ReST IN PeACE JilL CraNe DAY II

 

 Above - both sides of a valentine mom made me 

in 1993 or 1994

Pages from one of the magazines mom and I used to make for ourselves in like the early nineties.  

The hand is mine and the pretty stargirl hippie drawing is hers:

More of My Pasadena History

If you are a frequent reader of the blog, you know that much of what appears on here is an exploration of two of the main characters of my life, my mom Jill Crane and her best friend Bill Tunilla, and the years spent with them in Pasadena.  

Whenever I walk around my old Pasadena stomping grounds (often), I take note of the changes versus all the things that have stayed the same, and I take it all so personally, thinking things like “When I was a kid, I had no idea they would build a Target on this block someday.”  I have a hard time keeping up, and often give Geof (who is unfamiliar with the area) directions that apply to the Pasadena of two decades ago, like the other night when we went to a movie at a Pasadena theater he hadn’t been to before and that I guess I hadn’t been to since I saw “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” which seems like just last year or something but was actually released in 2005 (I looked it up).  I told him “Just park behind this building,” but there was a structure in the place where I’d imagined the old parking spaces to be, but that was okay, because there was a brand new parking lot the next block over, where I’d imagined a building to be – when was the parking lot put there?  How and why do things change in the place I feel to be mine?  I used to think my fascination with walking the same blocks of Pasadena I used to walk as a kid and revisiting the mostly completely changed old spots I used to know had something to do with my interest in time travel – I believe that time travel is possible, and to some degree, when I re-walk the same paths from my childhood, I get the feeling that such repetition and circling back will someday be a part of what makes time travel possible.   

But I have totally done too many drugs, and I think my belief in time travel sounds like a drug-person’s thoughts, right?  I just recently discovered a different way to describe my fascination with Pasadena as it relates to my childhood -- Metaphysical Solipsism, "a type of Idealism which maintains that the individual self of an individual is the whole of reality, and that the external world and other persons are representations of that self and have no independent existence" (http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_solipsism.html).  It’s true that to some degree, when I walk around the old streets I used to walk with Bill (dead) and mom (dead) it seems weird that the place exists when my old Pasadena companions don’t exist anymore, and I do sort of believe, against logic or the decent amount of self-involvement, that Pasadena is mine.  

I’ve been sort of researching my personal landmarks for years, for facts to flesh out my own personal Pasadena, and in particular, facts about the location of House of Fiction, Bill’s old bookstore, where I spent so much of my childhood just hanging out and getting primed for a bohemian adulthood (I remember sitting at the store and pondering the poster for the 1980’s Bukowski biopic Barfly that hung from a wall, thinking it was pronounced “Barflee” and wondering what one of those was, and then, years later, when Bukowski-literacy was a necessity to a writer-drinker, thinking “Oh, it's Bar-fly”).  Every so often, I’ve done internet searches on Bill’s name and the House of Fiction, as well as other of my own landmarks, partially to satiate my old curiosities about certain places I remember, and partially to help flesh out my writing when Pasadena appears in my writing.  I didn’t used to be able to find much, but about half a year ago I stumbled on http://pasadenadigitalhistory.com/, which provides history and photos of many of these landmarks of mine.   

For instance, when I was a kid, it was one of my – goals?  predictions? – that I’d be familiar with gay culture someday, and there was a gay bar called Nardi’s next door to the bookstore that I was always so curious about, always trying to see inside, and excited when I’d hear their Juke Box through the wall, often playing that Smithereens’ song “A Girl Like You.”  I  am so intrigued by the Pasadena Digital History information on the bar: 

from the site: 
Only infomation given on envelope, is Nardi's bar. Do not know whom the people are in the photo. Date taken: 4/14/1945. Nardi’s existed at 665 E. Colorado Boulevard under a variety of names. In the 1943 Pasadena city Directory it is listed as Elmer Nardi Liquors; 1947 Nardi-Waldorf Cafe; 1960, the Waldorf Café, and in 1970, Nardi’s. As near as we can tell, the bar was demolished in 1998 to make way for the Laemmle theater complex

I also had a childhood fascination with flophouses and there was one two doors down from the bookstore, “Crown Hotel,” which was destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.  I'd gotten to go inside it when it was a filming location for a while, and one of my grown-up friends, Michelle, used it to film her short film Pin Feathers, but it was just an empty building at that point -- none of the rumored hookers or their imaginary retired hobo flatmates lived there anymore.  
  

I don’t know – I’m writing about my solipsistic nostalgia sort of jokingly above, but the fact of the House of Fiction having been demolished (currently the site of the movie theater where I saw Me and You and Everyone We know), and of Bill and Mom both being dead, of course gives me a feeling of deep sadness, and I am both pained and grateful for the constant dreams I have of us all spending long hours hanging out at the bookstore together, though the store is usually partially demolished and often under new management.  I found a short film (below) on Vimeo the other day (by film-maker George Porcari) that is about the House of Fiction and Bill, and it is the jewel of my Pasadena-personal research – my poor mom and poor Bill leaving their sanctuary at the end, on the day the store closed, slated to be torn down and turned into something more profitable, the way it always goes in this fucking country.  

All generalizing aside, nothing special ever survives, ever.



The House of Fiction from George Porcari on Vimeo.

A Compendium of Well-Worn Memories: Youth: Precocity

  "cheer up, son":  Apocalypse Now Death Cards scene

Sad:

-In fourth grade my teacher was a flamboyant gay drama coach whom I adored even though sometimes he was high-maintenance, requiring constant attention and adoration from his students.  He had a very lesbianish friend he'd known for forever who was a part-time flight attendant - because she loved adventure - and also a substitute teacher; she taught our class whenever our teacher was out sick.  They were probably both in their forties.  He wore a professorial cardigan and a goatee.  She was tiny, with thinning short hair and an appealingly ugly face, and when I saw Rocky Horror years later I was reminded of her by the character of Columbia.  I was very attached to them and always imagining what they were like in their regular lives outside of school, just hanging out with their friends, and what their respective apartments may have looked like and what music each listened to.  One day, the woman must have been on campus to sub for a different class, and she peeked in on our class to say hi but the door was this really heavy monstrosity, made of iron or something instead of just a regular wooden door, and when she poked her little head in without securing the door open with her body, it closed on her head and it looked like it hurt so much, but you could tell she didn't want to turn it into a big deal so she was just sort of like "ouch" and said goodbye -- but you could tell it really hurt.

Pride mixed with a Sense of Foreboding:

-When I was an older kid, like twelvish through my teens, and I'd be super-bummed and pouting, mom'd say "Cheer up, son," quoting a line from "Apocalypse Now," the scene where Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore is putting "death cards" on the bodies of Viet Cong civilians his platoon has just killed, and one of the soldiers looks really sad and scared about it.  The perfect gallows-humor irony of this private joke of hers coupled with the fact that she'd groomed me to pick up on it made me feel proud of our household, but also, uneasy with the certainty that this would be me someday, a cool, depressed mom with an impressive appreciation of film.

Guilt:

-In college my freshmen and sophomore years, there was a kid named Rory who was in many of my classes.  He was very quiet and looked like Kurt Cobain (same hair and clothes but without Kurt's handsome face), and I was always curious about him and wanting to be his friend, but I was sort of a jerky punkish girl so I would be mean sometimes when I wanted to be nice instead, and one time when I was with a friend who also knew him from classes, he was petitioning to legalize weed, on behalf of a socialist group he must've been a member of, and even though I was probably stoned at the time he approached me for my signature, and I believed in all the good, kind generosity that comprises socialism, I made some crack about him being a hippie, and blew him off.  The following year, he killed himself, jumping out of his window in the tallest building in town, which happened to be the dormitory he lived in.  I should have been his friend.

*Side Note:  Painful Awareness of Mortality:  I was a campus janitor at the time of his death, and in fact, the Janitorial Headquarters were located in the basement of the building he'd jumped from, so I'd actually seen his dead body covered up with a sheet before I knew it was him.  In a very understanding way, my supervisor had asked if any of us would be willing to help clean the blood off the pavement with the pressure washer.  I didn't offer, but I'd considered it, and then felt guilty about it, realizing how much I'd enjoy the sympathy and gratitude of being one of the brave ones. 

**Further Side Note:  Coincidence/People's Interwoven Experiences in Some Grand Cosmic Design of Interconnectedness:  I'd had an awful on-campus psychologist who'd threatened to have me put on a 72-hour hold in a psych ward, clearly on a power trip and not because I was a danger to myself or others.  I remember being truly scared of her and the damage she could do to me.  Later, it came out that she'd been Rory's counselor and had possibly sort of fucked him up by pushing him to come out of the closet when he was still figuring out his sexuality.  She was put on administrative leave or fired or something. I guess I dodged a bullet. I had survivor's guilt, though.
 

  Little Nell as Columbia in "Rocky Horror Picture Show"

Being a Young Woman During the Time of My Life

my favorite of our old Olympia houses.  I like to see it through the eyes of Google Maps.  It's that little gray thing hiding behind trees with a billboard on its lawn.

When I was 18 through 22, I lived in Olympia, Washington.  I’d moved there ostensibly to attend The Evergreen State College, but my true reason was the town itself, which was the starting place and still-center for the punk community I’d read so much about since my early teens.  I only applied to one other college, which was prestigious and at which I was accepted.  With  Evergreen State College, I bombarded them with several fine points and essays in my application, and received an early notice of acceptance as well as a full-tuition freshman year scholarship, which I won based on my work on the zines I’d written throughout Junior High and High school, and my extracurricular activity of being in a punk band that played in a few L.A. venues. 

There are so many stories that I want to tell someday -- about depression in college, some of them--  also about a major heartbreak that, when it turned into more of a sentimental friendship, involved so many little scenes of bitter sweetly crossed wires and unexpected, genuine rewards of loyalty and alliance in return for my years of pining.  I want to explain as completely as possible the depth and wildness of my most important female friendships, and just being, FEELING, so young, so wild and free.

But the memories I keep having of those four years, instances I hope to explain beautifully and loyal to the facts someday, are, importantly, instances of experiences so wholly unfamiliar to me, as a Los Angeles native – glimpses in many cases that I think would be considered mundane by others.  I remember some things that were just so identical to dream scenes, never things I could get used to or forget.  I remember a little house with a bright silver Airstream parked in their driveway – the lush lawn was dotted with children’s toys.  These items, covered in rain drops, were the kind of American family accouterments that I thought must be magical.

There was a burned down house I came upon one time with photo books among the rubble that hadn’t burned.  They were still full of pictures of the family who’d lived there.

One Fourth of July, I walked up and down a few of the streets in a neighborhood full of nuclear families, and feeling that the barbecues they were having would be a nice thing to know firsthand.  They had built-in friends and biographers in the family around them, and their lifelong friends (I imagined).  They looked normal.  Sometimes I want to be around a normal person, and in fact, sometimes I just want a normal person to take me completely in hand, to feed me something healthy and demand I go on a walk and that I stop moping.  The dependable-seeming mothers at these barbecues – it would have been nice to be able to spend a night in a guest room in one of these houses, with the guarantee of coffee and a functional shower the next morning.

I loved the garage sales there, especially the ones that elderly people gave.  The old women had costume jewelry and coats, and the men often had a box of belts and belt buckles that’d become tongue-in-cheek riding on our hips, NRA belt buckles, or a cast iron likeness of a bald eagle, or a hawk.

There was a garage sale we went to in a beautiful part of town, and it turned about that there was a bear roaming the streets.  Nobody ran for cover but I think we all turned just turned our backs and wished it away.

In the winter, around Christmas, there was nothing more bittersweet (I already KNEW, as I engaged in these vignettes) than walking around an unfamiliar neighborhood, taking a break from a party at someone’s house I didn't know well, to walk around looking at Christmas lights in freezing weather.

This that I’m describing now is a particular night in my sophomore year, a particularly huge party in an unfamiliar neighborhood.  I’d had to coax my short-lived boyfriend to go on this walk for me.  I said the type of whimsical thing I used to be known for, something like “oh it’s so beautiful, I feel like I’m in heaven.  I wish I could fly,” or something like that.  He wasn't receptive to such a line of bullshit.  Supposedly he’d told people he thought I looked like an European model, but he never showed real interest in me.  I remember one time when he was asleep in bed I wrote a poem that I later turned in to song lyrics with my band The Tantrums.  He always slept like a baby and I always stayed up all night, sometimes whispering a non-denominational and hopeless prayer, like “Oh please let him seriously start liking me.”  Fuck, that bedroom, that temple of selfishness, no room in the bed, no space heater, no food anywhere. 

These were the lyrics:  Sometimes I want not to eat but my stomach is so bare/It is a place all dead with magic/you have been in there – is it fair?!  Is it fair?!”

Anyway there were boys.  There was inebriation.  But there were one-person adventures.  It was an adventure to walk down to the gas station convenience store in the middle of the dark freezing night for a pack of smokes.  It was a solitary adventure to walk on a side street and notice a tiny little babbling brook  that nobody else said they knew about.  It was an adventure to walk across the street from our should-have-been-condemned $650 monthly house to the graveyard with the radio tower in the distance. It was an adventure, and a most wonderful and flattering thing to walk around and run into people I knew.  But I was a cutter and, in many other ways, a dime a dozen.  These boys needed their time away from us girls to practice their Pete Seeger cover bands and their Peter Pan shrugs.  We used our time for beautiful creations as well but allowed too many visits during these fits of epiphany.

A BRAIN A HEART A HOME THE NERVE

Everyone I’ve ever spoken to about the movie Wizard of Oz feels like they own it to some degree, like it is an artifact from only their own childhood.  For my own part, when I was a kid, the Wizard of Oz used to air on network TV once a year and it used to happen near my birthday, so it was a birthday tradition for me, my mom and her two best friends named Bill (Young Bill and Old Bill) to watch it together on TV as part of my birthday celebration.  This is a particularly poignant memory for me because I loved both Bills, and one I haven’t seen in years and am unable to track down on the internet, and the other one died of cancer in my mom’s house a few years ago, and also, of course my mom and I can't regain the closeness we used to have when I was young enough to get excited over the big deal a network station (I forget which one) made about showing Wizard of Oz.  So this memory of watching Wizard of Oz with them every year is one of those painful poignant stabbing memories.  Now that Gregory Maguire has written the series “The Wicked Years,” where the faaaaamous novel Wicked comes from, I feel like it’s in the collective unconscious to play with themes from the Wizard of Oz, with the collective acknowledgement that the movie is special to so many of us but that our youthful perception of the story is often very different from what occurs to us watching it as grown ups.  For instance not many adults could watch the film without feeling sorry for the wicked witch that nobody feels sorry for her for the brutal way she lost her sister; also, most adults feel that Glinda the Good Witch of the North is sort of a dick for saying stuff like “Only bad witches are ugly” (is she saying that ugly people are bad?  I sort of think so…) or letting Dorothy get in so much trouble before telling her she could’ve just clicked her heels to get home the whole time.  Why did we like this movie so much?  It was just beautiful and special and magical and captured the boredom, terror and wonder of youth really well.

Anyway, before Gregory Maguire’s Oz-for-Adults (erotic fantasy) Wicked Series came out, there were two other books I read, one in high school and one in college, that also used Wizard of Oz as the motif for a sad grown up story.  One was Was by Geoff Ryman, about an Oz-obsessed man dying of AIDS, and the other was called Judy Garland, Ginger Love by Nicole Cooley, about a woman who has an Oz-themed emotional breakdown after the painful experience of birthing a stillborn infant.  I really love both these novels and the way they use the Wizard of Oz.  When the film came out in theatres again in 1999, I was a college sophomore, and I went to see it with one of my best friends.  It was an emotional and spooky night.  I cried so much while watching the movie, it just painted such a perfectly articulated portrait of how beautiful and unfair the world can be.  Then when we left the theatre we realized it was fucking FREEZING, like ice storm cold, and we’d dressed up sort of dopey and cute for the movie, like our version of witches or something (I wish I had pictures), so we were freaked out waiting for the bus in the cold and dark in a part of town too far to walk home from, but we were also buzzed from the movie and nostalgia, just … what a night.  What a terrifying, goofy, young, fun night.  Inspired by seeing the movie again and by the books Was and Judy Garland, Ginger Love, I wrote this little zine here, “Twister.”  It’s not dated, but yeah, I think it was done in the winter of 1999, the day after seeing the movie in the theatre.  Enjoy! 

Children's Verse Zine

Here is Children's Verse, first published Autumn 1998.  Jesus but that was a cold season, obviously.  I misspell Cemetery in here, which is funny because I ended up working in a cemetery for a couple years shortly after  graduating college, and I misspelled it for awhile even when I worked at one.  Enjoy.  or, I mean, enjoy?
xoxo robin

Girl Scout Handbook

Aw, when I was trying to decide what college-age zines of mine to repost here, I completely forgot about my Girl Scout Handbook, a sad yet hopeful college freshman's rewrite of an old version of the Girls Scout Handbook, found in a thrift store or belonging to a house mate I think.  I published my version in December 1997.  In case you can't tell, the 2 handsome boys pictured w/in these pages, one blonde and one w/ dark hair, are both me.  xoxo princesa robin