out and about

I’m some seats behind a man whose tall, narrow head is covered in salt and pepper hair. He wears sunglasses on the back of his neck, and calls to mind a Grenadier Guard with non-regulation eyewear.

The bus stop facing Warringah Mall: a young man leans on the rail above a seated girl, with a curtain of brown noodles falling from his mouth.

Conversation continues at the cafe: “They’re not musicians and they don’t understand. If it lasts 25 years they think that’s good enough. Why not get something that will last two hundred and fifty years?”

An old man boards the escalator with a look of deep concern, phone pressed to his ear and a black bag hanging from the wrist. His other hand looks for support.

The man who does serve people opens the cafe door and stands there, talking to a woman leaning in from the footpath; her clothes are all shades of orange, and her shopping trolley is red.

A laptop baby beats the table and grins. “Hey!” says the dad with a smile. “Hey!” He looks across at his wife and speaks in Spanish.

The cafe’s TV shows a painting of a water mill framed by shrill, poinsettia-red trees. A stream in the foreground tumbles down terraced boulders to a pond.

A man shuffles past in the sunshine, navy blue track-suit and dark, shiny hair. He runs a hand over his head.

The man in front is a structure of flakes and splinters, a bollard with ears. He glances up just once, to the side, with eyes that are wide and startled.

Two blonde girls grab consecutive seats on the bus at Warringah Mall, and B1 spins around with a gimme gesture. B2 hands her a pink box. B1 extracts a mysterious device, which she rolls carefully over her lips. Her lips begin to shine. She rubs them together. “I like it,” she says. And hands the whole thing back to B2.

An open paperback across the aisle. Most of the page is blocked, but stretching my eye muscles to their very limits I read: “He was starting to think June could be …” What? What could June be? Up for it? On to something? MI5? A head-case? The One? My god! The book’s entire genre hinges on June.

A dark-haired, dark-clothed couple, equal in height and rotundity, passes the window. The woman tilts her phone, leaning so that both can see the screen. She opens her mouth to speak and they’re gone.

A girl with hijab and microphone calls the world to Jesus, right there at the bus stop in Dee Why. A gangsta boy stands close behind, holding a speaker to her head.

Collaroy. A small girl who has fallen mid-leap over her towel-poncho and is beset by clucking relatives: (angry) “I don’t need it!”

Morning Glory chokes trees on the Burnt Bridge Creek Bypass, pressing them up against the noise barrier.

At day’s end a man with a backpack trudges past the window. He blinks, and his eyes stay closed.

At the cafe: both staff members huddle over a phone in the corner window. The man who won’t serve anyone lifts an eyebrow, and his serious companion rests a hand against the wall.

The tabletop is stainless steel with a van Gogh sun: twin filaments at the heart of an ellipse, and scratches of light spreading out in ever-widening circles.

The corner window frames a girl on the footpath, her back to the traffic, dark eyes considering something overhead. A snapshot. She drops her gaze at last, and enters the wall.

A man on the bus has a precision haircut, ear buds and no restraint. He looks straight ahead, talking at party volume to an unseen phone. Beside him, another young man with headphones turns and stares. He clenches one hand on a pole.

Two young women in a flash of passing side-street. Confrontation.

Down at the Spit, a man stands knee-deep next to a boat that almost touches the sand. Two small children splash beside him, ducking beneath the surface of Middle Harbour.

A girl dressed all in black is running for the bus, with black hair streaming from a scrunchy. Something white is written on her back.

In the garden of a house on Old Pittwater Road stands something like a covered well-head, gabled and dark. Entropy is stong with this one.

Three women jog shoulder to shoulder in Mosman, their shapes encompassing Before, Work in Progress, and After.