Can't take my eyes off of you

As the rain drips and dribbles down the window raised above my ahead and the women of the office tweet in an out of the student work room, I am forced to look inside myself and see that I am nothing but judgmental.  I think make-up and a shower does this to me.  But under no circumstances does my outward appearance validate and legitimize my worth as a human being more than any other woman who pokes in my office.  And yet, a woman in a sweatsuit - the JLo kind - catches my eye and my snarl.  A woman bragging about her daughter, whom she has every right to brag about, watches my ears perk and my eyes narrow.  And my boss, my favorite woman in this office, smiling and happy as always, offering anyone and everyone fixin's for s'mores, earns a subtle cut of my eyes.  And "subtle" is being generous.

I suppose now comes the time that I go into hipster mode and discuss how being judgmental is or is not hipster - I think it is very hipster - but now is not the time to think over my hipster-tude, which I have realized, I do not have.  Now is the time to think over in what locus did I get the idea that I could judge.  I have done it all day today - men driving a Gator, girls walking to class, professors doing their job - and I assume all day every day, but who am I to judge?

Yes, I know that because I scale mountains and write award-winning operas, and because I repair electrical appliances free of charge and designed an internationally recognized line of corduroy evening wear, and because I am an abstract artist and a concrete analyst, I should be of the right to judge whomever I choose.  For we all know, I am better than all.  Look at all I can do.  But what can you look at to see who I am?  What can I look at in others to see who they are besides what they do? You cannot. Therefore, I cannot judge.

Close your eyes; clear your heart

There is a feeling that certain music gives me when it gathers around me and engulfs me and fills me with an uncontrollable effervescing of sheer arousal.  There are not enough words in this language or any other to describe it for I believe that any word could describe it and all words could describe and no words could describe it.  "Microwave" can describe it, for what does a microwave do but create a deep warming sensation from the center of a dish of pure delectability. And "sunglasses" can describe it, for what do sunglasses do but shield your gaze from that which is too powerful, only to deliver the world in a manner that is more beautiful than without the hazy shade of sepia caressing it.  And "conditioned" can describe it, for what does something conditioned do but perform better in its circumstances, attracting admiration and dissonance from like-minded individuals that cannot seem to have minds alike.  So how does one describe it?  Well, when I heard a song that gave me this feeling earlier this morning via the jukebox in Waffle House as I sipped on weak coffee and enjoyed the company of two brilliant friends, I commented, unwittingly speaking my pure mind and soul, that the music "held my heart." Now do you get it?

Decisions to decisions are made and not fought and I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot; I guess not

Brittney, my dear follower, has asked me to post to my blog again, so here goes.

This is a blog of my hipster encounters, so today must be discounted; it has been less than hipster in content, form, and style, for it has been full of lazy clothes, lots of sleep, a teeny bit of reading, and, of course, nicotine.  

Yet, I have not left my hipster course! Fear not! Only but two days ago was I atop the Vulcan in Birmingham - a spot left not only for the hipsters, but definitely one that could be considered hipster in nature, considering it's subject - with the girl of my present dreams - not literally, though, because another girl inhabits most of my sleepy nights - dressed in a full hipster getup - Chucks and skinny jeans, black shirt and contrasting shrug, scarf and bracelet; I will not let my advocates down! Leah, the aforementioned rapturing girl, kept commenting on my hipster-tude, and I, in true hipster fashion, as I later realized, denied her accusations with full force. I fear that only hipster deny indictment so ruthlessly.  (Can you be ruthful? And doesn't "ruthful" ring true of being ruthless?)

It appears that I have not lost my touch in blog post construction. The style of my language has not faltered over the past several months, as I afeared it would. Thank goodness.

I suppose now is time for the picture that I dare take with every entry; this picture is less than hipster, I must admit. (I'm wearing

Abercrombie, but, in my defense, it is an ex-girlfriend's shirt.)

Something worth fighting for

Being one of the very few awake in a sleepy dorm at 2:30 AM, I find myself finding the only company in my blog and my music.

I got a job, though. In my sleepless night, I found a job as a tutor. Now all I have to do is wait for students to contact me. I set my own hours. I set my own salary. Good job? I think so. And tutors make a shit-ton of money.

I noticed that I haven't spoken of my hipster musings lately. Today was a good one. I wore nothing but black today - black leggings, a black shirt, black shoes - save my circus-colored skirt that I found at a thrift store - Goodwill? - on Saturday back at home. Though what I smoke is not very hipster - I hear hipsters don't do Camels - the variety pack that I tote around with me in my purse is. The contents of my purse: three books, a notebook, six packs of cigarettes, a lighter, a pen, and some sunglasses. Occasionally, I stick my wallet in there. It's Vera Bradley. Slash against hipster points.

Beach trip on April 24th!

Train trip in August!

Tonight was a night of cigar smoking, cigarette smoking, Family Guy watching, and trip planning. Time very well spent. I love Patton and Brittney.

I'm still lonely.

The dress

My Deb dress

Love, pull your sore ribs in

Finally, back at home. Yes, I'm in Tuscaloosa. Yes, I'm on campus. Yes, I'm at my dorm. But most importantly, I am in the warm spot!

I've got my Coca-Cola Vanilla Zero.

I've got my cucumber-provolone-hummus on sourdough sandwich.

And I've got my 555 Filter King cigarettes.

These are the only cigarettes that still give me a buzz.  It may be the triple shot of tobacco in each one...

Good day. Good day.

In other news, Classy has released its first EP! It's rough. It sounds like it was made in a basement. But it's finally here! Yay! Best Tegan and Sara cover ever? I think so. "Not Tonight" is where it's at.

http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/artist/Hidden+Classy

Austin was all it could be and more. From meeting the pretty girl I saw on the bus at a party to hearing Mother Falcon live after much anticipation to hanging out with my favorite people from St. Hugh's College... It was a hipster trip to top all hipster outings in the most hipster of towns. From my dress to the concerts to the smoking, it was all hipster.

As the wind picks up, I will retire to my other home - the cave under the stairs - to wait for my compadres to return home and read up on transgenderism from Kate Bornstein.

P.S. I may or may not have made out with a fifteen year old. As long as she's cute, right?

Loosen up my buttons, baby

I am sitting in Sam's dorm room in a vintage shirt that I bought yesterday over the clothes I wore yesterday, minus the underwear I had on yesterday. No, I did not change underwear. "What are you talking about, Sassy?" you ask. I am not wearing underwear of any variety, for last night, or early this morning - the time is not important - I spent a great deal of time in a hot tub in my underwear (yes, of course, I was wearing a thong) with Fran, Lucas, Sam, and Will, wine glass and cigarettes in hand. I dated Sam for somewhere around eight months and the most skin he ever saw of me was last night.

This morning, I woke up in a house I had never been in before yesterday with people I had never met before yesterday. I could not sit on that couch any longer. Trekking out to the porch to lay in the hammock, I decided that there was a better spot in my near vicinity to relax. I spent the morning alone, sitting on a dock on a private lake with a cup of Irish coffee in one hand and a Camel 99 in the other in grungy clothes and no underwear. All I wanted was my moleskin journal to concoct some doodle of what was in my mind. 

Side note: Today, I received the grade on my psychology paper I wrote the other night. I wrote it drunk. I got a 4/4.

The plague of locusts

I sit here alone in Sam's dorm room, surrounded by people, all dreaming of sugar plums, wrapped in each other's arms, with only sounds of heavy breathing and the occasional buzz of a cell phone as the friends of my friends start to wake up and pray that my snoozing fellow snoozers are indeed awake, as they are not. For you know, it is a day of prayer, seeing as it is Sonday.

And the friends of the one typing are slowly coming to their senses. The boys, every boy, is awake and moving about, being loud, being manly, in their underpants and singing "Wizard of Oz." And laughing like hobgoblins, apparently.... Oh, it is such a weird day in such a hipster town where I feel anything but hipster walking down the street in unmatched patterns, boots, tights, greens socks (barely visible). 

I was feeling totally hipster because Sam said we were heading to a hipster gathering. I stand corrected. I am not a hipster in a town as hipster as Austin, only in the coming-of-age towns such as Tuscaloosa and Huntsville.

The indie culture has me beat. But today is a new day.  I will prevail! I will look like a hipster, even if I am not a true one. There's something about my style that is not hipster - it's not grunge enough - but it cannot be classified as anything else. Even my yellow headband...it doesn't make me hipster in the most hipster of crowds...like last night.

Come on kids; let's all hold hands

The ferociously female - female, not girl or woman - she has never felt the true feminine characteristics that she so often has been told to feel, that would make her a girl or a woman, though she is undeniably female - adolescent sits outside - she calls it outside because it is not enclosed by four walls, but it is roofed and it is surrounded by columns large enough to appear as walls - of the place she refers to as home - is it really home? - to all that she knows how to do best.  I don't care if you're good, as long as you are good at it. She is smoking and she is drinking and she is listening to the sultry sounds of Ani Difranco. And what good - I say "good" here as if it means something - does this do her? She knows that she should be studying and reading and learning and feeling, but yet she hides in the corner of the world - the world is round and has no corners - refusing to do any of these things - things? - for none of these things do her any good either. Especially that one called "feeling."  

Yet as she sits in her corner - the corner in which she really feels at home - the corner that she would never call home - for who calls that which is considered outside "home"? - she waits for someone - anyone? - no, a certain someone that she has been waiting for for months now. So why does she pick this spot to wait - she could wait forever - when she could wait inside where it is warm or wait where she would be sure to be found? She doesn't know. Probably because it was in this spot that they first had a conversation; there was hookah smoke and cigarette smoke and cigar smoke and tobacco smoke and loud conversation and laughter and inappropriateness and hard-beating hearts. She longs for that day to arise again, for the sheets of pressed paper to be read aloud again and for her sense to be overwhelmed by every feeling, but mostly that feeling of love. And that is why she does not feel now. Not only is she waiting for that person but she also waiting for that feeling, and like she will give her time to no other, she will her feelings to no other. She is committed, faithful, dedicated, to something that is not there to hold her commitment, her faithfulness, her dedication. To replace her feelings, she has found hope.

Her words are poetic - her thoughts are poetic - but what can be poetic without feeling the poetry pulse through your veins and out of your fingertips as you type diligently on your silvery white laptop. What can there be but words, empty words?

All I really want

Today, all I wanted to do was sit under my peacock blanket outside with a cigarette in hand and watch "The L Word" with Brittney, but the interwebs wouldn't work in the Warm Spot. FML

Don't live your life like a movie

Again, I sit in my Documentary Film Making class, bored out of my mind, blogging and trying to take pictures of myself without being noticed. My professor hardly teaches us anything that I haven't learned before. I wish I could use this class time to capture the shots I've gotten. But I guess we cannot because not everyone has shot yet. Ridiculous. It's March and some people have not started shooting their films due next month. I have a few hours of footage to work with. 

My professor gives me great ideas when we're alone and talking - ways to film, ways to ask questions, people to talk to. However, in class, I feel as if he doesn't realize all that we know. Or maybe I don't realize all that I don't know. Either way, sitting in class is a waste of time. The class itself is not - I'm learning a lot about making movies, but once I got the basics down, I'm learning more from playing around on my own than sitting in this little, cold, poorly lit classroom.

Hipsters do not dig authority.

That's why God made escort agencies

I noticed that I did not include any hipster musings in the previous post.

The whole post was hipster. From driving at night to smoking to writing poetry to the clothes on my body. Hipster.

So I dress hipster and I act hipster. My music is not hipster. No, I am listening to the Dresden Dolls right now, which is too mainstream to be hipster. I'm sure someone out there reading this has heard of them. And my speech is not hipster. Well, save those times I say "deck." I don't read hipster magazines or hipster websites. I do dig hipster literature. If you believe that my literature, dress, and activities are enough to define me as hipster, and not the things that most often define others as hipster (referring boldly to music choices), then yeah, I'm hipster. But I am not so sure that these three aspects truly define me as hipster. I don't feel hipster on the inside, but my outside says different. What does it feel like to be hipster?

Cigarettes and white grape sour life savers

Whoever said that cigarettes and coffee are brilliant did not know - could not know - the wonder that is found in the taste of white grape sour Life Savers when encompassed by the swirl of tobacco smoke.

However, when you are driving down the highway at night (note the pitch-blackery of that statement) and you are trying to light a cigarette, a cigarette that has a white filter (note the pitch-whitery of that statement), you often find that you will light the filter, not knowing that you are making this grave mistake, and begin to suck. Not only is it upsetting to realize that you cannot puff on a filter-lit cigarette, but also more upsetting to find out that the reason you lit the filter was not because you were a dumb-ass that does not know up from down, but because it was your

 lucky cigarette.

I went vegan for Lent. It's expensive. I'm not vegan anymore. 

To add to this sporadic posting of allegories, I wrote this poem - I suppose you could call it a poem - around the beginning of November. It is no longer applicable, though it is very applicable, for my life seems to center itself around this narrative.

With your hand caressing my arm and your back nearing my chest,

With my fingers gliding along your bare skin and your skin arising with goose bumps,

With your fingers interlaced with mine and your whispering voice flowing in my direction,

My heart's beating quickens - races towards the finish line - and the finish line is nowhere in sight.

My heart beats,

and it beats,

and it beats,

and it beats,

and beats,

and beats,

and beats,

and beats,

beats,

beats,

beats,

beats,

beats.

Slow.

Slow.

Slow.

Slow.

Slow.

My mouth finds your ear.

Slow.

My mouth finds your cheek.

Slow.

My mouth finds your lips.

Forget it.

Everything is speeding now. Hearts are racing, hands are roaming, voices are cracking.

And lips, lips are working harder than ever before.

From ears to cheeks to lips to chins to necks to collar bones to bare chests to beautiful breasts - 

My lips envelop you in kisses,

Your lips - slightly parted, release quiet gasps with each pleasure.

Your fingernails create canyons across my back.

Your legs intertwine mine until we cannot tell which are our own.

Your back arches in reminiscence of full-formed rainbows.

Rainbows and unicorns and love.

Love? Love. Love, really? Love. It cannot be love. But it is.

I am in love with my ex-girlfriend's best friend, my best friend's ex-love's best friend.

Oh, dear.

What am I getting myself into?

"Sassy, I had a lot of fun last night. I do not regret it at all. But, Sassy, I'm still in love with Bev. You and I - there is no spark between us like there is between Bev and I. I'm sorry."

Well, that takes care of everything, doesn't it?

Beside you and I'm falling

I have found myself, more than once, outside the side door of Blount, back pressed against the glass, worried that my ass crack is visible to all those walking down the hall on their way to join me, or join the atmosphere, because it doesn't really matter that I am there or not, as long as there is warm concrete and an ashtray.  However, I am most often not alone; no, Brittney has been losing herself in the overwhelming draw to my computer screen's depiction of a completely accurate representation of lesbians, also known as "The L Word." And most often, my ass crack is not visible because I am wrapped - we are wrapped - in a vintage peacock blanket that is warmer than any Snuggie could hope to be. Cigarettes in hand - did you know that the smoke of Marlboro Reds and Camel filters gives off the aroma of marijuana? - we dissolve into the world of Bette and Tina, Jenny and Shane, Helena and Dylan, Max and Tim, Kit and that drag queen, Alice and Tasha and the hot Asian - our favorites are Bette, Alice, and Shane (in that order) - often screaming at the interwebs for the awful connection in the warm spot, forcing us to smoke one last cigarette and retire to the unwanted warmth of the Blount lobby, where something is always happening and it is always loud - not conducive for watching hot, lesbian sex with the straightest girl I know. Does any of this make me inherently hipster? Does this much anticipated past time of my evenings shout hipster?

Blount - yes

outside - yes

Brittney - no

"The L Word" - yes

computer, so I don't have to purchase Showtime - yes

MacBook - yes

MacBook Pro - no

vintage peacock blanket - yes

cigarettes - yes

Marlboro Reds - no

"interwebs" - up for debate

Is it "hipster" if I do it because I truly enjoy the atmosphere of the warm spot, if I truly enjoy "The L Word," if my truly favorite blanket just happens to be vintage and features a peacock?

To put this in perspective, I now sit in the ultra crowded corporate Starbucks of the Ferguson Center, listening to the Backstreet Boys "The Call," and trying to block out the laughter of a Randolph alum that sits directly behind me, praying that she doesn't notice me. I'm sure she has. I'm wearing a bright yellow headband. I think I'm going to escape to the outside. Notice how unhappy I am!

I never made it outside. I ran into some friends, saw Breckan and trotted over to her to clarify some disturbing news I heard about myself - news I needed to diminish - followed her back inside, found myself back in Starbucks and lost in the conversation of unfortunately straight friends, realizing that I had barely seven minutes to myself before I needed to be back at Starbucks for a meeting about the Fellows Formal. Much to my dismay, it appears that I will have, like so many days in high school, a Starbucks-filled day, albeit in high school, those Starbucks-filled days were much enjoyed.

Man! I feel like a woman.

This is the reaction paper I wrote. This is the reason I had to stop posting this afternoon. The blogging is getting to my head already. Heh heh.

Taken in class:

I've been blogging, inspired by the late Virginia Woolf and her A Room of One's Own. In that inspiration, I am tempted now to construct my reaction paper in the format of a blog. I am tempted to add pictures and videos to illustrate my thoughts. I am tempted to ramble about my life and my musings, as a hipster might, and though I may try to keep this academic, my mind may roam, my mind will roll. "Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind" (Woolf 76). Lock me up in a library of academic propriety; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. And because of this, because Ms. Woolf has unwittingly given me permission, my mind has been unlocked and set loose like Pandora's box. Pandora Woolf, what were you thinking?

What she was thinking is that women needed a writing style of their own because the feminine experience is distinctly distinct from that of the masculine. Note my use of gender term, and not sexes; unlike Woolf, I do not believe that literature was taken over by the male, but by the masculine. Here is my attempt to introduce the feminine, calling it the female. My release is not in sentence structure, as that of Woolf, though sentence structure is important, and I do, more often than not, catch myself writing in the manner that so characterized Jane Austen, full of subordinations, but more importantly, full of commas. Is this distinctly feminine? Possibly, but I would not hold it against any person of the masculine sort to write this way. I stand corrected by myself. I would not hold it against any male to write this way, but the masculine...the masculine is the short, concise, Ernest Hemmingway sentences. Anyone can admit that he is overtly masculine, and would not be valued if he had written in these lengthy sentences, littered by subordinating, floral in nature, if you will.

I digress, but I gave you fair warning. I am in the blogging mindset and in the blogging mindset I shall stay, not because I cannot escape from it, not because I think you'll understand and take pity on me, but because the blogging writing style is that of me. "What do you mean, Sassy?" you say. Well, as much as Austen's inordinately filled sentences were seen as, well, refreshing to the women of her day, for they were feminine and they were theirs, my stream-of-consciousness blogging personality in my writing, that which is different from the great rowers of literary history, such as William Faulkner, is refreshing to a portion of those in my generation: the hipsters, especially those of the feminine nature, though I find it hard to recall a masculine hipster that has crossed my path. This brings me back to my point(s): the feminine needs a writing style, not the women. And so, for you, whoever you might be, if you can find it in your self to be feminine, at least for the course of the time it takes you to make it to the bottom of this black, pressed lettering, this may read to you as your own thoughts, your own musing, on Virginia Woolf, whether or not they are. For what is feminine but the ability to relate to all things feminine? And what is blogging but the ability to draw a relation to all those reading your blog? Sound familiar? Sounds like Virginia Woolf to me.

The first five times

Yes, it is time that I open a blog. Yes, it is time that I open my musings. Yes, it is time that I bring you to the realization with me: Is she really...a HIPSTER? Hopefully, this blog will lead me to a conclusion, either a confession or a denouncement. From now on, at least for the time of Lent, I will admit to my hipster moments, styles, tastes, thoughts. And I will admit those which are mainstream.

Because of the brevity of time that I have before I must read A Room of One's Own by the late Virginia Woolf and discuss my reactions to it, I must keep this short, not to say that the following posts will be eons longer. That's just silly. But there are some things that we need to cover, such as the day. The day has featured a surprise wake-up to ants crawling across my body, in my body, through my body; hours upon hours of reading about women, be it about abortion or women in fiction or intersectionality or heterosexism; give or take five hours spent with headphones in my ears; and much smoke passing slowly through my lips, around my uvula, only to be encompassed by my lungs, with only a little sprinting back out again.

I want you to notice this guy. Consider him: what he's wearing, how he's standing, what he's thinking. Approachable?

Now I want you to consider how I wait for my Women's Studies class. I stand on the third floor of Manly Hall (yeah, the Department of Women's Studies is located in Manly Hall), cigarette in hand, wearing a hat (which often happens to be a fedora, seeing that I own six or seven of them) and a sweater, often sporting a button-up shirt and Chuck Taylors. My posture? Just as this, only with one hand in my pocket...the other is, of course, steadily transitioning from side to mouth. And I often have my earbuds in my ears, listening to what, I'm sure, my fellow classmates, who are 80% athletes, figure is too trendy to be trendy yet. However, what they don't know, is that this morning, while waiting for class to start, I was listening to the Goo Goo Dolls. Hipster? I'll let you decide.