I’ve only met him once, and that was over twenty years ago when he was just six, but I always felt like I made a pretty strong impression on him. As such, I’ve tried to stay in contact with him over the years, hoping to provide the leadership, guidance and confidence, that a young, ambitious and talented member of my family might benefit from.

I have to say, he has proven a very disappointing correspondent.

No matter, the fact that he’s never bothered to respond to any of my email hasn’t stopped me from writing, and when I heard that there were very serious allegations of match fixing at the highest levels of professional tennis, I wrote my young protege these supportive emails.

Andy:

Hey!

It’s your cool cousin, Michael here!

You know, the one who taught you how to serve and properly identify a crop circle back in the summer of ’94! I got a bad bloody nose for some reason that day. No idea why. So weird. Might have had something do with magnetic resonance from the crop circles.

Anyway, I know that you’re involved in the match fixing that’s now being investigated by the authorities.

You’re a Murray.

We come from a long line of sheep thieves and have a known a history of committing cowardly acts in the face of pressure. It’s in the blood. Hell, in grade seven I threw a spelling bee because another kid promised me a sexy photograph of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci.

I pretended I didn’t know how to spell “Psychotic” during the competition. Acted like I thought it started with an “S!”

As if.

I was born knowing how to spell psychotic.

I just want you to know that I think fixing matches is cool. It’s easy money. And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me!

Confidentially,

Michael Murray

PS: I know your character even if the public doesn’t.
Andy:

I owe my bookie Goran in excess of $7,000, due in large part to betting (unsuccessfully!!) on you.

You gotta back family, man!

Michael Murray

Andy:

As you might have heard, I now have a baby boy. Jones.

He’s the apple of our eye. Sure is expensive, though. Hungry, little money machine. Clothes horse, too. And as I am now the respected head of a family I really need to boost my earning potential. Not sure what to do. I have a real gift for predicting the outcome of sporting events. Do you have any suggestions of what I might do?

Michael Murray

Andy:

Was looking at some pictures of your wife the other day.

A real beauty. Guess money buys a lot of nice things. Has anybody started a fake Twitter account for her where she says you’re a domestic abuser and have all sorts of terrible and embarrassing sexual kinks? For an angry and desperate person with lots of time on his hands, that sort of account would sure be easy to create.

It would be a real shame if anything happened to her pretty face or hot body.

Michael Murray

Andy:

I am going to take your silence as agreement with everything I have written. If this is the case and you are onboard with fixing a match on behalf of your family and saving yourself from Twitter humiliation, please wear white during your next tennis match.

Michael Murray

Andy:

Excellent.

In the second round of the Australian Open, just pretend, as you typically do, to have lost your temper and concentration,

or perhaps twisted an ankle, and then limp off the court in furious defeat. You know the drill. With this one meaningless loss, which will give you a glorious two week vacation in beautiful Australia with your stunning and as yet undamaged wife, I will have been able to clear my debt with Goran, make a nice profit so I can take that nude life drawing class

I have always dreamed about, and you will have given Jones, the latest Murray, a great start in life.

As our family crest says: “Furth fortune and fill the fetters!”

Michael Murray

PS: We make a great team!

In an effort to bolster awareness of this and to encourage it’s citizens to help in creating a “city within a forest,” the city has mapped out all of it’s 70,000 trees, given each one a unique ID number, and invited residents to write the tree of their choice, with the tree actually writing back.

Here are some of the letters that people have sent in to trees:

“You’ve got to stop leaving your tree garbage all over the goddamn place! Every day you’re dropping crap on my driveway and I’m sick of finding it on my car and having to clean it off all the time. Knock it off or I’m going to chop you the hell down, I mean it!”

“For the last seven years you’ve stood outside of my front window. Each day I sat at my desk working and you were always there, my constant companion, and over time you became a symbol of my little house. Whenever I was really looking forward to getting home, and then would see you from down the street, I’d just relax, knowing I was almost where I wanted to be.  You always had a calming effect on me, and after all these years living in Melbourne I feel like you’ve been my best friend. I’m moving to London now, and I think I’m going to miss you more than anyone.”

“You happen to be at a really convenient location, in a park right between the pub and my flat. I must have pissed on you a hundred times over the years. Did it bother you that I did that? I never thought so. I figured you understood, and I always liked that moment or relief, leaning against you, my forehead and arm resting against your trunk, just the sound of my piss being absorbed into the ground. It was a timeout, you know? Anyway, I just wanted to thank you and let you know that you’re a bloody great tree!”

“My name is Randy and I’m in grade three. I really like trees and think they are important. You offer shade, help to make air and let animals live in your branches for free. Can you talk to the animals? Also, can you talk to other trees, and like in Lord of the Rings, will you be able to one day rise up and help fight against terror with the rest of the world? Thank you for all you do for the planet! You’re a hero!”

“Back in 1996 I carved my girlfriend and my initials into your trunk. He name was Marie Bell and we were just graduating from high school. Things didn’t last very long, as we both went our separate ways after school and lost touch. Anyway, I recently moved back to town to help look after my mother, and now I pass by you nearly every day. You always remind me of young Marie Bell, and so after nearly two decades of barely ever thinking about her, I think about her everyday. I wonder if she ever thinks of me, or even remembers that night I carved that heart around our initials.”

And so for first-time director Aaron Wilson, who debuted his film Canopy at the festival, it must have been a validating and exciting experience. The movie has a very simple premise. An Australian pilot gets shot down while battling the Japanese over Singapore and improbably bonds with a Chinese soldier similarly trying to elude capture.

The central characters of this film—which is almost devoid of dialogue—aren’t really the actors playing the roles, but the jungle in which the story unfolds and the hyper-accented soundscape that surrounds them. Wilson is trying to do something different here, but in so doing Canopy comes across as more of a concept of a film than a film itself, an interesting idea in theory, but in practice maybe not so much.

It’s impossible to see this movie and not think of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red line.

I don’t think that there’s a film on the planet that compares well to it, and Canopy is no exception. Although Canopy is beautiful to look at, it never establishes an emotional grip on the audience, relying too heavily on the mechanisms of filmmaking rather than the film itself. For instance, after a spell, the wordlessness of the movie becomes burdensome, a cinematic imposition rather than an organic necessity of circumstance and disparate languages. Clearly, the director wants us keenly focused on the canopy of sound covering the silent action, but he points us so intentionally in this direction it’s as if we’re following a neon-signs-lit detour route.  The acoustics swiftly become a clumsy, almost naive contrivance that is master rather than servant to the film, pulling us away rather than in.

Perhaps if the actors were more expressive or physically compelling, the director’s reach wouldn’t have so exceeded his grasp. As it is, in spite of its lyrical flourishes and allusive passages, the movie has a constructed, almost humid weight. As we move from one poetic war trope to the next, as if in some theme park yet to be invented, Canopy does little more than ask you to like it.

When it ended, the near-full house applauded, as if in encouragement, it seemed, rather than appreciation. The director and his key people took the floor, ready for a Q & A, and the last amongst them to do so was the lead actor, Khan Chittenden. As is often the case, he was smaller and more vulnerable than you would have expected after having just seen him up there on the giant screen, and as he youthfully bounded down from his seat, he threw up an arm to the crowd, he too hoping for more than what was received.

I’m walking along the Serengeti like any normal day and suddenly my spots begin to fall off. I’m freaked-out, of course, and I try to roll around on the ground to get them back on me but it just makes it worse and they continue to fall off, but at a faster rate now. I start to run away, but as I’m doing this I realize that my spots have become a trail that will lead my enemies to me.

Lobster

I am just walking along and then I find myself in some sort of trap. It’s like everything is in slow motion and I can’t get back out the way that I came in. I’m in a real panic and then very slowly the trap, with me in it, begins to rise up through the water and I just know that something horrible is going to happen, and that’s when I wake up.

Woodpecker

It’s always the same tree. I’m pecking away, trying to find some grubs or ants to eat and then I break through a barrier and I’m looking into a big room that’s in the middle of the tree where my mother is having sex with my uncle.  My beak is stuck in the tree and I can’t look away. It’s horrible.

Butterfly

I am flying along and then something happens and I’m only able to fly in a straight line. I’m doing everything I can, but still, just a straight line. I feel so out of control, so lost.

Kangaroo

I’m looking in my pouch for my Joey and I can’t find him. I’m frantic and just keep digging deeper and deeper, but all I keep pulling out are tufts of hair and then I’m completely bald and I know, I just know that the Dingo got my baby and that it was my fault.

Squirrel

I’m getting ready to hibernate for the winter and I’m collecting as many nuts as I possibly can. I can’t stop eating them and I’m just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then I start to float up into the sky and I feel like I’m going to drift away into the vast universe and never be seen again.

Seahorse

I’m floating around and everything is very calm. I don’t feel threatened at all and in a flash there are Sea Monkeys everywhere. The chattering is horrible and there’s nothing I can do to get away, and then they all pile on my back, whistling and teasing, and I try to buck them off but I can’t.

Penguin

I am on an ice floe alone in the middle of the ocean and the water keeps getting warmer.

Another woman, less shy, seemed encouraged that somebody had actually spoken and started a conversation with me about geography. The man she was taking her daughter to visit was a big football fan and loved Brazil’s national squad. “I’d love to go to Brazil,” she said to me.

Her daughter was probably about 16 or 17, had a dollar sign tattooed at the base of her right thumb and having squeezed herself into an outfit that wasn’t much larger than a sock cut off at each end, was dressed to please. Ever since 9/11 she’s been scared to fly, but if she could drive anywhere in the world she told me she’d visit either Australia or Newfoundland. As she was telling me this two very tough looking men in their early 60s approached the building. They looked like they knew trouble and what to do with it– like they were born angry. One guy, covered in tattoos and with a powerful, wide upper body, pulled his shirt on as he entered the room, as if a statement of violent intent. The other man was in a sleeveless, white undershirt, his ashen hair greased back. They sat there like furious, black clouds.

The girl who was scared to travel passed slowly in front of them and then back again, at which point her mother grabbed her by the arm, hissing, “ Jesus Kat, you really gave those two an eyeful, didn’t ya?”

Walking into the prison visiting area is a little bit like passing through security at the airport. You empty your pockets and then walk through a metal detector while largely disinterested officers idle by. Once inside there are two U-shaped seating areas with the red-suited prisoners on one side of the protective glass paneling and the visitors on the other.

A woman who was wearing a hijab began to weep after speaking with her son. She was emotional and talking with her hands, her husband trying hard to steady her from beneath a heavy, masculine mustache. A young man blew streams of kisses at his infant daughter. The child’s mother, waving the little girl’s hand at her imprisoned father, was backing out of the room, stealing as many moments as she could.  Nearby a prisoner sat waiting for his visitor. The man had vulnerable, heavy eyes. He was just sitting there in front of the phone, his mind God knows where, and the pull toward his loneliness was so vivid and intense that I had to stop myself from just picking up the phone and starting a conversation.

On my way out of the building I passed through a cluster of people smoking. One woman said, “I thought for sure that my other boy would be here, too, but at 24 he still hasn’t been incarcerated, praise be.” And then she added, “But he’s still just 24, so I gotta keep my prayer on!”