I was meeting with Ruby and her teacher yesterday and so I gave you the house keys and you went home alone and let yourself in. Sometimes, during the lunch hour at school, you and your friends walk to Pizza Hut before racing back to beat the bell. This is all occurring so nonchalantly now, even though only a minute ago this kind of activity seemed unfathomable to me. You’re a boy now—no longer a little boy, you’re a boy boy—silly, and playful, and thoughtful, and kind. We banter now. But we still get our cuddles in. The other night I stroked your forehead and lay beside you in bed awhile. When you were sick with the flu last weekend, I wrapped you in a blanket and held you in my arms until we both fell asleep on the couch. You snored. I might have, too.

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And it’s that time of year again—time to select the best of the best and the worst of the worst books, films, and documentaries that I reviewed in 2019. As usual, I will begin with the books, turn to the movies, and conclude with the documentaries before providing the comprehensive of list of what I read and watched.

The Books

This year was a record setting year of reading for me—I finished a total of 119 books! As usual, good ol’ story books dominated (34 fiction books read—and I tried to prioritize reading a lot of African lit this year), but poetry moved well up the list (15 books read), and graphic novels still hung around (only 4 read… but they were all solid… I would read more but the price versus the amount of time it takes me to read them is hard to justify… goals for 2020: use the library more). I read less Science & Nature books than I intended (only 10) and my number of Indigenous studies books also dropped (down to 7). Readings related to the psy disciplines, as well as more therapeutic stuff in general popped up out of the blue (sitting at 11), and I really engaged in some sustained readings pertaining to sex and gender (13 books) as well as dabbling further in some matters related to race (5) and fascism (also 5). Picked up some more “religious” type books for the first time in years (3), and also knocked of some stuff related to gentrification and urban studies (2). Social theory and philosophy was lower than some other years (10) but I read a good mix of some classics that I have neglected as well as some fun new things. All in all, I’m quite happy with this although I plan to step back from all media (including books!) at the beginning of 2020 to spend some time thinking about where I go from here, and doing a bit more writing. January 2020 will likely be the first month I don’t read a book since, um, 1987??

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Discussed in this post: 13 Books (Conquest; Theology of Money; The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry, and Medicine; Women in Dark Times; Black Flags and Windmills; A Secure Base; Invitation to Responsibility; This is Your Brain on Parasites; the heart is deceitful above all things; Veniss Underground; Return to My Native Land; Anya’s Ghost; and When I Arrived at the Castle); 2 Movies (Force Majeure and Silent Souls); 3 Documentaries (Aquarela; We Breath Again; and Hail Satan?).

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I remember driving home from our grandparents’ house in the early dark of Winter evening, passing over gravel hills, frozen fields to the left and right of us, I didn’t know that this should all have been a forest. My younger brother and I in the middle seat, counting all the houses shining in the night with Christmas lights. Red, yellow, green, and white. Haloes of colour, signals of warmth, in a void that was dark and c-c-c-c-cold enough to freeze any Indigenous teen grabbed by the cops and ditched outside of town without shoes or coats or hats or mitts or scarves or snow-pants and all the other things we bundled on then, when we were children, and I tried to fall asleep, hoping that my mom or dad would carry me still half-sleeping (or more than that) from the van into our house when we got home.

Neil Stonechild was only seventeen when he froze to death northwest of Saskatoon one Winter night when the temperatures had dropped to -30 or so (Celsius—that’s -22 Fahrenheit). Bashed in nose, cuff marks on his wrists, and one shoe missing altogether (the Saskatoon Police, who dropped him there, did an investigation into his death and concluded there was no foul play). That night, the sky was clear and full of stars, although, given their distance from us, no matter how fast light travels and how long stars live, a lot of them are already dead. Their deaths just haven’t caught up with us yet. Dead stars shining down on a dead boy whose life, however brief, was also composed from stardust and whose death, I sometimes think, has also not caught up with us yet. November 25^th, 1990. I was ten years old. I may have been looking at the same stars on a sleepy car ride home.

And Winters come and go, just like the rest of us, and these days I don’t count houses with Christmas lights, I just try not to count those whom I love and who loved me, too, who died around this time. I could never bring myself to count the dead—those I know who died in shelters, or on the steps of shelters that kicked them out; those who died in public washrooms hoping to please, God, for just a few minutes, feel okay; those who died when the hospital disconnected them from heart-and-lung machines after fruitlessly searching for family or next of him; those who bled out on the sidewalks of cities (that also should have been forests); those who jumped in front of trains; those who were seeking a little warmth, a little safety, a little privacy behind a garbage dumpster; those who died of blood infections after being kicked out of hospital; those who just couldn’t take one more punch to the head; those who only needed a door handle and a belt to hang themselves; those who simply disappeared, vanished, were gone, erased, voided, missing. I could never number them. They are too important to me. They won’t allow that. And I don’t want it, either.

And the biggest lie about Christmas is that there’s a god who will come and save us. And the sickest joke about Christmas is that all these rich Christians pretend like they’re longing for salvation but, really, they know that god has ever only been on their side as they look on children never stolen from them, in homes never invaded by the Children’s Aid Society, social workers, cops, bed bugs, drunken violent neighbours who push their way in, or slumlords who like to sniff around, and they pretend they are longing for god to come but, really, they’re thinking, “not this year—this year I think I want an iPhone 11, that bathroom renovation I’ve been putting off, and maybe a trip to Bhutan.” Because they sing, “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” but they’re faking it—wallowing in a passion play that involves them pretending to feel lost so that they can pretend to feel saved—because already they have all they need (including the judges, security guards, politicians, bankers, and whatever number of pussies they want to grab).

And me? I bought my children seeds to celebrate the start of the holidays. In the Spring, they will each be able to grow a flower garden. Until then, when we’re out driving in the dark, I see the way the houses with lights—all red and yellow and green and white—reflect in their eyes, and I see the special excitement that flushes across their quiet features as they nestle down in their seats and Ruby pretends to fall asleep so that I will carry her inside.

Discussed in this post: 13 Books (Occult Features of Anarchism; Lacan and the Political; Jesus and the Politics of Mammon; Whipping Girl; Virtuous Violence; Wolf in White Van; The Earthsea Trilogy; Hustling Verse; Bright Dead Things; Ghost Of; and Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers); 2 Movies (Suspiria; and The Banishment); and 3 Documentaries (Quiet Killing; Qallunaat!; and nîpawistamâsowin).

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I was talking with some Christians the other day and somehow the topic of sex came up and they mentioned how happy they were that they “saved themselves” for marriage and they told nostalgic, humorous, and affectionate stories about their “first time.”

And it made me remember other conversations about this topic.

And it made me think about how the way I feel when this topic comes up is so different now that I remember more about what my dad did with me when I was very, very young. Because if I choose to join in to such conversations, I will talk about the first time I chose to have sex as a young adult—not all the times when it was forced upon me as a child. Before I even knew what it was. Because ain’t nobody wants to hear about that.

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Discussed in this post: 7 Books (On Becoming a Person; Promises, Promises; Boredom; Endland; The Carrying; Don’t Call Us Dead; and The Whitsun Weddings); 6 Movies (Capernaum; Joker; Morvern Callar; Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark; Kubo and the Two Strings; and Anna and the Apocalypse); and 2 Documentaries (Learning to See; and Drokpa).

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I fell in love with sorrow at a young age. I have been trying to understand why. Maybe it’s because my mom was always so sad—mostly in a hidden way, but it was there, moving beneath the surface of her skin, at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and there were a few times when I went looking for her and found her sprawled and cruciform on the floor, crying, pleading for help from a god who never came to save her—or maybe it’s because that’s how I taught myself to love myself. Because I was also always so sad. Or maybe, again, it’s because boys are taught that being men involves saving women and my fantasies were full of women (girls at that time) who suffered so that I could save them.

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[What follows is a paper I presented at “Learning to Listen: Listening to Learn” a community event about further understanding Settler Colonialism in Canadian-occupied territories. Much love and respect to the other presenters, Vanessa Gray and Jordan Williams White Eyes. It was an honour to learn from them.]

A Crash Course on Settler Colonialism in Canadian-Occupied Territories:
in which a 152 year long, all-encompassing, ubiquitous, and ruthlessly brutal war of extermination is summarized in a few hours

Introduction

Boozhoo. Dan Oudshoorn nidizhinikaaz.  Zhaaganash endaaw (Dutch, Scottish, and British).  Deshkan Ziibiing ndoonji. London ndinda. Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Wendat, Attawandiron Aki.  Mizhiike Minisi.

Hello, my name is Dan Oudshoorn. I’m a White person of Dutch, Scottish, and British descent. I was raised by the Antlered River and London is where I live. I live there because my people—the Canadians—have stolen this land from the Anishinaabe, who also share this territory with the Haudenosaunee and Lenape, while recognizing that the Wendat, and the Attawandiron continue to be a part of this land in ways not immediately obvious to those of us who operate within Eurocentric systems of power and knowledge.

As land thieves, Canadians occupy land that is not theirs to claim on Great Turtle Island. As a Canadian, I participate in this illegal, brutal and, as we will see today, genocidal occupation. In this context, the Indigenous statement that “existence is resistance” is fully appropriate. In a settler colonial state premised upon the erasure and extermination of sovereign Indigenous peoples as sovereign Indigenous peoples, those who continue to exist as such are literally the living embodiment of resistance. However, if we agree that “existence is resistance” for Indigenous people, we need to ask ourselves: what is existence for those of us who are Canadians? The answer to that question should be clear by the end of this morning.

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