Landfill county - and if you collect enough bags, you become queen.
Melbourne Central Boxing Day sale - 30th December.
Racks clustered with treacle clothes to be retired to forever bins or op-shops by next Christmas.
Idle minds in slow-moving bodies.
That looks nice.
That doesn't look nice but I'll buy it anyway - it is half-off, after all.
What is a 50% discount on something vastly overpriced?
Just... overpriced?
"Excuse me, miss, do you think I could have some change?" a native face drawls.
"Sorry man, I don't have money."
He slurs his pupils towards the two plump grocery bags beside me.
"Well, do you think I can borrow a lighter?"
I'm jotting in a notebook while waiting for a tram - a smoker would be getting in final puffs.
"Don't smoke."
He drifts on, ghost eyes already elsewhere.
Nowhere.
Across the road a man sleeps in diagonal - blue and grey sleeping bag cocoon with no beautiful butterfly coming.
Other men wear grizzled grins on their muzzles as they hold their dogs - 80c of coins starving the inside of a stained hat. One with a starry-inked face ponders his next marketing attempt - permanent marker poised over cardboard in his lap.
Still, the shoppers and tourists and well-to-do students, walk slow, clotting every street - often displeased that one person would need to slip by their 5-berth meander. How very dare I?
I walk fast. No patience for noise, litter, begging and lacklustre hedonism. But I stop to watch the dancing, the shouting, the cry for help from the dark bodies in bright clothes on the State Library's steps. Chants echo the sound-off on a megaphone. Banners scream their plea: No more rape as a weapon of war. No more. No more. Freedom now. Freedom now.
I want to sob. Instead I smile. People should know about this stuff. I know so little, but enough to be hurt by it. And I'm happy to see as many tall, determined men as round women in headscarves. They've fled dictatorships. Unspeakable horrors. And now someone in tepid Gucci accoutrement pauses to video the scene. How quaint!
I'm glad my tram comes, or I may go up and ask one of the protestors about their fight.
And if I do, I'll cry. My safe street filters will come off and empathy will render me socially unacceptable.
Much more de jour to pop your boutique bags down and record without expression.
And still, it's just another day in a city.
No-one's getting saved - they're getting spending.
