executive decision

i don't think i've ever not been happy.
instead, there are way too many things that do make me happy
so having to choose just one of them has always been difficult
when really you just love it all.

I made an executive decision tonight.
After very much deduction, discernment, discussion, decision, deliberation, picture-looking-at, myspace-researching, life-thinking and total long-nighted consideration, it is this:

I will not be moving back to LA.

Sorry guys. the desire is gone.
There are too many wonderful things to do otherwise!
too much summer to spring happily about to, too many country markets to attend, too much grad school to consider, too many jobs to get, worlds to explore, colors to drink, nights to dance at local bars, too many other ways to experience happiness than that way.
It was like a foreign exchange program, I was a visitor (it shows in my photography!) But my home was never really there and my life has always been everywhere.
SO if too many things make you happy - why choose just one?
we'll always return to what we love anyway, old friends and snowboarding and doing plays. Happiness is first and foremost about people, what you can share with them and everything that follows.
So I am definitely not planning to move back, and it feels good to say it.
I can't wait to see what's gonna happen next!
the fungus on my toes never really fit in down there anyway, at least not with my Tevas on.

Love Mikie

my plums are a little bit not ripe. do you throw away unripe plums, or keep them?

Throw away, she says. Throw away.

rafting metaphor: in a pond

I am certainly unfastened to any good rafts, instead I chose to make my own. Ah, my raft. My real Zora. That pretty golden jewel-machine, which has rusted (even the prettiest of rafts seem to go out of style). So where the hell am I now?
In a green rusted raft, riding the same river. But there's more.
Steamboats were passing me by not too long ago and now they're gone too. Steamboats! loaded with my friends! For goodness' sake, those steamboats threw me off, rocked my boat away with their wakes of speed. me, in my copper old raft without a rutter..

oh yeah, that's another thing. the rutter's broken, most completely broke off for no reason, so I was forced to toss the rest of it overboard. Geez at least you can steer a rusted raft when it has a rutter.
And then what happened? the flow stopped. That's right. Downstream became upstream because the freakin flow haulted! Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate serenity, just not when you've got a lunch stop to rendezvous with.
So here I sit, in a pond too pretty to appreciate with no river's flow to move me on by, in a rusted raft without a rutter and no more steamboats even to rock me away. Nothing but a couple of empty shores and a frictionless flow on one bright sunny afternoon. Gosh, how strange. I never expected this.
No current in a floating ugly raft. whoda thunk

I do however have a paddle and a book. I'm not frantic yet, at least there's these two things. Well the book I have read a good few times now, and marked all up. During my prior ride, pages were torn out, words scribbled over..still its the same old story no matter what page I turn to. And my paddle? Its a single, so the going is rough. You scoop water on the left side, then switch to scoop water on right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right. Left.
"All Forward! Hard Hard, dig it in! annnnd...STOP!"
Ok ok , pretending to be a river guide in a rusted raft on an empty dead river gets you nowhere.
You know what I dream about? that someone pushes me. Gosh I'm sick of doing this on my own. Anyone, hop on please. I promise I'll make it a kickbutt of a ride, we'll hit all the rapids the wrong way and then thirst ourselves to death with droning conversations about nature and people. Anyone? Poop.

Paddle, book, raft, sun, shores, river water, solidarity... what a weird equation. Am I missing something? Is there something my eyes just don't see, something from another dimension haunting over like a supernatural Being, waiting for the right moment to appear? I mean, at this point it's just me and my paddle. That's all I've got.

Someone told me tonight that I have no family trade or business to fall back into. They were right, there nothing. I guess except for the few trades I've made for myself. Theatre, blah. Rafting jobs, yeah. Pizza Delivery, oh woo hoo. Education, sure. Food service, whatever. Snowboarding, I wish. Flight school? Justin that was seriously a bright idea.

God what else? Nada? seriously? Is all I've got a college degree with straight A's, a flexible body and my mini brain that works on overtime all the time? You know, I'll take anything you throw at me at this point, I'll commit to anything, so long as it allows me to love like I always love, but freely again.
A paddle and a book are not enough equipment for handling this heavy raft. Somebody with freaking fingers, please, POINT!
this raft metaphor is driving me crazy
I'll keep you updated.



here we are, on the river again.

single

the life of trying to not be single has mutilated our internal organs.
for some love is maybe, some others is not
a conditional thing, fairweather loving

My solution? avoid it. save us barrels and buckets
of pain and disillusionment, going to sleep and waking up
with nothing but balls of twine wrapped up in your stomach
sharp splinters and thorns of a jumble within,
that has nothing to do with love.

so long as relationships continue to harbor
these dingy's of pain and disappointment,
then maybe we won't be sailing any seas
maybe we are made for land and the trees
when there's mountain abrasively clinging to air
what's a cool ocean breeze but some wind in your hair
not a sign of enlightened potential somewhere
just a gust from dark water o'er wreckage & despair

i despise my telephone

twice today I tried to throw my phone away
twice i spun it sideways from my palm,
once it landed in the street not far away,
the second time the thing flew farther on
making its way into some fields of bush
That time around, I let it lie, the lying thing.
It sat there 15 minutes, maybe more
until my dad came round in his Nissan
hello dad "hop in!" what a cool old guy
and so I did. "I threw my phone" i said
and quiet like he does, he drove us back
back towards the field where my blue phonething lied
"where is it" "somewhere near those green bushes.."
then out, I hopped the fence, and there it lay
an ugly wrecked rectangle, smudged green sticker on its back
you stupid piece of blue and silver plastic
you flat, tiny, silent scumbag staring up at me.
"I hate you" then raised my foot up high
directly over it's opaque ugliness
ankles braced, Teva sandals firm,
my foot raised high, ready to smash the thing
with all that energy balled into a fist
swooping my arm i plucked it from grass
frowning, dejected, God, my mission failed.

I want to throw my phone away still
its slimey blueness laying silently
quiet on the desk in front of me
what was once a shiny friend
I hate it more than anythng.
I hate you phone, you only bring me terror
you tacky Razr kiss my human rear
I'm not going to charge you tonight
just so you die.
..
I wish disney had a different number for me
otherwise I would have left it there

everybody's got it right

it all headed up against a brick wall
it poured back in waves washing me
now drenched I drink the sunrays

I think I've figured something out.
While listening to Wilco just now
I think I realized something.
It wasn't anything too special, to anyone else
but it really meant a lot to me
It's not about what I was thinking about before
and that's when I said "f*ck it" to the door
of an empty house, to a beautiful silence that the neighbors heard,
It made me wonder where I'd be in twenty years
when I found this proposition in my mind.
there was a little jealous reaction
from some where else inside
my mind was in control (my mind was)
and it knew what I was hiding when I was hiding
the clouds about it knew about it too
so did the cat, he'd seen it all along of course
seen the worst, curled up in my lap
never feeling sorry, not wanting that
just love that happens alone
my mind inside alone it needs
alone to need to see

there is a huge spot in my heart for the Badass Coffee Shop in downtown Santa Cruz
I'm supposed to go to Hawaii today
you can buy bacon by the slice at the New Leaf
studying something's haunting me right now
master-brewing beer can make $42,000 annually
I want a typewriter, Bukowski, a truck, and to play outdoors,
it's summertime folks

Purple Room Move
June 14-15, 2008

"you might be scrubs, but you're definitely not chubs"

"mikie, you just fixed my life"

"discombobulated, gumption"

"mikie...move"

"beer is not clear"

"it's that thing"

"you know what I fear"

"tacos, burritos, what's coming out of your speedos, you've got troubles *whoo* you're blowing bubbles...*whoo*"

from a train in motion by the sea,
a boating schooner scoots through
planes of burnt-up pier and wood
the reeds shush a saucy tale:
of drinking dingy shanties
sung among the silver fog,
of black and yellow windows
burning bright on bobbing logs
of half a country's roarings,
warring over booze and gas
now of bodies hiding akin
whining railroad tracks.
blowing smoke in heavy stacks
the train in motion crashes
violently into the schooner
shattering its belly

motion, motion
floating over bones.
wet boating schooners
scooting through empty
tracks and planes of burnt-up
wood in shambles.
reeds and brambles
shush of saucy tales-
of drinking dingy shanties
sung among the silver fog,
of black on yellow windows
bobbing logs alone
above abandoned bones,
of half a country's
wailings, roarings
pared asunder,
of bodies hiding under
whining railroad tracks.
blowing smoke in heavy stacks
we roll away in motion over
drowned downed lights from
sunk drunk nights

in response to last night's post:

Moving to a city is like choosing a college, you kinda want to try them all. after a discussion with joebob yesterday, it seems there are countries, valleys, worlds full of these cities beckoning discovery, collectively calling your name. Well if we choose a college, we best choose one that makes us the happiest, right? it may not be down the main stream, but not everyone needs to barrel over waterfalls. sometimes it's smarter to just climb down the side; you'll be swimming in the same pools anyhow.
well I didn't go to school to finish into a niche,
I went to begin into all niches - besides, it's summertime.
the days are longer and the nights smell green.
I think it's time to explore those spots inbetween spots
and fill our evenings with wild new things

there really are some things i miss about LA.
Particularly, the excitement of it all. I won't lie, it was all very exciting. Each moment was, filled to bursting. I'd go to work a happy boy, excited just to be alive and part of something breathable. I'd be excited to get off work and jaunt by Ralph's for some late-night chow and a glance at the magazines. I'd be excited to hang out with Nikki and watch movies. I was even excited to drive the doomful drive across town to Santa Monica for my great failed class. then on the ways back nothing could contain the beauty that was downtown Los Angeles in the midnight air, glimmering and bright like a nova shining in blackness, merging into proximity and then hovering above me like a space ship. The beauty of a city is something incomparable in nature..
somewhere along the lines of things I definitely had a reality check too. And I followed that check, followed the urgency because no matter how pretty or haunting or excitable all the glitz is on beautiful days, none of it matches the urgent truth of loved ones far away. That vacancy cannot be filled with alcohol and tourists or even good work. No, it is a thing of its own, and must be preserved.
and so my long summer of wonder begins. with time now to consider and discern, i rest for a few nights at dad's house. then to Santa Cruz, and then Hawaii it seems. coming back I could be broke and burnt, but maybe coming back i'll finally have a new course for steering some of these new things.
I know it's hard for me to say this after all those crazy sad nights of loneliness and bad dreams, but I miss LA.
I wish I could have it all. I wish I could close the gap between worlds, live in all places at once, pull together everyone and have us all do exactly what we set out to do originally, together.
So now, where's my command? What fingers point where?
I think I know, but the answers we want and the answers we get never match. Rarely. Not until we listen to our mothers, right?
well Mikie the current you says to the future you: break a leg

I just wanted to point out that I love San Francisco. I spent a day there yesterday with Hillary, Carol, Robert and Candice. It is a place that fills you with some sort of spirit I find hard to capture anywhere else. Maybe it's the sheer winds chilling you to life, or the good eateries on every corner. Maybe its just the good company, or traveling under the banks of an ocean. Maybe the eclecticity of colors
pounding down boulevards of steam in the sun rays of ocean spray.
whatever it is, i like it.
That's it. As the words of advice go from one great man,
"stop looking, Mikie".

I remember at the beginning of last summer, Darin instilled in me a sort of charm about the possibility of being "Freewheelin Mikie Beatty". He used the nickname once in response to the freedom I was being handed by finishing college. I took it gladly and ran with it. For almost a year I freewheeled my way several times around the state, barely setting-up shop in any particular order or place. Even in LA, I never fully unpacked my stuff. So now the summer's rolled around again, and I'm uprooted and wheeling once more - sans 2 wheels of course.

Driving from Santa Cruz to the Sacramento Int'l Airport today, it occurred to me that I might finally be done with my Bob Dylan dreamings: spending frivolous earnings on gasoline simply for the joys of the open road. This is not to say that my bug to travel will ever truly escape me - heading east is intriguing, always has been and always will be. I want to study other cultures, immerse myself in new streets surrounded by strange people. But that's probably a natural urge for any world-curious boy or girl of my age (and since summer is the time of opportunity for these things why not pick up our feet and freewheel a little bit). But driving, leaving, packing, running - the travel is stale, singing alone in the car feels like a chore, it even takes a conscious effort to look at the mountains. The adventure, the grandeur, has been tapped out. I mean I think that's it, it's not adventurous anymore, not in the same way. What once was glamourous glorious and grand now feels just irrelevant, like leftover sweet rolls after dinner is over; living a Vagabond on the road, what was once such a dream that once enticed my little heart (from characters like Richard from The Beach or Sal Paradise from On The Road) has been lived, the experience is in my belly with the rest of the foods. I've eaten plenty of rolls, and now I've lost my taste for sweet bread.

So I'm sweaty and smelly in the sun this afternoon, pulling every piece of my life from the trunk of a rented Pontiac in an airport parking lot, and I couldn't help but be wary of the fact that instead of playing the role of Vagabond any longer (in some sort of story-driven great adventure I've been living in happily for a few years now) I've actually become one. Not a great actor eating the fruits and rolls of a meaty role, but an actual jobless carless homeless beat.

is this true? am I really convinced? Not quite yet..
Because beneath it all there's still all that formality of University education, years of working on stage and off in unshakable dedicatedness, long airplane rides for a hosting job, a financial aid office lecturer and college advisor, a hard-working Native American anthropologist, a pizza delivery kid who gets his sh*t done, an LA barhopper, a young uncle who can play and walk with the kids for hours, a totally inexperienced boyfriend, a tan rockjumper, an avid library browser, a pro snowboarder, a rafting guide, a health nut, a friend, a family boy, and an all-around over-lover of pretty much every thing.
we don many colorful faces as we eat all kinds of colorful foods. I just feel this Vagabond mask has molded onto my face too tight, and its hurting me. I'm ready to peel it off now and hang it on the wall.
Thank you mister Dylan, I love freewheelin.
But it's time to make some new things happen again.
And so i need a new title, a new mask to reach for.
Darin, any suave ideas?

here's some pictures

name this man:

in my white sheets on a stack of mattresses
i turned over to see an empty house
quiet with the thought of you
my dreams from the night begin to fade
making shape within a charted map
between islands of reality
all tied together by my ship
my ship, a restless vessel slave
to an ocean's call on the clouds
but in this light life floating along
you have taught me how to build an anchor

I take a moment to bid you all a fine first day of June, 2008.

A single white rose blooming in the desert is more beautiful
than rows of red roses dangling in city streets.