The Art & Photography of Kenn Orphan

10/25/2024

Enough of the lies.

10/16/2024

October.

Flowers, though fewer, still court pollinators. Ferns, once as verdant as those in tropical rainforests, turn to fire red as they become brittle. Wild winds lash at the waning grasses, splitting them even more to chaff, and begin to knock loose the leaves from their branches.

Winter, I can hear you coming. Like a jet, I hear the engines revving up. But in the meantime, the light is still with us. That orange glow that casts long shadows. Makes me bargain for just one more day, just one more evening, before winter's solemn curtain falls over us like a shroud.

In this brave new world, where the skies grow angrier by the day, where armies rage against children, where cities are leveled by maniacs, where storms of water and fire move across the horizon with an ever bolder ferocity, I wonder a lot about the seasons. How they have changed. How we "ain't seen nothing yet." I wonder about the longevity of our lost species. About our penchant for doom. And about the creatures I may not see again next Spring, or ever. The ones who have been quietly extinguished by my kinds careless avarice, murderous militarism and nihilistic abandon.

But I remind myself that under the shroud of winter, both figurative and real, that life still stirs. The field mice and ants who've gone under, toil in their labyrinthine passages of hardened soil. The seeds sit still as a stone, waiting. Ancient lichens persist. And people still love.

And I slumber courting a dream of a world where war, cruelty and destruction are but minor footnotes to a longer, sun filled and verdant day.

*Photo is one I took here in Nova Scotia.

10/02/2024

"I found a considerable lack of work after doing concerts for Palestinian children.. if that's the way it has to be, that's the way it has to be. If you support human rights, you gotta support them everywhere."

- Kris Kristofferson

Rest in peace, Kris. You were a great talent and a huge inspiration.

06/20/2024

Seriously.

06/05/2024

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900) Darial Gorge 1882

05/04/2024

“I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.”

~Mary Oliver, Sleeping In The Forest

Photo is one I took in one of the parks in Porto, Portugal.

04/03/2024

I know some may think I am new to this. But I have been writing about this for well over a decade. I have been involved in solidarity for far longer. So, what I post isn't from someone new to this horrific game. Although, that shouldn't matter. Because anyone new is more than welcome if they are on the side of humanity.

This was from 2014 when I wrote about the slaughter of four boys on a beach playing football.

Since Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza, a captive population in what is the world’s biggest open air prison, there have been scores of heartbreaking stories that have emerged from the Strip. For…

04/02/2024

"It's a cookie, mom. You eat it. See?"

I take a bite of one them as my mother looks curiously at the chocolate wafer between her fingers.

"But what does it say inside?", she asks.

"Nothing, mom. You just eat it."

My mother cautiously tries to pry open the delicate and crumbly edges of the wafer. I watch in dismay.

When I recall the woman who raised me, I cannot seem to process what has been robbed from her. What continues to be robbed of her. They say dementia causes literal holes in ones' brain. So, it isn't simply losing memory. It is losing the ability to navigate this world. And it is random.

One doesn't simply forget distant memories. One forgets concepts, ideas, definitions. One forgets the algorithms of life. Those simple instructions for completing the most mundane of tasks, like how to identify and eat a cookie.

How can ones' mind be so ruthlessly pillaged? And why does it seem to occur in fits and starts? How can something like a cookie be so confounding?

Mom gently wraps the wafers in a tissue and puts them into her purse.

"They may be worth something," she says.

"Maybe," I reply.

Then she looks up and gives me a tender smile.

"You're Kenny", she declares. "You're my brother."

I smile and nod my head. And I think to myself, at least she still remembers my name.

Photos are of some of the things in her room.

03/22/2024

A poem I wrote back in my university days.

I love buzzards.
Because they eat death.
And because I cannot think of anything more terrifying than death.
And because I cannot think of any worse meal than death.
And because I believe death needs to be eaten and digested.
Because only then, death can then become life.
Again.
I love buzzards.

~KMO

03/22/2024

If the West has any credibility left, it should demonstrate it by not allowing a double standard in this spectacle.

Russia was correctly booted out - but Israel wasn't. What does that tell you?Please like, subscribe - and help us take on the pro-war media here: https://www...