Category Archives: Lessons, Life,

i have a few (ok, many-) things that i have picked up from thrift stores and random shops all the way from los angeles to austin and everywhere in between. things i love, but things that need to be released, set free, let GO. after all, i bought it all to sell anyway. good stuff. to this end, i am photographing, writing descriptions for and getting ready to sell most of these rad things. things that i have held captive, schleppled around and basically held hostage for too too long.

maybe i’m sentimental. maybe i cling to certain things longer than i should. maybe i’m just a huge pain in the ass. whatever. the point is it takes me FOREVER to make certain decisions — anyone who has known me/been with me/been my friend/is my friend knows this fun little fact. frankly, i exhaust myself. i hold myself hostage to ideals that can never be met and to tomorrows that may not ever come. its funny how we do that. i know someone who is going through a divorce. this person’s marriage partner won’t sign the piece of paper. won’t let it be done. the unhealthy tie remaining intact even though they have both moved on — held hostage. um…yeah! GOOD TIMES. why do we do this to others? why do we do this to ourselves? why keep holding on to stuff that isn’t really ours anymore? i’ve been trying to liberate myself from a lot of configurations and arrangements lately. i’ve been the hostage, the prisoner, if you will. starting my own lil’ biz and liberating myself from the corporate jungle/world of hell is one thing. letting go — really letting go — of expectations of other people, places and things is another. i have taken my share of hostages, too — (oh what fun for everyone!). i have held on longer than i should, kept unrealistic expectations alive. in the slow slow SLOW process of awakening, i now know that sometimes it’s best to let go, set things free. that happens to be many things for me, and maybe for you, as well. but today i’ll start with few atomic era treasures, remembering that only i hold the key to my version of freedom. and i shall be released.

©littlebrownbutterfly

photo taken by amandapandabananafanafofana elmore.

©littlebrownbutterfly

memories are interesting little reminders of life as we knew it, especially juxtaposed within the context of how things are now. with summer disappearing in my rear view mirror and an inexplicably wonderful new road under me on which to travel, i pause to consider what once was and that which will always be.

at the goodwill a few days past, i was rifling through a pile of old cookware, looking for some groovy cast iron skillet stuff when i came across a pizza stone. not something i would ordinarily consider, except that seeing it jarred a memory — a very specific memory — of my summer’s spent with my grandparents in ft lauderdale, florida. my grandfather was a school teacher and had the summer’s off. my grandmother spent her days at a big concrete building downtown and while she worked, my grandfather grocery shopped. going to grocery stores was a pastime of his and as the only scrawny grandchild he had, feeding me became his obsession. although i was happy to eat mustard sandwiches day in and day out (frealz-), he loved to load up the fridge and the freezer with food — all for me. the most common food? pizza. specifically totino’s frozen pizza and always always at least four of every kind: cheese, supreme, pepperoni. i always wondered if there was a sale on this brand of pizza as if i ate one, it seemed that is was always replaced with a least one more, keeping a nice even count. to fancy it up a bit, we always cooked it on a pizza stone. funny. frozen pizza became a gourmet dream when shoved in the oven this way: a shitty 95 cent pizza became, for me, the stuff memories are made of.

my grandfather is in a nursing home now. he cannot shop for food anymore. he cannot do much of anything but remember the way things once were. this makes me both incredibly sad and incredibly happy all at the same time. sad because we will each face some eventual reality such as his. happy because i had him then to buy me pizza, to feed me, to love me. i am lucky that i can share a bit of a pizza-esque tradition with my child, my son. i’m not, um, you know, much of a cook, but i am fortunate enough to live in a town with the best pizza this side of nyc. it’s a little place called home slice. my friends own it, my pals work there and my son loves it. it is not quite a totino’s on a pizza stone in a kitchen in florida, but a memory in the making nonetheless. one day my son will remember the days we spent eating our lunches, our dinners there. one day he will remember, and one day, it will mean so very much.

  
i have never been given a gift so sweet. a belt buckle with a starfish etching, brass, early 70’s. TOTALLY my kind of thing. as a serious thrifter and looker for things all great and groovy, i give a lot of amazing vintage gifts and i get good ones, too. but what makes this a gift of note is that it has a story: a story that makes it a possession i will never part with. i’ve carved out a special place in my heart for this buckle, a place where very few things reside — and also a place for the woman who once wore it, who owned it, who schlepped it around for 20+ years. i did not know the owner this buckle once belonged, but based solely on her seemingly rad style, i’m certain she and i would have gotten along quite famously.

it’s funny how things find us. i’ve always been someone who has been searching. in high-school and college i searched for a religion/spiritual practice/ideology that would suit me: catholicism, the kabbalah, zen buddhism, jungian psychology…you name it, it’s likely that i have studied it, and studied it in-depth. my adult life has involved the seeking of other things. the right car, the right person to 
(     fill in the blank    ) with, the right this, the right that. and in the most dark and desperate times, i have searched for myself. lately, it’s been chill on the search front. a sort of quiet acceptance seems to have lodged itself deep within my being. or maybe it’s just apathy — differentiating between the two is sometimes, um,  let’s say…. a bit challenging. right? right. all i know is that when you stop searching, settle down and stay still, good things can come.

as to how all this relates to a certain starfish brass belt buckle, here it is: i did not go in search of this particular treasure. instead, it found me. and with it comes the knowing that although it took a very long time to get from there to here, from her to me, it finally did. an impressive journey, wrapped up in the life of a woman that i will never know —  but the search finally over, the lost, found. i do believe she would be pleased with where her sea star ended up. 


©littlebrownbutterfly

i bought this stapler for a friend. i don’t actually know if he needs a vintage stapler, but i figured he would appreciate the good design and color of it if nothing else.

a stapler is an interesting piece of office equipment, is it not? a necessary accessory used to staple papers together, keep everything nice and tidy and with other papers that by some typed, printed, categorized means they inherently belong. in the macrocosm that is this life, we all need the equivalent of a really goddamn good stapler. something to keep it all together for us. most days, i feel rather adept at handling the various miscellaneous flurry of papers that get thrown my way. i can compartmentalize, put things in the filing cabinet that keeps my little tiny mind clutter-free. i can keep every paper, every interaction, every detail, every THING each within the categories they belong. i can staple it all together and be done.

but then there are the days that i can’t. i get overwhelmed. the overload, the need to do it/anything/everything better and better and better all the time completely overwhelms me and i am paralyzed by the sudden appearance of my good friend — my longstanding companion — Fear. as kind citizens of this office space/brain wave/planet, we should all attempt to keep our shit more together. perhaps then we would be/could be nicer and kinder and more sympathetic to the plights of others and the stack of unstapled, unsorted papers that they too must inevitably sort through, prioritize and figure out what the hell to do with. a stapler may indeed just be necessary office equipment. or it could also be a symbol – a reminder – that to keep it all together, sometimes you have to let it all fall apart, papers everywhere, so that the reorganization, the restructuring of life…can begin.

you know what i mean.

© littlebrownbutterfly

this was not the blog i intended on publishing today. i had another one all lined up and ready to go about a vintage stapler that i found, fell in love with and bought. oh well. next time.

i’ve had a real clusterfuck of a week. to clear my mind and try to get a little bit of goddamned perspective, i–you guessed it–went on a little thrift adventure to one of my favorite thrift stores, where hipsters looking for cool shit are outnumbered by real people just trying to find good, cheap clothes for their kids. it’s my kind of place and i find it comforting being there, amongst it all.

as i was strolling down the last aisle, i saw out of the corner of my eye a knick knack thingy that literally took my breath away. like, i stopped breathing for a second or two. i walked in seeming slow motion to it and realized that it was the exact knick knack thingy that my mother had in our house when i was a child. naturecraft, from england, worth about $50. tears. more tears. and then a smile. look at the universe talking to me. (sometimes, all we must do is listen-) it’s of an old man playing the piano. he is obviously homeless, but he has his piano, he is playing and he is happy; cat crawling on him, holes in his shoes, happy. as a scrawny little towhead of a kid growing up in f-l-a, i had no brothers, no sisters – just me. i made up a lot of stories in my youth to keep myself preoccupied, to get through some lonely, only child moments and to fill a little time. this particular collectible was one of those things that made my imagination run wild. who was this man? did he have a family? was he without a home? how did he feed his cat!? as adults we make up stories, too. about our lives, about the lives of others. we tell ourselves what we think we need to hear to make things better. we embellish, we lie to ourselves, we hope we can believe our own bullshit to get through the day. well, today, dear readers, i am sick of the stories i have been telling myself. i want the truth. i want to live in the moment, i want to speak from my heart and i want others to do the same. time’s running out. speak the truth. stop the storytelling. be honest. it’s all we’ve got. are you in?

©littlebrownbutterfly

©littlebrownbutterfly