The answer my friends is (garbage) blowin’ in the wind - Cassin Elliot & Toby Gillies

Wake up, shower, shave, dress myself and walk to work.

This is how roughly 231 out of 365 mornings a year start for me.

I walk to work past the giant Great West Life parking lot smack in the middle of what could be one of Winnipeg’s highest housing density neighborhoods, past the huge heritage houses of Balmoral St. always keeping an eye out for ghosts in the windows to explain how deserted most of them seem.

Past the rooming houses with tenants littered across the front lawns like last nights empties and past the drug houses with young kids playing in the front lawns and older ones stumbling out into the back alley.

Today started the same as most with the addition of a strong garbage wind.

I’m far from a expert on the garbage winds, but they seem to start in the spring, after the snow has melted and exposed all the remnants of our winter’s excess: Chocolate bar and condoms wrappers, but mostly Slurpee cups and plastic bags.

Once the thaw is complete the wind seems to pick up whatever is still intact and light enough to fly through the sky. Its mostly plastic bags that the wind picks up and launches into the sky like its scattering garbage seeds through our neighborhood.

This morning somewhere between the heritage houses and the rooming houses I was standing minding my own business waiting for the longest light of my commute. Listening to music, distracted by a potential morning break and enter happenings across the street, I turned my head at the last second and there it was - the garbage wind’s had exacted their revenge on me for my lack of garbage sacrificed through the winter.

Wet and dirty, stuck to the side of my face with the force of the garbage wind. I got bagged by a Giant Tiger plastic bag that looked to still have the receipt inside.

The garbage wind’s once again have showed who is in charge and I’m left wiping a wet plastic bag off my face while onlookers honk.

Good morning.

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Words: Cassin Elliot

Artwork: Toby Gillies