Hi All,
News: The popular Montreal-based writing project ‘365 Attempts at Life‘ has invited me to write a post every Monday for an entire year. Six other Montrealers in the Entertainment biz are writing on alternate days. The topic of each post is simply, ‘life’.  Below is my 3rd post, and below this post, are my first two posts… I will log each post here, along with upcoming news, as I progress through the ensuing 12 months ahead.
In other news, I’m slowly carving away t
Evja, the project with dancers from the Ballet Jazz de Montreal, is shaping up and will be presented at the Outremont Theatre in early January, 2013.
An iPad app I helped develop for the popular children’s book ‘Monkeys in my Kitchen‘ will be released soooooon…Â We are just wrapping up a few loose ends with the technical side of things.. hang tight mothers, fathers, and toddlers.
Writing Post #3…. : Oct 23
Tiger Dumpster Seagull Ghost
by Courtney Wing
Through the row of windows that line the south west facing wall of the boxy home in which I reside, a plastic bag clings to a branch three quarters of the way up a relatively high tree. This particular tree is the last of a row of trees that line one side of the street I look down upon. The other side of the street is void of such extravagant greenery, save for a sole soldier which surprisingly has maintained its composure in the face of it’s opposing wall of mighty fauna. Many of the leaves of these trees have died, fallen, and given character to the pavement. The rest hang on for dear life alongside their foreign companion, the plastic bag.
The bag, you see, has been there for three years, entangled around a few thin branches that extend from the end of one longer mature branch. Â I have watched the bag as it has passed through the seasons, enduring the challenges of weather and decomposition. I have watched it withstand extreme weather conditions – storms so intense that not even broken shards of glass could keep from being blown into the creases where buildings meet sidewalks.
The juxtaposition of the beauty of the tree against this vagrant member of one of the world’s leading criminal materials has triggered mild fury in me at various times. One summer day in ’09, as I was busy fine-tuning my procrastination skills, I became bothered by the loud rustling sound made from the bag as it inhaled and exhaled a stern northerly wind. This prompted a quick furious dial to the city to see if a civil truck that had hydraulic extension capabilities would be able to remove the bag if and when it was passing through my neighbourhood. The woman on the other end of the line laughed at me and responded with a question nothing short of what I would expect from our civil-service. She said, “My God, what do you expect, are you crazy, ha, forget about it?”  To which I replied, “No, but thanks anyway, goodbye. “
I was left to devise my own strategy as to how I would remove the bag from the tree. My idea to extend a long pole made up of a series of short poles from my window to the other side of the street in hopes to unleash it from the branch was foiled when I realized it could be hazardous to passing bystanders five stories below. Worst-case scenario headlines were flashing in my mind: ‘Innocent Pedestrian Javelin’d by Loose Dollar Store Broom Handle. Musician Jailed for Long Long Time!’ It seemed, the bag was staying until it stayed no more. There was nothing I could do about it.
Overtime I grew more and more comfortable with my invasive neighbourly companion. I grew accustomed to the plastic bag rustle mixed with the gentle sound of seasonal breezes. It became a conversation piece when friends hung out on my fire escape. It acted as a weathervane, always letting me know which direction the wind blew. It was, and still is, my neighbour between my neighbours.
The weather, in all of its aggressive forms, has taken a toll on the plastic bag. The ink that made up the graphics of whatever company distributed the bag has worn away completely. The shimmery white color that once was, is now tainted with deep shades of darkness, no doubt due in large to the carbon monoxide and dirt filled air that has battered it’s surface time and time again. It has become stringy in nature, and as unattractive as it once was, it now carries a somewhat graceful presence about it as it sways in harmony with the dying leaves surrounding it. In recent times, I have even associated the shape of it with that of a tired dumpster seagull ghost.
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