She’s walking alone.

Wrapped in rags that flap listlessly in the fitful dusty breeze she shuffles along the road.

There isn’t a footpath here to walk on, the road, the curb, the path; they all merge into one lumpy, patchwork collage of haphazard bitumen, crumbling concrete and sun-hardened grey-brown dirt.

She shuffles along, her packing tape wrapped shoes scuffing the ground, kicking up puffs of tired grey dust; her gait is short and rocks her from side to side as she balances her collection bags in her worn old hands and across her crooked back. A threadbare broad-brimmed hat made from some ancient mouldering felt adorns her head, a dull broach in the shape of a dawn sunburst is clipped to the side; a family heirloom, a forgotten memory of a nation’s forgotten pride. It is, like her; a relic and when she dies, who then will remember?

She is a vision of social neglect, a body that lives and yet has no station here in this place. To the corporate observer, to the black uniformed guard with his faceless, black visored helmet, she is not worthy of notice. She’s beneath an animal, beneath contempt.

But she’s smiling.

Under the grubby brow, around the brown and missing teeth there’s a little contented curl to her lips as she hobbles along, over the lumps and around the pot holes.

Her eyes aren’t dull, as the eyes of the white shirted wage slaves are dull, they are gleaming bright like the opals they used to mine in the desert. She is looking for opportunity here and there, she doesn’t see the filth, the refuse; she doesn’t see the misery of a thousand passers-by, she doesn’t feel their pity or their anger.

Like her forebears she’s mastered the art of Easy, of laid-back and chilled and “No-worries, mate”, because why should she worry what some uptight wanker in a pre-pressed shirt and fake leather shoes thinks of her? She doesn’t have much, but she owes them nothing. She’s as free as dingoes that wander outback, far away, in the Never Never.

She keeps her eyes moving. They’re a beautiful green but no-one sees them beneath her tangled dirty grey locks, no one sees the life and the fascination with all that she passes.

They try not to notice her, they move to the side as she shuffles along, her gentle murmuring to herself is a shield. They think that she is crazy, she should be avoided.

No better shield than a little fear, a little disgust. A little contempt scares away prying eyes.

They are all slaves, but she is free.

She counts their day as she lives hers, six thirty a.m. they leave their homes, six thirty five the blonde man with the real leather shoes reaches the front door of the office, six thirty six the inner city guard turns to the left at his post and stares into a building face for fifteen minutes.

That’s what he must do. He’s a cog in a clock, a mindless cog in a clock with the wrong time. The thought makes her chuckle, her clock is the sun and moon; the days of the week mean nothing to her.

She is free to bumble along, finding opportunity in the discarded possessions of these busy, scheduled people.

She knows she is old, but she doesn’t count her years any more, it is pointless to obsess over numbers that hold little meaning if an hour matters so little; then why should a day, a week, a year? One day, she knows, she will die and when she does she will be forgotten. But society forgot her a long time ago and over the meaningless days she’s come to terms with that, she is, in a word; content.

Today she will wander, along this road, then down to the stinky bay. She’ll follow the abandoned tram-line from the old city to where it meets the sea in Plympton, hobbling slowly over broken flints and rusting rails, smiling as the lichen and moss reclaim the tumbled stones and decaying sleepers.

She’ll look for shellfish in the gloom of half swamped houses, listening to the creaking walls and roofs. Where once people lived before the sea came back to claim the low lands, to push people away.

Perhaps she’ll set herself there for the day, on a pile of fallen timbers and discarded bricks and then in the night, she’ll have a little fire made from flotsam and jetsam, and the thin smoke wafting into the cooling night air as she watches the still working city perched in the Adelaide Hills from afar.

Perhaps then her friends will find her. The others that like her live the free life, those that wander the streets and have no number to call their own.

There will be Rosy and Jacob, Lionel and Jeff, then Geoff with a G and Francis too.

Perhaps no-one but herself and her dreams will keep her company, by what once was a tramline where it touches the sea.

But that’s hours away and the new morning beckons, her bags are full of things to trade with the others like her, the “unincorporated”, to her they are the sad little things, so full of their pride and self-importance, so keen to show her their superiority through their contempt.

She’ll be thinking of them tonight, as they spoon regulation gruel into their mouths after a day of drudging mindless service, as they watch the corporate news in their soulless beige rooms.

She’ll watch the waves from beside a little fire and perhaps sing a song with her friends or perhaps by herself. They’ll keep rhythm with sticks and with stamping feet, clapping hands. They’ll laugh. They’ll shuck mussels and snails she’s found in the lapping waters of the flooded streets and perhaps a little fish; if she’s fast enough to catch one.

Perhaps in the darkness she’ll go for a swim, peeling off her ragged clothes that keep her safe from predation and luxuriate in the cool, salty brine; scrubbing the dirt from her leathery brown skin before redressing and wiping soil on her face and hands; a clever disguise to hide her pride and her happiness.

As the rest of this land once called Australia toils under the yoke of SeaCorp’s profit plough she can watch the stars and remember and dream about her grandfather when he gave her his slouch hat.

In what once was Oz.

 

By Baart Groot

Website: http://baartgroot.wordpress.com/

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