Brennan's Old Blog

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world. -Jack Layton

 

The Land of Ghost and Glory

CW: NSFW Themes In the discourse on identity and sexual orientation, a fascinating interplay emerges when one positions Indigenous philosophies side by side with Queer theory — Little Bear’s description of Aboriginal philosophy and paradigms offers a profoundly inclusive worldview, characterised by...

REVIEW: I’m Just Waiting for Something to Happen

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was a remarkable and charismatic bird, once inhabiting the southeastern United States, particularly in bottomland hardwood forests and swamps. It was a beautiful black beast — with white wing patches, and a vivid red crest. Due to logging, land...

Analysis: Hatching From Trauma

CW: Child abuse, Canadian Residential Schools, Racism Some truths are too brutal for prose and require a different language. One of metaphor and nightmare, where a black lizard can crawl into a child’s mouth and lay eggs. Gregory Scofield’s “Cycle...

Walking the Red Road

The sun breaches the horizon on a spring Manitoban morning in 1996, in Winnipeg, the Heart of the Continent, where my journey begins, painted on a canvas of contradiction. Winnipeg — a Cree word meaning “murky water” according to Artibise — resides near the...