I am not a Hipster!

Hipster: though this one seems to be rocking hipster/redneck chic.

I would like to say I’m not a hipster. I find hipsters just as annoying as everyone else, in fact I thought hipsters were annoying before you even knew what a hipster was!

I’d like to say I’m not a hipster and for that to be the truth. I don’t really know if it is though. I don’t want to be a hipster because my dad is a rock musician; because I like actual rock music, despite my fascination with Belle & Sebastian; because I think prescription looking glasses should be worn solely by people with eye problems; because I think the term ‘vegan-leather’ is utter bulls**t; because I like Rockwiz; and because I really freak out at being type caste (note: the play on cast/caste is intentional).

But here is the thing, I like old looking bikes; so I have an old style bike that is perfectly back with quirky saddlebags that are way to new to belong to a hipster. I also ride my bike to op-shops to buy old clothes; most of the clothes I buy from op-shops are designer labelled or cute sundresses. The things I buy at op-shops that aren’t designer labelled or sundress-like are over-sized knitted jumpers and eighties trousers. I like the brat pack, but I didn’t like the prom dress from Pretty in Pink. I like felt hats. I own a jumper that I expressly can’t wear with loafers without socks because guys wearing Buddy Holly glasses, cardigans and too skinny, too short, acid-washed and pre-ripped jeans start hitting on me.

I am mostly certain that I’m not a hipster. But. I took a facebook quiz a few weeks ago, probably the first one I’ve done since first year uni, and it said I was a hipster. I have had nightmares. I walk the streets in fear of a trilby accidently falling from a hipster window and landing on my head while I’m wearing an oversized cardigan. I met with a friend last week wearing one of my favourite overly large cardigans, not with boat shoes or vintage looking boots… I wore it with very modern German (not even remotely hipster-looking) knee high boots, yet one of the first things I said to my darling friend was “I’m not a hipster, I just like oversized jumpers!” She laughed at me.

I’m not a hipster.

I just like oversized cardigans.

And vintage-look boots, that I try to avoid wearing with oversized cardigans.

I liked Mumford and Sons before you even heard of them.

Freezing Fingers and Absent Stories: Making sense of June

A  boat shed on the Swan River, Perth

The dust has settled and the debris of June cleared away. The false feeling of new beginnings and former fears have been tucked away into the dark corners of my mind as I pull my sluggish brain out and shake off the cobwebs and accumulated nonsense thoughts, preparing for the clockwork to begin again.

I had intended to present for you a month long short story via this blog of mine; I was to write an additional piece for this phantom short story each day culminating in a finished work at the end of June. That didn’t happen, instead my June month was the first month of this year in which I haven’t added new work to the blog. By way of explanation I’ll say my June imploded. My beloved mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Whenever I have told people this I immediately follow it with supporting statements such as “But it’s okay, they found it early and treatment options are good and it isn’t aggressive” along with various other comforting facts about why my mum isn’t going to die and please stop looking at me with that look of pathetic sympathy. That conversation, on my part, is performed to inform and comfort. Mum and I spend most of the time, we find ourselves telling people about the cancer, comforting others; it is tiring and boring! When we discuss it together we, more often than not, subject the entire scenario to inglorious boob-related humour. We face it down with practicality and humour, we have to because my mum has breast cancer which also means that one day I might have it too and neither of us are about to let it take our joy.

I’ve also had to move from Small Town South Coast to Perth (Medium-sized City West Coast), so between the packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking and cleaning I found that I just didn’t want to make time to write. Now I am in the city, I’ve been here for a couple of weeks and for the first time in months I’m not tired. I live with my Nan in the house that has been most consistently part of my life since my birth; my family nucleus has moved many times, but Nan and Grandad’s house has always been the same. I live in the room that I’ve stayed in on just about every Perth trip in my life, which is upward of four weeks out of each year, so it doesn’t feel strange or new, it just is. That is why the feeling of ‘new beginnings’ is false; there are new experiences to be had and new friendships to be made, but I don’t like the term ‘new beginnings’. I do like new adventures though. Former fears, on the other hand, are the things that I’ve conquered long ago that creep up in the slow anxiety of leaving the comfort of a long-held home. I think if you look at those sorts of fears directly under the light of the sun they disappear like mist figures.

The upshot of a writing-free month is the forlornness of my brain along with a jerky unease in my imagination; too many unwritten stories are jostling for face time with my frontal lobe. It is time to take to the tumbling bunch of them with a sharp edged quill, or in my case a pen and notebook and my trusty laptop.

It’s cold in this middle-city. And while city residents accuse Small Town of being freezing, I’ve never been so afraid of losing my fingers to frost bite as I am on these snow-blue mornings!