drawing watercolor graphite crumpled paper art by Matthew Whitney

The western ideals and ideologies, which have been dominant and perpetuated over the past few hundred years of civilization, are in their late-stages of manifestation – and things are pretty scary, with accelerated climate change and the very survival of humans in question.
I’m learning to let go of outcomes; control; even the very concepts of worldview. There’s no time for half measures. The powers and ideologies that allowed for slavery, colonialism, state religion and worship of money, exploitation in all levels – Time to crumple them up and let them go.

But how do we heal? Our world is not a crisp sheet of new paper. The scars remain. The creases won’t disappear. We have to make do with this thing we have – our very lives, these bodies we inhabit – and collaboratively make something of them.

A counterpoint to the first drawing, and the dialectic I’ve found myself in. What truly is? What is to come? What needs to die, so that something new can be born? Will it be new, or will it necessarily bear scars of the past? A crisp clean sheet of paper, or something flawed yet usable and lovely? And as my Zen Buddhist friend and boss Rev. Seifu would say – who’s doing the asking?

Chaos-monde is a concept of relational poetics by Martiniquan writer Édouard Glissant. To offer a gross oversimplification, it means to me something like: through the diverse relationships to others, we create and recreate ourselves, and the one.