Memoir: Away From Home

I would never run away from home. Not voluntarily. You probably won’t understand this thinking if you don’t have a love of the Black Hills. As a poet and as a human, the Hills are my magic and my life. They are timeless, unwavering, comforting, a channel to the sacred.

Now that that’s out of the way, I can properly explain my first experience away from home. It was in the spring of 2004. Even writing that year makes me realize how much younger and naïve toward the world I was. But, journeys like these can fill you and make you grow. Or, they can break you and make you grow back in other ways. This was a little of both. I had been accepted to Pepperdine University. Since I was currently at a local university, this forced me to choose between a new path at an exclusive college, and my home, family, and someone who was very special to me. Fortunately, my head was still filled with dreams of screenwriting and directing, my family encouraged me, and the girl never returned my feelings.

Thus, like many people who migrate to Southern California, I had a sob story and a dream to fuel my journey. To mangle a quote from Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day, “Everything that’s not properly nailed down slid toward Los Angeles.” So, like my ancestors, traversing the plains to settle the Badlands, I accepted and went to Malibu. I quickly grew to hate L.A. with every fiber of my being.

But at the same time, I grew to love Malibu. I could see the Santa Monica Pier from my room. I practiced as part of the fencing team in a rotunda that is, like most of the campus, right next to PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and the ocean. I became friends with a band that, one day, will be very, very famous (Manixview). I hung out and browsed shops that, when walking through them, I realized had been movie sets at one point (I still belong to the Blockbuster that Arnold Schwarzenegger visits in Last Action Hero). One of my friends was on Saved by the Bell: The New Class (am I even allowed to brag about that one? Just kidding; he was awesome). I roomed with two great guys who I’m still friends with. One’s a film and television producer who’s developing his own show, which the Travel Channel was buying, last I heard. The other is a self-made millionaire investor and real estate agent. We used to drink at Moonshadows, the bar Mel Gibson left before he got arrested (we never made that mistake... drinking and driving OR being racist). And our other roommate, who I’ve since lost touch with, was a great friend as well. We used to catch movies at Universal City. This was before we chose to eat at a burger chain that we, soon after entering, learned it was some kind of gang hideout (that’s another example of why I came back).

Long story short: I had some contacts for my writing, and a paid offer on the table to work as photo editor for The Graphic (Pepperdine’s newspaper). Why did I come back? I don’t really know… not completely. Most likely, it was the fake, oppressive Los Angeles air that surrounds everything one does when he/she lives in there. This also accurately describes the physical air; not just the way people act. There were also some family issues that prompted me to live closer to home.

So, now I’m in Vermillion during the school year. Do I miss Malibu? Who wouldn’t miss Malibu? Maybe I’ll buy a timeshare there someday. I do have some good news, though. The hobnobbing skills and movie jargon I picked up during my time in SoCal has paid off- I’m the executive producer of an independent film here in Vermillion. No, it probably won’t debut at Cannes, but whatever path it is that drug me through Malibu and back again, I’m glad to be on.