Crossing Lines at Warringah Mall

Foreman is playing with a vast tangle of rusted metal rebar. He’s using Elsie, lifting the knot in her jaws and dropping it, then smashing her face down on top of it.

Ahh, you don’t believe
we’re on the eve
of destruction …

P.F. Sloan, 1964
Performed by Barry McGuire

A big man in funky high-viz leans right down, lifting double-handfuls of water to his mouth. His base colour is orange, but his massive shoulders and sleeves feature bold black stripes that give him a kind of fluororescent zebra look. As he stands and walks out the gate with hulking arms, he displays a tiny, gratuitous patch of horizontal black stripes at his waist.

The vertical bricks that trim the top of the balcony wall have shifted. Light appears between them.

Two men walk past Elsie, directly beneath jagged sheets of metal hanging from the dinosaur’s mouth. One man has a hard hat, the other not. No one calls out, nobody raises the alarm, and neither man looks up.

A man climbs into the back of a dump truck, bends and raises a long, wrapped bundle against the side. He steadies it, then ducks again and lifts, tipping the bundle up until it rests on the edge. With a final push and a guiding hand it slips down over the side and disappears. He climbs out after it.

A middle-aged couple walks past me at the bus stop. He’s paddling, she’s … I’m not sure what, really. Mustering as much dignity as she can, perhaps. Their mouths are a matching pair of disapproving pouts.

He’s dark and swarthy, grizzled and gnarled, pock-marked and battered as a pocket Danny Trejo. Ponytail, big moustache. Large as life and here at Warringah Mall.

Cool.

A young bloke ambles past with a skateboard horizontal in his hands. He flips it over. And over. And over. His head is shaved at the front and sides but a blanket of down covers the back like a fallen blonde toupee.

A woman walks through the food hall, wearing a long navy blue dress with matching handbag. The bag is a rectangle. Her arm is a right-angle. Her forearm traces the top of the bag to a hand that clutches the strap. She wears black high heeled shoes and moves with a kind of stiffness, like a robot inspired by catwalk models. All around her are the noise and daggy Summer outfits of a Northern Beaches shopping centre, a gauntlet that she navigates only out of grim necessity, and with the utmost disdain.

Today’s avocado isn’t properly ripe when I open it. The flesh is hard and doesn’t taste of anything much, and mashing it into the tuna is a real workout.

A drink bottle is trapped in a pile of temporary fencing, angled like a diver and frozen in the moment it breaks the surface.

Elsie remains upside-down, staring gobsmacked at the sky. A raven appears out of thin air and lands on Elsie’s twisted neck, turning this way, turning that, then parachutes onto a take-away food container.

Inside a shop, a woman leans back in a chair with her arms folded and her legs crossed. If she could see she’d be looking at the ceiling, but she can’t see because someone’s put tape on her eyes and drawn big black eyelashes there.

A young bloke with a ponytail and red shirt stands with a black and white ceramic coffee mug half raised to his mouth, waiting to cross at Neutral Bay. His elbow rests in a hand crossed over his chest and the body language is total dandy. I can imagine him sighing impatiently in some line.

Passing Seaforth. No longer part of our lives. The house-boat is still there that we could see from our front room. It has solar panels on the roof now.

We’re held up at the Spit, waiting for the bridge to go down. A girl across the aisle takes out her phone and lines up the traffic queue on her screen. A finger carefully touches a point near the bottom of the hill and she snaps it, then leans in to type a message that will speed it on its way.

A very old man prepares to leave. He pastes a mask carefully onto his face and pulls his shopping trolley closer, settling his coffee cup in the child seat. Pushing to his feet he turns, makes a slow circuit through the cafe seating area, crosses the aisle and passes out of sight behind the flower stall. He wears a loose black t-shirt and dark baggy trousers, and uses his trolley as a walking frame. His hair style changes completely at the back, from neatly combed to windswept, wild and rakish.

He’s left his paper behind on the table.

A tall girl is with her family at Cafe Piccolo Bar. She didn’t want anything from the counter and has been creeping around behind the flower stall like she’s waiting to spring an ambush. I lose track but find her again, back with the family. She stoops to give the biggest, longest hug you could ever imagine to a much smaller girl of maybe 8 or 10 who’s magically appeared. The small girl has a brother and tall girl gives him a moment as well, running a hand over what is probably a fresh-cut mullet as she turns away. The boy replaces his hat.

Puss ‘n Boots. They can’t even get the name right.

At the top of the Spit Bends, a woman in a white dress blows leaves into the late afternoon traffic.

I can see there are different cliques on this building site. Two blokes just stormed across in yellow jackets and really shiny black hard hats. One of them came out again with a kettle and hurried onto the footpath.

Green, gigantic leaves erupt at the edge of Military Road in Mosman, like a Jurassic explosion.

A huge man in shorts and a blue singlet hulks his way along the footpath in Mosman. His head is bald and his arms are covered in tattoos. Beside him trots a tiny, tidy little dog on its lead.