I'm not sure if this is the right way to start & proceed, but here goes:
I meant to post this from Wagga, before leaving for Japan a fortnight ago - it was commissioned by a suburban/regional mall management as a starter to a series of 'Mall Poet' community posts for the company's website.
david
Wagga Marketplace, Friday: A Pilgrim’s Progress
It’s our shelter from the
spring squall – our Friday fix, our Canterbury, Rome, Mecca.
And the Murrumbidgee’s
rising.
We enter from the
underbelly carpark, the travelator pushing us up to
this other world: lighter,
brighter, forever new …
where we can change our
clothes, our hair, our kitchen – our life.
Disability mobility makes
pilgrims of us all.
Let’s take the way of
window-shopping, of massage, of caffeine, of skin balm.
Today the Hub is vacant –
its industrial aircon underwear is showing.
Last week journalists
tapped away at their craft: living sculptures of Wagga’s media life
creating the news as we
watched.
Some people spend their
whole days here, says Dinah – mall dwellers –
a place to be loved.
A travel agent looks
hopeful, beckoning punters to other skies, other boulevardes –
linked by phone, Facebook,
the stockmarket.
A hairdresser bends
intently over scissors; strands of blonde and auburn bless the floor.
Crowds cluster at the Carvery
where electric knives whine like digital games;
wontons, like fresh-caught
sea-cucumbers, are tonged from boiler to bain-marie;
today’s espresso arousal fights
the inertia of deep-frying;
I fancy the improbability
of pomegranate and lime juice;
grilled salmon sushi looks
like delicate afternoon tea bliss bombs …
As the crowds thin after
lunch we can see the sheen on the pebblecrete –
and the cleaner says she
loves her five-day-a-week queendom.
Michel stops by – he’s
celebrating a family hundredth this weekend:
his son’s thirtieth plus a
friend’s seventieth.
We are less ideal than the
shop windows we gaze into
but in the fashion wing we
could be in Paris, Tokyo, Dubai airport –
Chloé (is that accent
right?), Jeans West, Napoleon Perdis …
the intense insouciance of Bras ‘n Things …
A keycutter jokes with a
man about a lock, tapping him lightly, laughingly on the head …
Bargain suits: royal blue or charcoal edged with fake leather
just $199 – and a pair of
shoes thrown in!
Japan comes to Wagga with
pastel hearts stationery.
Even in the toilets, the coolth
of faux granite & marble soothes –
we could be in a forest or
close to Nature’s intricate cliffs.
So we go back to face our
ordinary lives almost re-branded
like our city Wagga Wagga
–
the Art-Deco double W of
the Marketplace only just echoing
its bigger W brothers
inside.
the tension between
ReplyDeletemy-place
and no-place
space
I like it very much, David. They were lucky. A Mall Poet! Yikes, does it come with Mall Readers? :)
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the blog. The mall poet is an interesting thing. How is it going?
ReplyDeleteWelcome David, it's not like the Wagga I remember at all... Great project!
ReplyDeleteI love line : Japan comes to Wagga.
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