across the path, so I had to stop or I’d run over one of them. I figured somebody was in trouble, or maybe there was imminent danger ahead and they were warning me. “Perhaps I misjudged these guys”, I thought. “Maybe they’re just looking out for me, or for one of their own, which I can certainly understand.”
        I stopped, got off my bike, and said, in a consciously friendly voice, “What’s up men?”. They didn’t respond. They just stood there and stared. Glared actually. After a few moments of awkward silence, one of them slowly approached me. He looked like the leader of the pack, a little taller than his compatriots, and dressed even more flamboyantly than the rest. More neon. More garishly graphic helmet. Tighter shorts.
        As he approached me, he started taking his helmet off. The others kept theirs on. His motions were slow and deliberate. Actually, too slow and deliberate, as though he was self-consciously trying hard to be...slow and deliberate. Like a guy who’s trying to look tough, but isn’t.
        And he was walking funny too, because he had on those cyclist shoes with the clips on them. The whole effect was comical, borderline absurd, and I had to choke back the chuckles. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but I didn’t want to laugh at the guy. Well I did, but I knew it would be in bad taste. And I like to show respect for my fellow living organisms. Until they give me a damn good reason not to.
        And he was about to give me one. Actually, he was about to give about twenty.
        He turned and threw his helmet to one of his underlings, who proceeded to drop it. None of them smiled. I did. From ear to ear. They didn’t like that. After leader guy turned back around towards me, he spoke. “What are you doin’, boy?”, he said in a slow, measured cadence with just a hint of redneck drawl. Before I answered him, I thought to myself, “Boy”? I haven’t been called that in a while.” Before I could answer, he said “Ya know, we don’t like your kind on this here bike path.” Well that did it. A wire tripped in me, and I instinctively went into Wise Ass Mode. “My kind?”, I asked. “What kind would that be, Mr. Armstrong?” One of the guys in the back snickered ever so faintly, but it didn’t go unnoticed by me. Or by Lance, who turned around, pointed at him, and said “Give me twenty!”, upon which Mr. Snicker hung his head, dropped, and gave him...eight. That’s all he could muster, as he looked somewhat malnutritioned. So I did the right thing and offered him a Power Bar. More glares form Lance and the peanut gallery.
        Resuming his focus on me, Lance stepped a little closer and said “Looks like we’ve got a wise guy here, don’t we? Well listen up, Mr. Wise Guy. If you’re gonna bike on this path, you’re gonna have to abide by some rules. Now these rules aren’t written anywhere, but that don’t mean they aint gonna be enforced. See, we’re the unofficial Falmouth-Bike-Path-Proper-Bike-Etiquette-Poe-Leece. We’re a cross between a corrupt police department, a vigilante group, and a street gang. And you do not want us as your enemy if you intend on using this bike path. Once you step foot on this path, your civil liberties take a back seat to the preservation of established American values like religion, proper clothing, more religion, conformity, yet more religion - this time crammed down your throat, and the acceptance that, because we say so, we know better than you.” Suddenly, he didn’t sound much like Lance Armstrong. He sounded like George W. Bush.
        Then I realized what this was. This was a Cycle Gang. A self-appointed group of holier than thou, self-righteous, control freak bike addicts that look upon the casual cyclist like myself who doesn’t wear a helmet or a shirt as a bane to their sport. I’m everything they don’t like. I smile when I ride. I dress like I’m at the beach. I never wear a helmet. My bike is less than state of the art. I’m not carrying a water bottle. I have an enormous back pack on, which means I’m biking in part at least as a form of transportation to do something else and not exclusively as a form of no-holds-barred-balls-to-the-wall exercise. Which makes me a heathen. I’ve got on earrings, which increase my drag, so I’m not in the least concerned about my time. I’m doing this because it’s fun, I like it, it’s beautiful out, it’s great cardio, and I can get a tan and show off my bod. In other words, I am the the Obsessed Cyclist’s Anti-Christ.
        As soon as I understood what this was about, something overtook me. I shifted past Wise Ass Mode and into Complete Dickhead Hyperdrive. I walked up to Lance W. Bush, got right into his face and said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am Shiva, the God Of Death. I am going to bike right past you lame fucks. And so is anybody and everybody else on this path. Every minute of every day of every year, as long as I’m alive. And I intend to live forever.”
        Seconds after that, the group behind him started to disband, grumbling as they broke rank. They knew their days of terror were over, over before they actually began. And word of this would spread quickly, so effectively, every other Cycle Gang was doomed as well. It was only going to take one act of aggressive, potentially violent act of cycle defiance to thwart their ill conceived plan of bike path domination, and I was lucky enough to have been the right guy for the job, in the right place, at the right time.
        The bike path was now perpetually safe form the likes of unfriendly, control freak, elitist, obsessed cycle addicts. So come down and enjoy this new addition to the landscape of cape cod, knowing that you and your kin can safely enjoy the benefits of this path. Even if you don’t wear a helmet. Or a shirt. Or a stitch of neon.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a bike path of Wrongs) Reserved.

Update on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 8:44PM by Clint Piatelli

Egads! A thousand pardons! My creation of, and subsequent run in with, the "Cycle Gang" was, in fact, completely fabricated. I wrongfully assumed that to be clear, so absurd was the encounter. But I realize now that I should have somehow predicated that in the post. After all, I've made this blog about being open, honest, telling my truth, and exposing myself as deeply as I can stand. It was wrong for me to shift gears into absurd satire without forewarning my readership. My apologies.

The new bike path is indeed beautiful. And I still see more than my fair share of seemingly unhappy, unfriendly cyclists. But the existance and encounter with a gang of them is pure fiction; an observation taken to it's illogical extreme. But thanx for follwing me, all the way to the absurd, bitter end. I didn't mean to dupe you. I'm learning...

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.