The Escalator
Travelling past electrical stores, discount tyre merchants and suburban homes everything seems flat, depressed and out of date. The bus turns from the main route and by now the complex is in sight. "What's that?" a small child remarks, her hands pressed against the window. The mother in a low and hushed tone queries: "That?” And then wryly replies: “That is Marion."
I walk from the bus station through the clusters and clumps that comprise the carparks and the human traffic. I pass through the gates of the shoppingtown and enter the lowest levels. The transits are rolling and with a crowd of other travellers I board a travelator and am taken to the first level and deposited in The Globe. A large elliptical atrium rises above an elaborate central axis. At the hub of the cruciform nestles the café Coffee Club. And before the café a central staircase rises skyward, culminating in a web of steel, glass, and beams of evangelical light. Flanked by escalators, it's a symbolic ascension that rises towards the highest and most sacred aspects of the complex: The Cinema Megaplex, Central Administration, The Statue of Chaplin, Hocus Pocus and Intencity.
I sit at a table at the café and drink flat white coffee from a white glaze cup. Watching the spectacle of escalation, I take 'field notes'. To the front of me in the forecourt before the staircase, teenagers gather, sit, flirt, pose then depart. Two teens kiss and some girls run up the escalators. As if it were an amphitheatre some sit watching while others are watched; security guards patrol. Loitering adds to the spectacle. A contradiction appears between a space where I sit for the price of a coffee, and the space where others pay nothing to sit, but endure the cost of being constantly subjected to surveillance.
On the escalator to the left of the staircase passengers board and ascend. In doing so, caution is exercised and to stabilise, some grasp the rail and then board; some couples hold each other; some carry shopping and use the weight of their purchases as counter-balances; some cautiously board without holding the rails at all; the intrepid run, and as youth are want to do, some run against the grain.
On the escalator to the right passengers descend and alight. A cascade of ice-cream cones; shopping bags brimming with purchases, a father is carefully holding his child’s hand, his other hand is firmly on the guide rail. Groups cluster, crowds dispatch and disperse on arrival. A quick glance across the fields of escalators and stairs produce the strangest of conjunctions. A young child holds an ice-cream cone and licks the vanilla ice-cream dome. Protruding from a polo-necked sweater is a man's bald head. A hydrogen balloon, carried tentatively by a young girl, hovers mid way in the air, and shivers in the air-conditioned breeze.
Boredom. I lay a map of the complex out on the table and proceed to pore over it. Trying to work out where I am an elderly woman continually interrupts: "Whaddyadoin thair? Whaddydoin thair?" "Dywanna become a bus driver?" Bewildered, I don't respond, but I think to myself, "What am I doing here? Well, I guess I'm loitering", and prepare to ascend to the upper level.
I walk from the bus station through the clusters and clumps that comprise the carparks and the human traffic. I pass through the gates of the shoppingtown and enter the lowest levels. The transits are rolling and with a crowd of other travellers I board a travelator and am taken to the first level and deposited in The Globe. A large elliptical atrium rises above an elaborate central axis. At the hub of the cruciform nestles the café Coffee Club. And before the café a central staircase rises skyward, culminating in a web of steel, glass, and beams of evangelical light. Flanked by escalators, it's a symbolic ascension that rises towards the highest and most sacred aspects of the complex: The Cinema Megaplex, Central Administration, The Statue of Chaplin, Hocus Pocus and Intencity.
I sit at a table at the café and drink flat white coffee from a white glaze cup. Watching the spectacle of escalation, I take 'field notes'. To the front of me in the forecourt before the staircase, teenagers gather, sit, flirt, pose then depart. Two teens kiss and some girls run up the escalators. As if it were an amphitheatre some sit watching while others are watched; security guards patrol. Loitering adds to the spectacle. A contradiction appears between a space where I sit for the price of a coffee, and the space where others pay nothing to sit, but endure the cost of being constantly subjected to surveillance.
On the escalator to the left of the staircase passengers board and ascend. In doing so, caution is exercised and to stabilise, some grasp the rail and then board; some couples hold each other; some carry shopping and use the weight of their purchases as counter-balances; some cautiously board without holding the rails at all; the intrepid run, and as youth are want to do, some run against the grain.
On the escalator to the right passengers descend and alight. A cascade of ice-cream cones; shopping bags brimming with purchases, a father is carefully holding his child’s hand, his other hand is firmly on the guide rail. Groups cluster, crowds dispatch and disperse on arrival. A quick glance across the fields of escalators and stairs produce the strangest of conjunctions. A young child holds an ice-cream cone and licks the vanilla ice-cream dome. Protruding from a polo-necked sweater is a man's bald head. A hydrogen balloon, carried tentatively by a young girl, hovers mid way in the air, and shivers in the air-conditioned breeze.
Boredom. I lay a map of the complex out on the table and proceed to pore over it. Trying to work out where I am an elderly woman continually interrupts: "Whaddyadoin thair? Whaddydoin thair?" "Dywanna become a bus driver?" Bewildered, I don't respond, but I think to myself, "What am I doing here? Well, I guess I'm loitering", and prepare to ascend to the upper level.
posted by DJW at 10:55 PM
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