Reserved and rational. Stiff upper lip. Lover of classic cars, monarchies, and cheap gin with a twist of dry wit.

His wife, mind you, was a chain-smoking, ball-crushing Python sketch. I don’t know what happened back in Wimbledon, but her three sons (my dad + two uncles) sure did learn to cower at the altar of ‘strong women’.

She died before I turned ten, but her cutting disregard lingered:

‘Well, he’s adopted…so he’s not a real Burgess.’

She’d said it during our first visit west after the move from Nova Scotia.

I was just seven. Still shell-shocked from the car accident, the ‘ghost sister’, and the sudden farewells to childhood friends and quiet country living. ‘Granny’s’ raspy words pinned me to the rusty shag like a rare bug on felt. A curiosity on the best of days. But one easily sold. Or forgotten.

I remember retreating from their dining room to the lounge. It was my sanctuary on those Sunday visits, seated at that black baby grand. It waited there for me, lid half-open, plumes of Rothman’s smoke curling through the rays that bathed its keys.

Head down, I’d plink-plunk out melodies from cartoons and cereal jingles. Little spells cast with unsure fingers. The notes drifted back through the house, but the adults didn’t complain. Grandpa Stan indulged me a few times with old standards or 60’s Brit pop, and I’d watch his fingers dance in a way that his forced smile never did.

The tipsy lord with the steady hands. The lonely dad who rarely saw his sons. The SPAR engineer, who helped build machines that would someday touch the stars.

I watched and marvelled. Sang along. Applauded, even.

One of those times, he must’ve thought about giving it to me.

Because some years later, through his will, he did.

The movers left just before dusk, and for a long time after the house kept trembling.

A baby-grand piano will do that to a living room. It warps the light, shakes the air, and bends time ‘til your little world becomes tuned with something unseen.

When the men rolled it through the front door and hoisted it up the stairs, the house groaned like an old hull taking on water. By the time they left, the piano seemed alive. Its lacquered skin and shiny keys and curved body beckoned. Whiffs of polish and piano wire and ozone kissed the air.

The summer of ‘84 was a thing.

While the rest of Sutton, ON was deep into secret bush parties or Jackson’s Point thong parades or ‘beers and burnouts’ in the IGA parking lot..?

I was hunched over the beast.

Simple stuff at first. Tunes I knew. Like the love song from Superman. The Greatest American Hero theme. The loop from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Anything that rang of worlds better that this one.

The piano sat by a huge bay window in our modest Burke St. living room. At night, it reflected my own shape back at me - a lanky kid, haloed in the pale glow of the radio dial, playing to a suburban darkness thick with mosquitoes and dreams of escape.

Sometimes I imagined the chords drifting out the window, across fenced yards and over fields of weeds and wildflowers, carrying this weird kid’s pleas to something weirder beyond the veil.

‘Wow…a little dude down there sure is trying.’

That night in July was still and thick and hot enough to taste.

I was mid-phrase, copying a song from the radio, when the house…died.

No warning. No flicker. The power was gone. The buzz of the fridge, whirr of the fan, even the crickets — it all just stopped.

And then the driveway bloomed.

At first I thought it was my dad’s headlights, late after a thankless day of white trash real estate. But the colour…it was wrong.

The light grew, filling the bay window, spilling across the piano lid and drenching the walls. Metallic, liquid, and alive. The air crackled. Hair stiffened like wheat on my arms and neck. Breath fled my lungs. There was a low hum, and the world smelled of salt and electricity.

Down the hall from my parents’ room, I heard my mother shout, “Brooke! What are you doing? What’s happening with the lights?”

I couldn’t answer. I was already standing.

Through the glass I saw a spotlight sweeping across our driveway. The asphalt had turned blue, bathed in a glow cast from somewhere…above.

The hum grew until it filled my chest. I pressed up against the window, and felt the light on my face and the hum through the glass. Everything inside me went still.

This, I thought.

I want THIS.

My mother’s scream broke whatever trance I was in. I bolted for the door.

A single step, and the world outside turned to tar.

I was slow, and dark, and heavy in the face of blinding force from above. I took a sharp breath, and tasted burning metal.

The circle of light narrowed on the driveway as my mother opened the door. She joined me, trembling and slack-jawed. She pawed at my shoulder, stammering as she begged me to come inside.

But I pushed her hand away, took a step towards the light, and looked up. And for a life-changing moment, I swore that it spoke to me.

A whisper in that spinning disk of blackness that eclipsed the summer stars.

A message, born in swirling rings of azure and crimson.

An invitation, calling out from a burning and otherworldly heart:

HOME.

I heard my mother scream then. In terror and in helplessness. And that’s when the hum rose to an frightening pitch. That’s when the thing began to spin, faster and faster, brighter and brighter, until a white-hot ring carved at the night itself…

…and then shot straight up into space.

Smaller than a star, until it was nothing at all.

Gone.

The silence afterward was wrong. No neighbours came out to see it, no dogs barked, no cars sped down our street to witness.

My mother stood frozen on the stairs, one hand on the wall.

“Oh my god…” I gasped. “Did you see it, Mom? Did you SEE?!”

She just shook her head, and refused to speak of it. Even if, for weeks after, I knew that she scoured all the newspapers and radio reports. I think she even called the cops and sent a letter to the Air Force. But for me…only silence.

Yet, through the years that followed, my thoughts on the matter were anything but quiet. I went merrily down the UFO rabbit-hole. Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, late-night reruns of In Search Of, dusty paperbacks on Roswell and Majestic 12 and the notorious ‘men in black’.

Then came the Internet. Abductee message boards. Chilling accounts. Grainy stills.

Folks called me obsessed. Said Fox Mulder was my spirit animal.

I brushed it all all. Joked that I was…homesick.

Because somewhere, deep down, I believed that craft was some kind of kin.

That maybe, just maybe, the boy who wasn’t ‘a real Burgess’ was part of some greater family…

And they finally got a chance to check in on me.

Decades later, visiting my parents in Halifax, I was compelled to ask again:

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to make sense of the impossible—through prayer, and art, and every attempt to fuse science and spirit until they sing the same in some kind of harmony. But nothing quite fits. And few believe (or dare to humour) me.

But that very real encounter rearranged my mind’s furniture. I was no longer just a smart kid with an active imagination. I had become a living lightning rod for wonder and weirdness.

Both were dangerous. Both were necessary. And both showed me that denial, avoidance, and gas-lighting? Well, these are their own special forms of violence.

So now, when my son comes to me with his eyes wide and mind open? When he asks me to bear witness to things so staggeringly impossible, they make my little brushes with strangeness feel quaint by comparison..?

I look him in the eye.

I shut out the world and listen.

I pull him close.

And I never tell him it was ‘nothing’.

Because I can still feel the hum on my skin.

And see the portal on the pavement.

I remember when the gods first spoke to me…

With a fire in the sky.

So, I will keep my heart open like a window for him.

To a home rich with mystery and madness and the music of the spheres.

If I can do only that—hold my boy’s hand tight, as the shadows gather at our walls—then maybe I will become what I was always meant to be:

Not the boy taken ‘home’ in flash of light…

But the father who stays to shine one.

If you’d like to hear the original audio story this was based on then grab some headphones, turn out the lights, and breathe…

It wasn’t a brawl or anything. Just your typical passive aggressive ambush. Inside jokes. Sideways glances. Talking in circles. Until one of the guys finally said it:

‘Sorry Brooke, but you’re just…too much. We need a break.’

I remember the mirrored ceiling, and the painted parrots on the walls.

I remember the 90s pop, and the waitresses in white dress shirts and black leggings.

I remember the fat wedge of focaccia, served with a plate of balsamic and olive oil.

So a year later…I put it all onstage.

DRINKS

It was summer of 1996. I was in my mid-twenties, heart freshly wrecked, still convinced that tragedy was just comedy without good lighting.

I wrote, produced, and starred in a ‘pitch black comedy’ that I mounted at the Vancouver Fringe Festival called ‘Evil at Earls’. It had a minimalist set with a waiting area, a large dinner table, a men’s urinal. Oh, and a giant paper maché parrot hanging above the scene — the real Earls’ mascot.

It started more as a joke. A revenge sketch. But like most of my humour in the 90s, it was more akin to an assault.

Three friends. One restaurant. The same actress playing hostess, waitress, and manager (because all Earls staff - IE: Vancouver girls - looked the same!).

From the opening scene, the audience thought they were watching a Gen-X Seinfeld fever dream:

The three ‘friends’ sit on a bench, waiting for the hostess to find them a table. They proceed to bitch about the joint, but it’s all performative. Tension is brewing.

BOB (acid-tongued): This place is a mirrored-ceilinged, parrot-covered, cable TV void... where the combined depth of all who enter could barely fill a specimen jar.

DOC (sarcastic): So…you’re saying it’s provincial, with a hint of olive?

MATT (flustered): Then why the hell did we come here?

BOB (deadpan): It’s better than fucking Denny’s.

The laughs came quick from the local crowd—more recognition laughs vs belly guffaws. We all knew guys like these. Smug, wounded, and always trying too hard.

I was one of them.

---

APPIES

20 minutes in, with the trio at the table and the machine-gun jokes about weed and anime and yoga chicks wearing thin as they wait for their order, the Hostess returns with an unexpected addition to the mix…

A man in a black turtleneck and blazer. Early thirties. Expensive cologne. The kind of guy whose smile feels weaponised.

HOSTESS (swooning): Here’s your table, Mr. Lann. I hope everything is to your liking tonight.

LANN (suggestive): It could be. This is a fine restaurant, made finer only by the warmth and helpfulness I received upon entering. Thank you, Holly.

DOC (repulsed): Bleaaaah.

Matt (muttering): Holly the Hostess…Wendy the Waitress…if there’s a Donna the dishwasher I’m gonna scream.

HOSTESS: I’ll have Wendy bring over an extra ashtray with your… what did you want to drink tonight, Mr. Lann?

LANN (superior): The blood of kings, the nectar of queens… but tonight I’ll settle for a glass of red — something with a hint of chocolate and a strong finish. And could you please warm the glass before pouring? I came to arouse my senses…not challenge them.

By the time he turns and says “Hello” to the table, we already know who he is.

This is no man. He’s a dark power archetype. A pitch-black mirror.

It’s the kind of character every insecure genius summons on his path to self-understanding — the epitome of smooth, articulate, and gleeful venom:

LANN (direct): I’m James Lann. I’m a friend of Bob’s. Where’s Bob?

DOC (weirded out): Ummm…nature called.

LANN (amused) Did she? Oh yes…I see what you mean. Aren’t you clever. I guess you couldn’t just say ‘men’s room’, could you….because you’d have to be men to say it. So…this way, then?

(He grins hungrily, following the sound of 90s pop toward the restroom.)

This sets up the first real chills of the play, as the audience starts to suspect they aren’t just watching a Kevin Smith flick in a chain restaurant anymore.

The laughs still came. But now it was uncomfortable laughter. The best kind.

As the scene darkened, things felt downright infernal with the AM pop melting into an ominous drone. I remember the restaurant background audio echoing around my own voice in the cavernous stage of the Firehall Arts Centre.

By this point of the show I’m running on caffeine, spite, and fear.

I had no idea the level of catharsis I was about to experience.

---

MAIN COURSE

It all built to the big monologue - the heart of the play - my first real exorcism.

I called it the ‘one bad day’ speech. It took place in the Earls men’s room. I was so scared of it that I only performed the speech twice across three months of rehearsal.

I had never felt so naked.

BOB: I just turned sixteen. Some guys from school sent a girl to my house. Rosie K. Everyone…knew her.

We played pool for about an hour, until she just climbs on the table and pulls her pants down.

‘Are you gonna be a MAN, or what..?’ she said.

Ten minutes later she’s gone…and my only memento for a popped cherry is a stain on the green felt I told my parents was spilt milk.

(Bob forces a laugh. Laan doesn’t. The lights slowly turn RED)

Six weeks pass, and she’s hitting me up for abortion money. So I empty my savings. Ask to come with her. But she insists to go alone. Then I hear a week later that she was on a spending spree at the mall…with the guys who sent her.

I go to confront her by the old train trestle near the school. But it was an ambush. Because Rosie isn’t alone. I see the guys who set me up and their friends. There were fists. Stones. Dog shit. I was lucky a train whistle made them scatter.

I dragged myself across town all torn up and bloody to my house. Snuck upstairs and hid in the shower and then just…cried. When I finally got out and looked in the mirror? I hated what I saw. I prayed to God…I begged…but nothing changed. And then I felt it…deep in my guts…this pit opened up…and a white-hot lump of filth rose up from it. Calling to me.

That’s when I sold my soul. And the worst part..?

I think it worked.

When I first performed it, the theatre went pin-drop silent. The snorts and laughs and squirms from earlier got strangled. Even the techie didn’t breathe most nights.

Because I wasn’t acting anymore — I was exposing myself.

---

The Check

By the final scene, Lann had gone full Asmodeus. The smooth, seductive ‘investor’ promising the young fool power through pain.

LANN (selling): Arrogance, sin — evil, if you will — it’s all just a matter of perspective. One man’s Hell is another man’s dream vacation!

BOB (shocked): That’s like saying murder is population control.

LANN (insisting): If the outcome serves the greater good... then YES. You don’t need smallness in your life anymore, Bob. It’s time to show them. All of them.

And Bob…me…took the bait.

In character, I finally get to blow:

BOB (to Matt and Doc - vicious): You’ve had enough of ME?! I’ve spent my entire life in a perpetual state of enough — surrounded by apathetic and limited people reminding me almost daily that I’m too smart, too pessimistic, and too intense!

And you, Mr. this-friendship-is-too-much-work, and your sidekick Senior Let’s-just-talk-about-this-later — you lead the fucking pack!

If you had a problem with me, you should have rented some balls and said something sooner. Instead you waffled and you toadied and you patronised.

Well kids, you’re free to go! I will no longer suffer fools gladly…and fair-weather fools NEVER!!!.

He’s not just yelling at Doc and Matt anymore; he’s railing against a life of perceived cruelty and abandonment, and prosecuting everyone who ever left him begging for approval. I felt the room flinch as the audience realizes they might be on trial too.

But don’t assume I got off easy. Hell, reading it now..?

I pulled zero punches.

DOC (explosive): You want to be a martyr? Tie yourself to some wood and nail spikes through your limbs. You want to be a real friend? Get some counselling, a shot of Thorazine, and a subscription to Self-Esteem Monthly, because brother — you are on a one-way street to a town called Sociopath!”

That line always killed…until I did.

Because that’s when Matt and Doc leave the restaurant.

That’s when the scene darkens, and a cold white spot narrows on the table.

That’s when the waitress returns…with the wrong order.

Plates clattered. Lights flickered. The music swelled.

And then I stabbed the waitress to death.

The show ends with the chilling choral peak of Cherubini’s Requiem in C-Minor as Laan rubs a chunk of bread on my bloodstained face and makes me eat it:

Each night, there was at least one friend or audience member who swore I was possessed. I can’t say they were wrong.

Because that’s when I understood what the play really was for me. It wasn’t just clever satire or art therapy. It was an invocation.

I had conjured a way to drag a demon from my youth into the harsh light of day, name it for all to see, and (hopefully) keep myself from hurting anyone else in the process.

---

Apperitifs

As a Pick of the Fringe that year, the response was kinda great. Reviews in the local rags said things like ‘raw’, 'triumphant’, and ‘fearless’.

But it wasn’t all roses. There were calls of ‘self-indulgence’, and even ‘misogyny’.

Some folks left before the bows. One dude screamed in terror when I said ‘hey’ in the parking lot (this is why you don’t watch live theatre on acid, kids).

Truth is, I respected the naysayers. Because I’ve always been…a lot.

And I was angry at women. At my ex. At the monologue girl. At carbon copy Vancouver girls. At my mom, I’m sure. It swirled thick through the dialogue like balsamic on a plate of cheap olive oil. I just didn’t have the tools yet to separate the confession from my seething rage at, well, everything.

But I learned something important in the doing - that darkness, when spoken aloud, loses some of its hold over you. That the act of creation can help leash the beast, and put the responsibility for the pain you feel back where it belongs—in your hands.

Because every night, when I took that final bow, and soaked in the applause while drenched in sweat and shame and stage blood..?

I felt a little freer.

I hadn’t completely vanquished my demons, no.

But I’d made them work for me.

---

AFTERTASTE

Evil at Earls planted seeds for much that followed: from Broken Saints, to my confessional podcast Buddha and the S**t, to this very Substack. It taught me that performance could be penance, and that humour could open a trapdoor for truth.

I didn’t know it then, but the show was my first RITUAL; I was casting a spell, born of equal parts comedy, confession, and curse-breaking magic.

An old writing teacher once told me that every creative person starts by trying to fix something that’s broken inside them. For me, that first fix was a stage, a spotlight…and a dinner from hell.

The stage was medicinal.

The spotlight electrifying.

And the feeling after ‘dinner’?

Transformational.

We hit that bump hard. He bounced off my lap, and jerked sideways for one panicked moment. Of course I caught him - that was never in doubt - but his little face changed instantly from glee to anguish.

“No Daddy, no! No Bumpy! No more BUMPY!”

I stopped the bike on the lane’s edge and pulled him close. Explained in words he could grasp (which, for a toddler, were considerable):

‘Sometimes the things we think we want aren’t actually good for us. Sometimes…they hurt.’

That moment stuck with me. And a few years later, it became an integral part of a very special creation:

It became BUMPY, one of 20 original songs on the DADBOD double-album — a music-and-video ode to fatherhood that was unabashedly inspired by my son, and cobbled together remotely with talents from around the globe whilst stuck on that sleepy Thai isle when the world was in full lockdown.

Musically, it’s a slice of jazzy old-school hip hop. I produced it myself, with my dear friend Chrystal Leigh vamping soulfully to set the tone. This vibe was intentional: half-spoken-word, half-cautionary tale. Something that could carry a little philosophical weight but still get fingers snapping and heads bobbing..

And lyrically? It’s pretty much a confessional. It’s a track that traces my whole arc — from foster homes to Hollywood, from swagger and success to dashed dreams — before circling back to the wisdom within: “Oh my child, I know that it ain’t easy…but I am on the road with you…and I believe we’ll make it through.”

Right at the top, I laid it all out there:

“From the first day, took it on the hard way

Slippin’ all the shadows of the Karma that I gotta pay

Meth-mom chronicles, didn't really miss her

‘til five foster homes and a throwaway sister.

Smacked by a Chevy on the eve o’ turning seven,

Astrologically they said I was supposed to go to Heaven…

I declined."

That’s pretty much my childhood biography in one verse. Five foster homes before my parents adopted me. A foster sister for four years who disappeared overnight in a long grey sedan. A teen birth mother who lost me to addiction…and then lost her life to violent crime. And finally, the car accident that nearly snuffed my torch at the tender age of 7 on a lonely stretch of Nova Scotia highway.

That’s the black in The House of Black and White, folks. The 'origin wound' unearthed, and held up to the cold light of adulthood in 4/4 time.

I think I started BUMPY this way because I wanted my boy (at some point in the near future) to know where his dad came from…and to understand that the 'bumps' weren’t just metaphors. Life’s hardships were real and they hurt like hell - but they also played a huge part in defining the man who raised him.

---

After re-exposing the wound…we explore the cycle.

I drop bars that tumble through all the vain pursuits I once thought would save me, but only left me feeling aimless and hollow.

From the relationship-obsessed ‘player years’:

'I've been there son

Busy bee makin' honey

Used to pollinate the flowers

Then I gave 'em all my money'

To the dreams of fame and glory:

“Made a show about holography and spiritual biology

Certified approval, Tom Cruise Scientology.”

To a shot at a million bucks on the pinnacle of reality TV:

“PTSD but now I'm doin' super-fine…

and you can ask Jeff Probst about Season 39.”

I tried to keep it all playful amidst the tragicomedy. A nod to the years spent trying to get Broken Saints adapted as a limited series. A not-so-subtle dig at being cast and then unceremoniously yanked from a season of Survivor. A sonic shrug at what felt like my cursed existence until that point:

“There were honestly so many days that I surrendered

to the notion I'm a failure to the planet and my gender.

I'm alive and at your service outta habit

cuz I dropped the brass ring

more times than I could grab it.”

These were all very real bumps on the road.

Things I thought I wanted…but turned out to be straight-up detrimental.

This is why the lyric format worked so well — rap lets you be brash and self-mocking, even as you confess. It gave me space to laugh at myself and tell the truth.

This included some fumbling around with Buddhist teachings, which was a flag I waved like a zealot in my 40s. Check out these chestnuts:

You think I’m outta my mind?

I am cut from other cloth — it’s the Boddhisattva kind

Understanding...even when I’m so demanding,

’cause this life is full of suffering

no matter what you’re planning

There’s even a nod in BUMPY to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Of course there is.

Raimi demanded to watch it at the tender age of 3...and then again, and again, and again. He’s seen it five times now. And from the beginning, he'd pepper me with (surprisingly) profound questions about the nature good, and evil, and spirituality, and even human suffering. How could I not love this kid?!

I folded it into the song. Because for me, Avatar was one of those shows that whispered the same lesson I tried to teach him on that scooter: that life ain't 'easy'...and our desires will all too often lead us astray.

You will stumble, no matter how strong you think you are and what gifts you're blessed with out of the gate. But what matters at the end of your day (and life) is your ability to find balance on the journey…while helping others to find their way.

The goal with each of these ‘House of Black and White’ essays is to unpack and examine the spirals creative DNA: the wounds, shadows, choices, and transformations.

And BUMPY feels like that spiral in miniature.

- The wound (abandonment, suffering, loss).
- The cycle (chasing illusions and validation).
- The attempt at transmutation (spirituality, reflection).
- The ‘generational echo’ (“we’ll make it through”).

It’s less primal than the ‘protector’ vibe of the Wolf Cub story.

Less mythic than ‘The Cat’s Maw’ one.

But it’s no less true, and no less valid. Because, through the lens of personal trauma, every creation becomes a piece of the greater puzzle. Even a patch of cracked asphalt can hold speed-bump epiphanies.

Listen…I never expected BUMPY or the other tunes to score a Grammy. It was just a bucket list creative flex with some hard-earned nuggets o’ truth. But it was also made to be a message-in-a-bottle. For my son. For me. And maybe for some others who felt shaken up by the big bumps in their own lives…

Some roads we yearn to travel down just aren’t right for us.

And even the ‘good’ ones are rarely smooth the whole way.

But if you drive with intention, and with your heart on the gas…?

Then you won’t be driving that road alone.

'The kinda love you're after lives only in poetry…or pets.'

I'm a 'cat guy' though. You could say I was building up immunity to indifference.

But then my boy had to go and crack me open.

On this particular day, a pack of rowdy teens had claimed the pavement. They were smacking a volleyball hard against the playground walls, swearing loudly, and flexing like they owned the place.

I could see my son flinching with every hit that strayed towards us. After four or five close calls, I caught the ball on a rebound and carried it straight to the 'alpha'. My words were calm but firm, though I'm sure my eyes may have held some measure of menace:

"Knock it off…and watch your language around the little ones."

The kid smirked as I dropped the ball in his hands. He was lean and athletic, with swagger and sneers aplenty. 'Whatever man,' he muttered back. His voice echoed through the yard, sharp with disrespect like bits of glass spilled around my feet.

My son could feel it. He feels a lot of things…but more on that another day. In this moment, I felt his tiny hand tighten around mine.

He was just six years old back then – a small six, especially compared to the Dutch and American kids who dominated the student body. I saw his eyes flick to the ground, and he started to suck his lower hip inwards. I feel unsafe.

So I knelt down, scooped him up, put him on my shoulders, and trotted over to the ice cream truck that visits most days by the school’s back entrance. Just two euros for vanilla cones with whipped cream and sprinkles. Dutch medicine.

About 20 minutes later we ambled back to fetch his bike from the downstairs racks. But the big boys were still there, putting on a show with their bro-barks and roughhousing. I could almost smell their piss on the racks, marking territory.

A tiny hand tugged at my shirt. Insistent.

“We can get the bike tomorrow, Dad. I don’t feel good.”

I looked down at him as he whispered…and it split me open.

Because I knew that face all too well. The mask of uncertainty and fear. The shame of surrender. The desperate wish that someone would come to your rescue and magically make things feel right again.

I felt something overtake me. My shoulders squared and I stepped straight into the wolves' den. I told them in certain (and colourful) terms to go home.

The alpha laughed in my face. Called me 'old man'. I asked if swearing around little kids made him feel like 'big'. He called me a liar, and stabbed a finger against my chest. I felt hot, and smelled ozone. Teachers gathered nervously on either side...

Before I knew it, I was chest-to-chest with a fifteen-year-old and his idiot posse. My heart hammered. My jaw clenched. So did my fists…

I nearly lost it. Not that Dutch jail is the worst of fates. But I'm thankful the teachers pulled us apart when they did, and that my son didn't think less of me.

I later learned from the Head of Secondary that the ringleader had some major 'authority issues' IE: absent father. I almost felt bad for the kid (plus I didn't want to get banned from future pickups), so I wrote a heartfelt letter of apology to the school and the boy's parents. Ghosted. But I've seen the kid around since. A quiet nod between men can speak volumes.

Later that night, long after snuggling my son into slumber, I was sleepless. Haunted, even. Because in that moment by the bike racks, I had become the thing I longed for in childhood: someone to protect me without hesitation.

But something else was unleashed that day, if only for a moment.

A hunger…a fire…a dark and terrible force, lurking in the depths.

And I feared what could happen if it ever broke free.

And that’s when I remembered…

———
I was just ten. Southwest Ontario. Farm-and-hockey town, remember?

I felt younger and smaller than the rest. Too sensitive. Too eager with answers at school. Too quick to shed tears at cruel words. Weekdays were a blur of bullies. Weekends were comic books and cartoon reruns, alone in the basement.

My mother pushed me to attend Wolf Cubs, the step before full-blown Scouts. She wanted me out of the house and away from the TV. But I dug my heels in, refusing to join unless my father agreed to help supervise. Reluctantly, he agreed.

And from the first night…I was marked.

The Cubs meet every Tuesday evening at the public school gym to learn new skills and try to earn badges. Typical outdoorsy boy stuff. But I was just too clumsy to build things or skate right or tie a damn knot. And I was way too quick raising my hand with answers to questions from the Wolf Cub handbook.

But my biggest sin? I asked my dad for hugs and kisses when I felt nervous.

“Faaaaaaag!” The chorus followed me.

I came home in tears. A lot. My mother’s exasperation was usually punctuated by the old 'sticks and stones' chestnut. She told me to toughen up, and play to my other strengths, because I clearly wasn’t blessed in body:

'My little daughter, Brooke…”

On a cold February night in 1980, the Sutton branch of the Wolf Cubs were given a challenge: sit quietly in a circle, eyes shut tight, and count to sixty seconds in our heads. A good Cub needed to show awareness, focus, and discipline.

As I sat and prepared, I sensed that the others were keen to cheat. As their eyes closed, they all started shifting their bodies towards the big clock in the gym. But I turned the other way, and committed to doing it properly.

'One little alligator, two little alligator, three little alligator…'

At exactly sixty, I stood. The troupe leader’s eyes widened, and he patted me on the back. I was announced as the winner, and the only one who hadn’t cheated. I even got a special badge.

I felt a rush of pride. Even my father’s hardwired Britishness cracked just enough for me to see a rare sight - he was proud too.

And that’s when Robbie Waterman appeared.

He was a pale kid, wiry and sharp-featured. Ice-pick eyes and a cruel, wormy grin. A poster child for fetal alcohol syndrome.

That night, instead of doing his usual chorus of taunts and name-calling, Robbie approached me after the badge ceremony with two friends in tow. He asked me to join them outside for the break. Maybe throw some snowballs at the lamppost.

For the first time, I was being included. Of course I would follow.

It was dark out. Canadian winter dark. A single lamp above the school entrance cast a wedge of pale light across the snow and ice. Our breath became fog, and within it we became shadows.

I found a huge bank of snow, and suggested we build a fort first. I waved them over excitedly and bent down to start digging, mittened hands breaking through the frozen crust…

And that's when it hit me. A fistful of jagged ice and snow slammed square into my face. Hard. Rubbed and grinded on my skin by a cruel gloved hand…

Robbie’s glove.

I screamed and fell to the ground. The boys' laughter rang cruel in the night air. A horde of little demons, chanting a curse between snowflakes…

'FAAAAAAAAG!'

I pressed my face to the ground and sobbed. Time slowed to a crawl. The pain and laughter and torment felt like it would never, ever end...

Until it did.

The silence was sudden.

Then a gasp.

A shriek.

Choking.

I lifted my head, but my eyes blurred from ice and snow still in them. I saw…a shadow…looming like some dark beast by the school door.

The shape held Robbie by the throat against the brick wall, twitching at least a foot off the ground. His eyes were wide and frantic as he writhed there, speechless.

The giant's free hand rose up to Robbie's face and curled into a fist.

And then a voice boomed like thunder:

“Don’t…you…EVER…touch…my son…again.”

Robbie sobbed and stammered a terror-fuelled apology. My father dropped him to the ground, and the boy scurried inside with the other frightened rats.

My dad bent down and helped me to my feet. He wiped the snow from my face, and said there was hot cocoa waiting inside…unless I didn't feel up to it, and we could go home.

I went back inside with him. For one night, I wasn’t afraid.

Because I knew my dad had my back.

———

That night branded itself upon me.

It was the moment my father — a man I had only known as meek and agreeable and people-pleasing to a fault — finally shared a glimpse of his masculine power. His rage, terrifying as it was at the time, was the fire I needed to feel safe…if only for a night.

Decades later, by a bike rack at a fancy international school in the Netherlands, I felt that same fire surge within me. But I almost burned my life down with it.

I’ve turned this over in my mind a million times since.
What does it mean to be a worthy protector for your kid?
When do you walk softly, and when do you swing the big stick?

I want my son to know in every cell of his being that I will always have his back, no matter what. Heaven, Earth, and all points in between. I am there.

But I also need to teach him that rage isn't the only answer. Because true power doesn't live in fists and fire alone. It's also dwells in restraint, and presence, and the courage to face problems with clarity and grace.

This is the house I'm trying to build for him.

Beyond just black and white.

A home full of love, and strength, and wisdom…

And maybe some cats to keep us humble.

In 2014, I published my first novel, The Cat’s Maw. It was the culmination of a lifetime of haunting dreams and half-buried memories. After years of notes and outlines, I settled on a remote isle in Southeast Asia to tackle the first draft.

It poured out of me in less than a month.

On the surface, it was billed as “Stephen King meets Narnia” — a supernatural coming-of-age tale wrapped in feline myth and mystery. It scored some indie awards, moved decent numbers, and earned a handful of flattering blurbs. You can still find it on Amazon, where it looks like your typical YA fantasy-horror curiosity from the 2010s.

But a decade later, I see it for what it really was.

What I thought I was writing — a re-contextualization of mystical moments I’d had with cats over the years, plus a way to explore budding spirituality and brushes with the uncanny — became something else entirely. A container. A vault. A butcher’s board of the most raw chunks of gristle and bone from my childhood:

Abandonment and self-worth issues.

Feeling cursed and needy and alone.

Being too smart…but not nearly wise enough.

My foster sister, driven away in a long grey car.

My first kitten, struck dead on the same stretch of road where I was nearly killed just days before.

The terror-and-wonder-filled dreams that felt like they were…more.

Messages from beyond.

Visions of the future.

Beacons of a greater truth just out of reach.

All of it found its way into the story.

Early in the book, Billy Brahm (my ten-year-old shadow-self with the same initials, and a nod to my original birth name 'baby boy Brahim') lies in a hospital bed after a terrible accident on a country road. His body is broken, but his faith in the world and his place in it is shattered beyond the help of any surgery.

When Billy was three he fell down the stairs with a double-scoop strawberry cone.

When Billy was four he ran out of daycare, tripped on his untied shoes, and met the shale-and-gravel driveway face-first. When Billy was five, a hulking sixth grader slammed him into a tetherball pole. Six weeks in a sling, and a broken collarbone to add to his ‘scorecard’.

Billy’s sole sibling at the time — a shy blonde girl with a love for stuffed bears — asked him if he was cursed, or just had really bad luck. Three weeks later, Billy watched from the kitchen window as the girl was packed neatly with her bear into a long grey car that whisked her away to another home.

As he waved goodbye and remembered her words, he began to wonder the same thing.

That wasn’t fiction. That was me…crying out from the page.

And the wound, my primal fear of being left, the suspicion that I was cursed, and the crippling belief I wasn’t worthy of real love? These became the marrow of the tale.

The Confrontation

The wound by itself doesn’t define you. But if you never expose it to sunlight and oxygen? Then it festers in the dark, waiting for one bad day to rise up and swallow you whole. Jung 101.

Billy’s story, like mine, circles that darkness. Basements. Nightmares. Blood and black magic. The places no good boy is supposed to go. And I’m pretty sure I wrote it that way because life taught me, cliched as it sounds, that sometimes the only way out…is through.

And as Billy writhes and moans in the belly of the book’s proverbial whale, my brave young avatar receives a key - not some trinket, but a hard truth about survival from his new friend, a girl who is also no stranger to suffering:

'Billy…being sad is a cold feeling. It slows you down. Freezes you in place. When that happens, it’s too late. It’s like falling asleep in the snow, and not waking up again.’

‘So how do you stop it?’ Billy asked, desperate.

‘That’s easy,’ Lynn said. ‘Just get mad. Anger’s hotter than anything I know.’

Billy rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling. Get mad, he thought. But good boys don’t get mad. Good boys follow the rules. Good boys do what they’re told. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how fast it could all disappear?

Somehow, in the twisting maze of my youth, I gleaned this truth long before I could articulate it. Sadness just numbed me. Froze me in place. Made me smaller. But anger? Anger kept me alive. It burned like a torch when everything else was dark. It held the power to resurrect me from the ashes and give me wings.

The problem was that I had been raised, just like Billy, to believe that anger was dangerous. A bad emotion. Because good boys didn’t get mad. And if I dared to rage against fear, abandonment, and despair…?

I would only invite more of it.

Reading the above passage now, I feel Lynn’s words echo across the years: Sadness creates inertia, locking you in place. But anger? It's fiery. Explosive. It's raw energy, begging for direction. And I think sometimes the heat of fury is the only thing strong enough to melt despair, and crack open the glacier with the fossilised child inside.

Anger, turned inward, will burn you alive.

But standing in that fire willingly?

It can transform you. Just ask the phoenix.

The Transformation

Every story worth its salt circles a confrontation with death on some level. The body. The ego. Beliefs. The Self. The Cat’s Maw is no exception to this rule.

Billy faces it not in some bleak hospital room or hellish school playground, nor in his parents’ conditional love and unwarranted judgements. Instead, the story brings him face-to-face with the most primal of mirrors: a caged tiger. Literally.

The thing he loves most (cats) now presents itself as his greatest fear (annihilation). And by facing that mirror and holding its gaze? He is finally set free.

The tiger opened its eyes. The boy saw his reflection in sapphire pools the size of his fists, and smiled. ‘You’re free.’

In its fierce and beautiful gaze, the boy’s fear and pain dissolved. His sadness melted like ice, and washed away like spring rain.

Whatever happens to me, at least I did something right, Billy thought. At least I got to help.

Time slowed to a crawl, and the force inside of him swelled. The boy felt himself expand, awareness stretching in all directions. Past the tents and garbage bins. Past the sleeping woman in pink who dreams that someone will tell her she’s special.

In less than a heartbeat, galaxies were born in his belly. In less than a breath, he burned at the heart of a billion, billion suns. The light shone so bright there was only Light. The hum grew so loud there was only Hum.

At the edge of eternity, the Emptiness awoke. And it had a thought:

I was a boy once. And I was searching for something.

This wasn’t about escaping pain. Or conquering fear. Or erasing the first wound.

It was about turning the wound into a gateway to something greater. Transfiguring terror into wonder. Recognizing that within even smallest and most broken boy in the world lives the potential for greatness…and grace.

The Echo

When I read The Cat’s Maw now, or listen to bits from the hypnotic audiobook, I don’t see a quirky YA horror-fantasy. I see a personal mythology laid bare:

The cursed child.

The loss of safety.

Raging for survival.

Rebirth in the dark.

Glimpses of Oneness.

I thought I was just writing about cats, and dreams, and magic (and sure, some memoir-ish scraps penned for good measure). But in truth? I was repeating a call across my creative existence. Reciting a mantra. Casting a spell of illumination:

The scared little boy asking: ‘Am I worthy of love?’

And the man who whispers: 'Yes, but only if you dare to accept it.'

This is why I’m here now, in The House of Black and White.

Stripping away old masks.

Following karmic breadcrumbs.

Swimming in the sweet sorrow of outdated selves.

Because I'm finally ready tell it plain. NOT because I’ve solved it, or overcome it. But because maybe, in the act of daring to face the past, I can transform it.

Alchemy. Lead to gold. The phoenix made real.

With a breath…we rise from the ashes.

With a thought…we set the wounds alight.

And with grace…we burn brighter than a billion, billion suns.

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I was six weeks old when the courts took me from my teenage birth mother. By the time I was adopted, I’d already been passed through five foster homes.

That’s where I met my ‘sister’. We shared a rough beginning, shuffled from stranger to stranger until we landed in a little blue house with white trim off Highway 1 in the south of Nova Scotia. For four years we were inseparable. Two lost souls in early 70s Canada made kin by paperwork and proximity.

But I knew something was wrong. The house was thick with tension. Lingering sighs. Pained silences. Wet beds and nightmares. Bouts of tears that came more often, toddler rebellions that carried a weight I couldn’t yet name.

And then one day it happened.

My mother told me I had to come and say goodbye to my sister…or else I wouldn’t get any dessert.

So I watched my sister march down the gravel driveway towards a dusty grey sedan waiting by the main road. She wailed, and squirmed, and pressed her little hand against the car window as the door slammed shut.

And then she was gone. A ghost with taillights, swallowed by the dusk.

I had just turned four. And from that night on, I understood: anything could be taken from you. Especially if you cry too much.

---

In the weeks that followed, I tested the air constantly. During math and grammar practice at the kitchen table, I’d ask my mom to check my work as she chopped the summer harvest with an old knife, its blade making dull clangs against the sink.

When she pointed out a mistake, I’d erase it furiously and ask through a cloud of rubber dust:

“Do you love me?”

The first time she answered, it was red-faced and with glasses askew:

“What do you want…a brass band?”

It was probably her way of making a joke. But for a boy who already felt like his world could crumble without warning? Jokes cut deeper than any kitchen knife.

This was my inheritance: a house where love was conditional. Where feelings were liabilities. And now, with my sister gone, I had to find a way through it alone.

---

On my adopted mother’s side, the family tree was full of brilliance. Scientists. Scholars. Rational minds who prized data over dreams, hard facts over poetry.

And then there was me. Awash in visions and yearning. Reading comics like scripture. Watching TV as gospel. Playing videogames as sigils and spells, secret keys to survival.

I dreamt of gods…but lived in a house built by rationalists. I was the squealing, off-key violin in an orchestra of cogs, gears, and neurodivergent clocks.

---

Three years later we moved to a hockey-and-farm town in southern Ontario. If you’ve seen Letterkenny, then you’ll know what I mean. I’d love to say things got better in the new house, in that new town. But that would be a lie.

I was clumsy. Emotional. Couldn’t fix a fucking bike chain. I just wasn’t ‘boy’ enough.

Instead, I was the too-eager prodigy who skipped two grades, got straight A’s, and still couldn’t throw a ball farther than a cow could fart. Hard to paint a brighter target on a kid if you tried.

‘Wimp. Loser. Crybaby. FAAAAAG.’

My constant tears, bloody noses, and screaming meltdowns only made it worse. My parents made the rounds, of course - teachers, principals, the parents of bullies - but things only escalated.

The day I came home with a head caked in spit, dirt, and clumps of fresh dogshit? Well, that’s when my mother’s words rang like that old knife against the sink:

“I am SICK of this. If you come home with ONE more problem…”

She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Four-year-old me already had. If I didn’t stop crying, I’d be gone…just like my sister.

---

Is it any wonder I grew into a shadow of man who questioned his worth, his right to exist, at every turn? And of course I was drawn (obsessively, almost mystically) to people who carried the same cold gravity I felt in that house. Friends, lovers, and colleagues who couldn’t see me, no matter how hard I tried.

Trauma loops prove that the universe has a sick sense of humour. Freud would have laughed himself straight to the grave.

But maybe fate wasn’t just twisting the old knife. Maybe it was part of some grand design, forcing me to embrace the only truth about trauma that actually matters:

If you want to be truly FREE? The only way out…is through.

---

My reckoning came with fatherhood.

When my son was born, everything shifted. Not right away, of course. But after a few months, lack of sleep and dramas on the home-front forced my guard down.

And then one morning in southern Thailand, on an empty beach at dawn, it clicked.

My little boy reached up, touched my face, and smiled.

And for the first time in my life…I knew what love was.

I was stripped bare. No performance. No titles or status. No seduction.

Just me. Just ‘dad’.

The sun painted the world gold. The old kitchen knife fell into an empty sink.

And the brass band I had so desperately sought all those years ago at last rang loud and clear and brilliant and beautiful in my chest.

I made a vow in that moment. My boy would never feel what I felt. Never doubt his worth, or his instincts. Never fear that his whole world might vanish down a country road, to be lost in the dark.

I would build him a home where dreams flourished, where love was loud, and where ‘black and white’ was a thing for old movies, chessboards and piano keys.

---

So that’s why I’m writing here. Not to posture, or chase pity-clout. But because I finally see the thread running through my life.

Everything I made - every story or poem, every screenplay or game script, every heartbreak I caused by my own hands - all of it was an attempt to confront the first wound, and somehow set it right.

To turn abandonment into belonging.

To transform suffering into spirit.

To answer the only question that ever mattered.

“Do you love me?”

Yes, Brooke…

I think I finally might.