Full

Today the sky was blue but cloudy, the air was cold, clean, fresh. The sun beat down on everything, the earth continued to be alive. Wind pushed between buildings, trees, over the tops of hills and beneath cars. People didn't notice the outdoors, some accused their addictions of causing cancer. A tree branch fell in the mountains. A molecule of water dropped from a snowpack, into a stream, absorbed a pool, ran a tributary, joined a reservoir, drained a turbine, pushed a canal, spun a processing plant, sucked a pipeline, ran your tap, fell into your glass, gulped your mouth, followed your esophagus and wet your stomach joining your foodstuff and feeding your cells. Someone won big. Their rival lost and laughed with a heavy heart. Two fought for the last time, two fought for the first time. Someone kissed someone they loved, hopefully.

There was a fight and you watched it. But it was based on love.. because people just love each other, fully, intensely, strangely, imperfectly, drunkenly, rudely, selfishly, obsessively, ruinously, to their own ends. Nature exists without difference, without mercy.. but we feel mercy and difference, and it mixes us all up.. like there's some kind of answer we're trying to figure and everything that we do is a response to that belief, an answer that could exist if we just keep fighting long enough

Still I say

Situations change but people don't

So love what you can
Or get out

Too be hip, or not to be

I was told tonight at the bar, after blasting the stage with a terrible rendition of Jack Black's Tribute, that I was too hip for Monrovia.

There are multiple problems with this statement:

1 - It came from a girl I feel genuinely connected with and attracted to.
2 - She has an awesome boyfriend.
3 - It implies that I don't actually belong in Monrovia.
4 - That I am in any way at all "hip"

I will ignore the first two, since they are irreparable (and frequent) failures, with outcomes for which I am helpless. Instead, I'll focus on the second set. #3, as you can see, is a statement of location. Do I belong in Monrovia? Well, over the past week I have seen a good friend secure a job at my same hotel in Hollywood, and show signs of actually moving, potentially with me, into a place in Silverlake. At the same time, I have felt that twinge of unwelcomeness (so usual, so obvious) when your roommate doesn't really want you around when they come home. Both things said, I fully enjoy where I live and the township of Monrovia. I don't really want to move, but the opportunity has yet again arisen and my options are slim.

But observation #4 is what really concerned me. If the speaker (a female, gorgeous, and completely interesting, aka Taken) finds me to be "hip" then I have been going about this business completely wrong. See, I come from a well-versed-in-not-cool background. And I certainly don't practice Hip, Cool, nor particularly Sexy. So when someone I've known for a while reads me as such, it is startling and unnerving, and curious.

I'm not moving nor am I marrying this girl.
Just curious about what she said.

Hip?

I'm not hip.
But then again, who is?
Are the hipstery hipsters hip?
Are the hippyest hippies hip?
Who the heck is hip?
And why, oh why have I been deemed so.

I want to kiss so badly I could scream. silently of course

Goodnight

Mikie

Engineer and the wall

Turning away from the dried riverbed, the engineer looks up both sides of the canyon. Neither seems too pleasant in the bright brisk midday. On one side a steep cliff juts up. A brown crumbly wall, like a bulwark of earth arresting any curious thing. On the other spreads a long collection of rolling hills, yellow in the fall, extending beyond the infinity of his horizontal scope. Cliff or hills. He considers.

He takes the cliff

This ascent is nothing less than treacherous. The engineer begins to grip and stab at the hanging rocks, pulling his body weight up against inches of gravity while his fingers prick in the late afternoon chill.

Climbing is harder than he thought. Behind him the ominous hills seem to roil on forever..

a lazy perfectionist, he tries not to look

Several more feet up, the engineer has cleared a good third of the wall. But the vertical barricade seems to be growing, and below him hangs a long drop. Is his position becoming more dangerous than he'd anticipated? The engineer starts to wonder if this choice was an impossible one.. this tedious, meticulous, life-threatening spiderlike position against a canyon wall, limbs locked. His future dances above him in what seems to be a growing length of vertical eternity. He's made an impossible choice. Those hills don't sound so bad now..

but he's too far up to turn back yet, and the rocks of the wall are literally falling away beneath his feet.

Up and up and up, one foot here, one hand there. His muscles taught prepared, his balance barely shifting in miniature spurts... a green twig sticks out from where he sets his left thumb.. he looks at it. A green sprig. Some life that decided this was the place to stay Forever. This innocuous, temporary, precarious ledge was the spot this green little wallweed would grow. Was it a choice? or a matter of survival.

The engineer stops for a moment. Some creatures don't set out to accomplish anything but living. And so they're happy given any bits of survival at all. "Give me a wall and I'll stay at it..I'm just a plant.." what life is this? How can a creature not climb to see what's beyond the next ridge? It seems there is so much life to be found and seen.. "but what are you looking for dead Engineer? where were you trying to reach? I too am reaching upwards and out, just from a stable home.. is there something up there you'd rather call a home than here?"

Shaking the thoughts from his head, the engineer looks at his anxious thumbs and glances up the wall again.. the wall that seems to be growing. He looks back at the hills..

*rumble*

Rumble? What rumble. The earth isn't shaking. Is it? Rumble? Where was this rumble earlier, when I was standing in the wash's sandy basin? I would have been fine with a rumble then.

*rrruummmbbllee*

OKAY
Specks of rock and dirt dance on their ledges, start to fall. The engineer holds fast to his grip. This isn't happening.

*RRUMMBBLLEE*

The wall begins to cool. The earth moves. The sun lowers in the afternoon sky, long shadows follow...

He frantically looks down and up the canyon. Far away, something grey sits, a darkness filling the late daylight.. a huge thunderstorm. But its so far away no thunder could survive the soundwaves.. besides, that distant storm is too far upriver and it seems to be dissipating. I'm ok, just a leftover bit of thunder..

*RRRRRRRUUUUUUMMMBBLLLEE*

apparently it's not thunder.

upstream the culprit appears. Along the dry riverbed, hailing forth from another land rushes a pouring, gushing, grey-brown monstrous, curling, streaming, dust-ridden, gut-wrenching, rusty, corpse-stinking, foamy mouth of a heaving, canyon-slapping, flash flood.

mamasita..

Tearing through the trees and boulders beneath him, the flood gouges through the wash, sweeping up everything. The engineer stares thirty feet down in complete disdain. Just his luck.. luck? The furious flood roars on.

a tiny fractured raft floats by, edges broken, trinkets dangling, familiar amongst the passing debris..

One huge wave pounds against the wall splashing up like an ocean's arm, exploding towards him. In a swoop he dodges the upflung gush, pulling his hand away and letting the water pass. It drags along the wall then pulls back to the flood below.

Whew! the engineer puts his hand back against the wall to climb again and notices something missing..

the little green wallweed had been replaced with nothing, but mud

I must to keep climbing or I'll face the same doom as that little plant. My goals have shifted. This canyon edge must be summited. I have to believe in something impossible, something too difficult to accomplish, or I will die too. just like everything else..

so the engineer continues on

Crouching Naked by the River

Loose me in your mountains

Stop me with your lips

Bead me from your feathered down

Let me move about your hips

Entangle me in heaven's bosom

buried in the grass

Pull me from the fire's belly

Heave me from your summer pass

Then when love is oversweet

all in Sun and haze

Rip me from your dancing feet

Send me reeling, pleading, seething

Gushing love in red cascades

Kissing

Lying in a bed. Cool sheets pulled up to my bare chest. Wooden beams hide in the dark walls of the room. The night was keen and bright, dancing wild fist pumps and marching. Drawn out talks, stretching by kitchen light. Breath, out on the porch, breath and steam and smoke before the black forest. Howling into the night, thumping our feet to the drums of a gathering. Eye-contact, thoughts passing between heads, laughter and saucy plans. Grabbing by the tail for more dancing.

Colors in the dark, to the beat of the 80's. Kissing? No. No kissing. Never

Quiet. The longing for nothing, love for silence. An old cynicism now pampered to plush humor. Just love, nothing but it. No possible outcomes makes nothing but the love for it.

Deep
down
love
for kissing.

Kissing the stars, kissing the fresh night air. Kissing the bottletops, kissing the cutted rug. Kissing the eyes, kissing the lips of the road with my wheels, kissing the raw bread and sharp cheese. not kissing the girl I've never met. Once kissing the girl I knew so well but didn't know. Kissing the thumbnail moon. Wishing for kissing a princess, to wake her from a slumberous doom...

Maybe this weekend will take a turn for the epic worst/best/leastexpected. Whatever way, I left one town to join another for these two days.

Until
tomorrow
adieu
Migs

Happiness

1st Layer: Organized clutter, scattered, colorful, fun. Lots of toys and games, cool ideas, funny new things and genuine old things, sentiments, outdoor smells.. all of it tossed about and constantly being used. Never enough time to set the pieces back. Nobody saying where not to toss them.

2nd Layer: Rumbling unrest in a thick slate of rock. Pressure from the disorganization above constantly offsetting the homeostasis of this bedrock. Unrest roils the rock about like a continental crust base, moving, shifting, churning, pressured wildly from above and heated steadily by below

3rd Layer: Fire. Lots of licking hot red fingers of fire in absolute confinement. Orange, screaming eyeballs of fire darting insane for escape!! Wildfire begging for holes, devouring oxygen, burning and burning and ripping through the enclosed air. Perfectly contained fire, in an unbreachable layer crazy under the pressure, burning, insatiable, inextinguishable

4th Layer: Calm water, dark, pure, silent. Like between the tips of trees bent over a glacier, dripping crystaline. Smooth rocks rest inches below the water's surface, barely visible in the low light. Across the endless pool of serenity an occasional glint orange survives from above, makes its way like a dancing spirit in spirals about the quiet room. Tiny reflections across the water. A drop from the roof hits the pool sending ripples on their way

5th Layer: A sleeping ball of white. Complete white. Perfect. Wound up as it has always been. Head in hands. eyes rested. Quiet ivory. Untouchable, forever sleeping peacefully in the darkness.

Story:
Once upon a time in the silent dark of the 5th Layer, somewhere between pure silence and total chaos, a little violet light appeared. It was a tiny light. Faintly purple, barely anything in length. Nobody knows how the light had worked its way down there or from what grand scale and length of impurities it had come, but it got there. It was one little purple light on a journey, and now it was in the 5th room.

This light, faint and gentle, headed inside. Determined, it tiptoed across the blackness towards the white ball sleeping in the center of the room. The light was careful not to wake the ball from it's total slumber. It moved forward, and stopped just before the ball to hesitate, for only a moment. Then like a violet rebel it reached its purple tips out, slowly, until it was almost touching the sphere. The light stood poised, ready, naive, and in the dark emptiness of the 5th Layer the purple light moved forward and touched the white orb.

In a one-colored firework of silence, it's violet drop of coloring emptied into the ivory sphere, and in a moment of absolute truth, above all truths, before the greatness of the kings and queens and leaders of the earth and Nature, this one, little, purple light in the darkness touched the white ball.

Like two stars seen from light years away, the ball, for a moment, changed to purple.

The end. :)

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in another country. These people all seem foreign - with their complete lives and full-on careers, hobbies, families. They drive so slow and carefully, go out for drinks at night, get off work around 5.. They have circles of friends, weekend activities, their wives and bros and dogs. Everyone is plugged in, always. In love with someone else. Their eyes focused on something I don't even see. What is it? What do they see that I can't even find the grey blur of? How did they start their lives here, when did they break from the outside in? Was there ever their time to wonder at others and feel comletely alien and disconnected from the society in which they'd chosen?

What's strangest of all is that my society, where I belong, I couldn't give you a location. It doesn't really exist except in my mind. There have been moments lately when I did truly feel at home. And that's a funny thing to say because I was standing on a ship's veranda overlooking the passing ocean, or alone on a trail singing to the Los Angeles skyline 50 miles away, or sitting on the back of a raft watching the trees sweep by, or dancing in a recording booth shouting at an imaginary police officer, or walking by bums sleeping peacefully under the early stars - all these places held a glint of home.. of the freedom that home brings. It's so pure and obvious. But it only comes in glints. And they're so separate from what everyone else does every day that it doesn't seem correct. I crave the relaxation of knowing that I'll get to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again exactly the same as today. Another 2nd chance at life/work/love, every day. But instead it's all seasonal and incredible, and temporary - like a good river day: you feel amazing for a moment in time and you want it to last forever, so you enjoy it as if it will. But it doesn't. That's home for me, inbetween temporary happinesses.

Maybe it's on its way. Maybe soon, maybe later. Maybe never. :)

So my Subway sandwich is finished and Patrick is waiting for me to go pick his ass up. Guess I better go.

Seeya dudes

Mikie

Ebb and Flow

Clearly I nixed the Dickens script idea - for now.

Let's talk about today:

It's March 1st, 2011. Happy March, tout le monde. The sun is partially shining (as it should partially be in this partially-through-the-winter month) there is soft music and a dishwasher spinning in my kitchen, and the quiet of morning in a pretty town. I stumbled down the stairs just now to wash some dishes and make coffee in my pajamas.. and I'm cleaning each knife and fork and mug and plate in the usual, thorough scrub thinking about the dreams that I'd played through the night (me and Adrienne flying, me using a spoon to meticulously control the air and windspeed along the north coast) ...

It pissed me off for a second how little anything really changes. I was having a post-rehearsal chat with some friends last night and one of them said "MAN, I've learned so much this past month" and I thought about that real hard. How many months have we learned SO much, and then three years later we wake up washing the dishes realizing we're the exact same person we've always been from the beginning despite lessons learned and information gained.. experiences don't actually change us, they just pile on to what was originally there.

Originally. The originality of our lives, that gets lost in the current, in the moment, in thoughts of the future and hopes for the things around us.. but that originality, those seconds inbetween the hours when you're doing something like a few dishes staring out the kitchen window or driving home from a 12-hour day, or at the base of a waterfall you just jogged and hiked and climbed to find by yourself on a Monday.. that originality, that fresh, first You that was born and is completely insecure and ugly and naive that hides behind everything we do and think.. he's there lurking and we supress him! Pushing his head back underwater so that we might continue to Learn.

This is the Ebb and Flow of experience. Some days we're supercharged and fooled, nothing could ever be the same, and other days our original nature surfaces and we're fooled again, as if the Earth is the same wonderful natural but completely inaccessible thing it has been since the beginning.. Both are foolish, both mostly make-believe dreamworlds, and until that day when I'm stepping onto the stage script in dressing room folded, wrinkled, eyes glistening with the knowledge that the safety we pry ourselves from in order to crack the dragon and save us from the doom of banality (watching society through a paneless bittercold window) was not in vain, I'll put the quest to question.

Annnd, maybe that day will change nothing. Maybe it's just a fleeting fancy. Maybe I've already been there, maybe I'll stand there again. Maybe this is a life-long pursuit, the dragons keep coming, and Doom is laughing from his booth.

well,

There must be something solid in this windy world
and that angel who dances between the trees
will not disappear, but one day see me
waiting here so patiently
and on approach offer her hand
to hold mine soft, and steadily

There must be a day when the untouchable is finally allowed to be touched? Please?

or else my whole life is in vain.

We'll see :)

Migs

Epic Dust, interrupted

I wrote the first Scene of a screenplay today, the first time in my adult life beyond college that I've ever really sat down to compose something in writing with more of a longterm vision than just the immediate..

And I think it came together quite nicely.

So much so, that it gave me an idea:

What if I blogged the script, scene-by-scene (think Dickens) on here for you to read and respond to?

It would go like this: weekly (or whatever time frame), I would post a new scene from the script to be read and responded to, sort of episodically but all one cohesive story. You read it, respond to it with a touch of honest feedback (criticism is invaluable!) and we go from there. Maybe the next week is a new scene, maybe it's a totally revamped version of the already written one... it's anybody's game!

What do you think? You ethereal-collective-worldwide-consciousness-occasionally-responding-to-my-dilemmas thing, you. Are you in on reading a suspensefully epic story created before your very eyes that will build to a blogged finale/climactic event shaped by a combination of your feedback and my writing as if the gods themselves we're wielding magma?!? YES?!?!??


OR I could just write a script and post it. I can go either way.
That's what she said.

Migs

spinning away, again

Valentines.

I've been pretty solo for the last while and while driving home last night at 3am with my elbow out the window whitelit by Orion's constancy hearing the same Beach soundtrack song playing from my car speakers with the same empty road ahead and behind me feeling that same tingle of possiblity and curiousity for the lusty foreign.. I found myself wondering whether anything was ever going to:

1 - change
2 - be in need of change.
3 - include another person in the longterm.

We make all these efforts to shake up our surroundings, like the pulp had settled and we need to get those healthy fibrous vitamins floating through our OJ again.. but I try not to drink the stuff at all - instead I find whole oranges growing on trees and pick em, tear through their citrusy flesh like a lustrous caveman and eat right from the source of the nutrients.. and it all works well and fine until you see again that no matter how hearty, lusty, messy, fresh and longevitous you're life has become, you're still doin it solo. You're the only one browsing sidestreets and trekking mountain paths in search for more oranges.

Sure, people talk. "HEY! I do!" Sure. But here I am at 3am looking at the aching stars licking my skin with frost and all I can remember is having the exact same feelings at 18 listening to The Beach soundtrack driving home from work. Nothing changes.

HOLD ON!
This isn't to say there's no motivation. It's like a math problem - if, then. If there are oranges, go seek them. It doesn't mean the fruit is any different, but the journey changes every day. I don't want to eat anything but fresh, raw oranges.. but we all know you can't pick fruit from only the same tree every day less it grow barren quick... no you have to be a nomad with your feats. Hop from day to day with new ways to satisfy that same undying urge. This is the timeless pursuit that we all face, and at 3am under Orion's saggy waistline it doesn't seem to need to include another person. No change, nor really any need of change. The search for fruit is solo. You only need to feed yourself. You don't need to feed anybody, you choose to.

Semirelated Thought: As a rich man and a homeless man have both the same freedoms, so do our loves intertwine like two dimensions a universe apart but layered in exactly the same place. The ultimate full circle.

All of this this could get difficult because I haven't had any children yet. This whole subject is subject to potential contradiction later.

Had enough? Neither have I. But our imaginations are cornucopial fruitbearing steamengines. Embrace your everstable self, and risk it all again and again. Because 10 years down the line you'll likely be where I'm finding too - driving down an empty highway staring at Orion's icy belt, making wishes, hearing the same ageold tunes, welcoming adventure, warmed by the present and thankful for your one cold elbow kissing the dark, reminding you of "home".

Voila.

Migs

Working Hard or Hardly Working

Typical post-W shift:

Walked to Subway, watched the Blackeyed Peas be interviewed on a blue carpet, ate a sandwich, talked to Steve Earkle (Jalil White) laughed at the absurdity of pretty much everything, walked to Dillons, made a purchase and now I'm upstairs watching pool.

And a TV show on one of the many sportsbar screens.. OK Go just came on the stereo. There are hundreds of beautiful girls in this bar, none of which I can make eye-contact with, talk to and eventually smooch. So instead I'm watching this show - shot in HD. The actors, I'm watching quite closely, use such big facial expressions. Actors. What the heck are actors?! I could write a tome on my thoughts right now but I don't want to disclose quite yet my opinion on the sitch. Let's just say, the way actors "act" these days is funny to me - it's comedy just to see the pain and toil of it all.. for what? A shot at an audition where they can impress the right people? Really? My one opinion: It's the same as any profession: if, while you're working, you're not in LOVE with what you're doing (the people, place, product) then why do it?

I've been in love three times in my life. One of those is with acting/creating shows. I'm a child around the entertainment industry, I'm obsessed with it. I'm in love with performances, movies, creating stories in every way. That's how I know. Competely obsessed with actors and artistic visioneers. It amazes me.

Whatever your pursuit, I hope you're obsessed with it too. Because when you finally get to do it, you can never get enough of it. It's like kissing someone you've always wanted to kiss - you just don't want to stop.

Well this got weird. I'm going hoome!! Birthday party in 2 weeks? I think SO. Who wants to go? I cordially invite anybody who's reading this. :)

Details later, yo.

Mikie

Dreams and mint leaves

It's superbowl Sunday, which is virtually meaningless to me. This homemade cup
of sumatra is more exciting.

Writing. There's plenty to write but nothing to say. I'm staring at my seatless bike chained to a white metal fence overgrown with roses, I'm sitting on a cement patio crosslegged and shirtless, there's a ruffled pile of doggie blanket by the door, the sun is at full warmth, the sky white blue yellow and clear.

And I literally JUST discovered an overgrown bush of mint leaves sprouting at my left, right where the patio ends into sidewalk. This is 3 feet from my doorway. Excellent.

Last night I had a dream that I had to get stuff out of Candice's car from in front of her house in Vacaville, and it was around 4am. Her dad was just waking up as I was on the secret mission of exchanging our bikes (something in the dream we had previously talked about). I could hear her dad stirring around the house, saw the living room light come up in the early darkness, and even heard some of his laughter. My heart struggled with a desire to run inside and say hello..I even felt a sort of longing for his approval. It was weird, like a comfortable feeling of a lost home.
I ended up switching over the bikes quickly, just as Lucy came dashing out and the sky was blushing rose. I grabbed my backpack and sprinted down the street, looking back the whole time to see if she would follow. She just turned and found something interesting..

It was one of a few crazy dreams I've had this week, random ones. Things that hang in the back of the mind like a movie left on pause and the TV turned off.

Well I guess I should do laundry and get my superbowl festivities on, whatever they might be. I miss my family and their awesomeness. Now that I'm getting settled in this new house, thoughts of the loves of my life keep coming back. Family, you guys are the main ones. Wherever you are, I love ya.

Here's to mint growing 3 feet from my door :)

Mikie