Style

 

As I walk along Adelaide Street, I must try to imagine that I am a journalist, or perhaps a mere journalism student, who wonders what interesting humans I will meet today. My eyes are suddenly diverted, for splashes of red and black have taken my vision from the wildy haired man mumbling incoherently under his breath, a leather-bound bible and crucifix gleaming in the sunlight.

For God is your saviour and He will come to walk within His kingdom again, he says, stopping this young woman in her tracks. She stares at him, taking in the figure--not with admiration, but with conceit and spite, for he has now diverted her attention from her current situation.

Leave me alone, Im late for class. Her voice trembles, holding back a scream. She stares blankly at him, then at me, then at her feet, her ballet shoes a humble coupling to flame red stockings. She is an interesting human. Miss Shannon Bowler is my Human Interest story.

Shannon is not adverse to this situation. Her journey takes her along Adelaide Street daily. They are always on the street, in the same place trying to appeal to the human emotion. I really dont want to talk to anyone on the street. There is too much happening. I just want to be in my own little bubble.

The person who has set off her outburst is  God-bothered. Shannon gives them this description  as they are more at home in a church pew, then out on the street trying to pedal their God-gifts to others.  If they want to talk about God in the street, they need a better forum.  They are basically selling God as if He is a commodity.

Shannon is a university student who does not have time for people on the street trying to pedal their wares or those whose mumbling and 'wandering eyes' make her want to stop, breathe deeply and give them a piece of her mind. I respect that they have as much belief in God as they do. Their ramblings may well change the life of an innocent office worker, about to go to the roof and quell their petty existence. Watching office workers walk by, avoiding eye-contact at all costs with the man that is trying to change their life.

Shannon often encounters, strange and kind of creepy characters crossing her path, who should simply not have been released from their little padded cells. Shannon, as an Arts student, takes in the world around her as if it is a canvas whose colours have faded and needs to find the tones and contrasts to make her world and the world around her function once more.

I find it really irritating that people feel the need to even look in my direction. Why can they not busy themselves with their own daily ritual, rather than invading mine? She asks herself this question and crosses her legs. Creases appear in her forehead and a sullen expression begins to emerge on her face, for a run in her red-blooded stocking leg has become apparent. My favourite stockings; they are no more.

Style is the focus of this article. Yet I do not know what style is. Style can be a persons view upon the world. It can be the way they appear in public or simply how people interact with one another.

Shannon, having walked down Adelaide street for the past semester has come to a self-confessed, mood-altering conclusion: Leave me alone! My stockings have opened a vein and, quite frankly, I am feeling the need to scratch the eyes out of the next person to whom I speak.