More Treasures

Today's excavation into my many treasure boxes I keep hidden away in a nondescript cardboard box is a look into this box here:

which my mom made me when I was a teenager.  I'm guessing I used it to keep treasures from the time I was 13 to maybe after college, since there's an old school photo in it of a good college friend.  the rest of this stuff is pure teen Robin though.

Here is the interior.  Stuck to the purple felt on the inside lid is 2 Rocky Horror pins and my ticket stub from when I saw Nirvana at the Forum, December 30, 1993.

Here is a piece of paper signed by all members of L7, plus Courtney Love.  A friend got it for me.  I don't know why I wasn't at that show.  It was probably on a school night and I was safe at home reading Weetzie Bat or watching The Simpsons.

Look at all these precious treasures.  I see:  3 of my public transit bus passes, my school ID, an antique match box full of my punk accessory safety pins, a ticket stub for The Crow, a couple school picture/booth photos, a acute card that says Princess (my long time nickname), a collector's care for Super Life" that says Cosmic Cowgirl on it and someone has put my face in it where the original Cosmic Cowgirl's face used to be, a roll of the elusive 2 dollar bill, 3 school-issued cards with my locker code on them (I have so many dreams where I go back to school and still remember my old locker code), a pin of a Robin I made at the downtown Children's Museum when I was a kid, and a matchbook from my favorite Hollywood Blvd Heavy Metal shop, back when Hollywood used to be all Heavy Metal, and not the mish mash of Coffee Bean and Forever 21 that is is now.

Let's see here. Here's a couple more school photos, a business card for a taxi, some cute keepsakes, w packages of The Crow collectors cards, a vintage card about how cool women are, and Kathleen Hanna's autograph.  of special note:  there was a concert at Castaic Lake I wasn't allowed to go to; it was Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., and Kurt Cobain made a surprise appearance -- ALL my friends went besides me.  One of my friends, the wild and deceased Peter, brought me back this empty packet of Custom .046 gauge strings.  He tucked this note inside:  "This was thrown into the audience by the singer for Mudhoney, after a mid song replacement at the castaic lake on 9/26/92.  on the bill:  Pavement, mudhoney, sonic youth."  There's also a note dated 10/9/95 that reads: 
"You were so sad.  You cried.  You wanted to hit someone but your bruises still ached and kept you blue inside.  Do you know what I mean."  It's very sweet, but I'm not sure who wrote it, because it's signed "Me," with a drawing of a bat underneath.  My favorite treasure among these treasures is a note I wrote to Santa, on a pad of Dilbert post-its:  "Dear Santa, I love you so much.  The only present I want is to ride with you ever Christmas.  You would not have to bring me any present except this.  Forever.  If you will just wake me up and say "santa is here."  I have been good.  Love forever, Robin".  Oh, I also included the helpful postscript "Dad's stocking is a boot.  My stocking is red."

Well, my laziness has now kicked in, which means I'm tired of cataloguing these treasures for now.  Here is a last overall look at this wonderful and bittersweet treasure box.

xoxo Robin

unstuck in time again

I’m always mentioning on here how I try to make dead things from my past (dead people, friendships, places) come back to life by researching them online.  Well I spent hours trying to use Google maps to get an aerial view of a house of a friend of my mom’s that she doesn’t know anymore.  This man was a packrat, but if you have to be one, he was a pretty good one – his floors were littered with money and old paperback books of Peanuts cartoons, his favorite, and also weir things like that Snoopy Sno-Cone maker from the 1980’s that many of us my age may remember.  This packrat indoors was cool in its way but I’m way too used to packrat environs to be interested in all the half-buried treasure trash for long, but he lived in a pretty neighborhood, and his back yard was absolutely one of a kind.  Hidden in the overgrown grass was some of the most beautiful tilework I’ve ever seen.  I had a suspicion that some famous tile person must’ve made and laid these tiles him/herself they were so lovely.  I can’t go back to that house but I thought if I spent long enough on the computer, I could find a picture of it, at least, but no dice. 

However, I did find a current picture of the Glendale bungalow where the ghost that leads me, Bill Tunilla, used to live, also from google maps, and I’ll share it here.  I remember one time when I parked in the lot to the side of the bungalow, I walked past his bedroom window to get to courtyard and his front yard, and I heard him say “Hi Robin,” and, straining to see through the window screen, I saw him laying in bed, reading a novel, maybe Saul Bellow or Barbara Pym, with his cat laying down with him, and I just loved him so much then.  My mom told me a serial killer used to live at his apartment (after him) but I tried looking this up, and, nope.