ORDER out of CHAOS (After the Journey)

I remind myself that I am still using Ben Franklin’s process for reflecting on virtues in one’s life and am back round to ORDER. This was the virtue I was studying last time wherein Christchurch fell to the ground and ORDER did not seem possible anymore.

The journey I just took was an impromptu one inspired by feelings of claustrophobia and angst brought on by living in a city that is in CHAOS. I had to get out and chase rainbows.

While I was on this journey, I listened to what I said to others, others who had no personal involvement with the earthquakes, had only visited the CHAOS through the media, the same media that allows voices to predict the end of the world or show tsunamis gobbling up people in real time.

I found myself saying, I have to get out, I have to get out unless they (Christchurch City’s power structure) let me help soon!

The day after I returned home to Christchurch and planning to instrument my escape, I received a phone call from someone I had met about a year ago at another artist’s home. She said she had been asked by the City Council of Christchurch, along with an American business man to submit ideas on how to revitalize cultural and artistic pursuits in a city with its skirt down around its feet (she said something different, but I think in pictures and so, this is what I heard).

She asked me if I had any ideas on how to help Christchurch I would like to submit...had I not just been saying I would leave unless they let me help soon. The universe is so amazing...this is it; this is what I have been waiting for...some place to dump the ideas that plague me night and day since the first big shake up in September of last year.

ART HEALS.

‘Art heals by accepting the pain and doing something with it’ (Shaun McNiff in Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul).
McNiff points to what Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy that when we are faced with the most dreadful circumstances, “art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live” (p. 4).

I do not agree with this because it sounds good, I agree with this because after 55 years of living through many types of trauma, tornadoes, divorce, death, bombings and now earthquakes, this has always been the only thing that helps me process these happenings, and the only process I have seen work for others around me.

It is. It is the healing that is most important to re-establish before even THINKING about doing any rebuilding. First, and foremost, every individual who has been present for these occurrences which in Christchurch is a collective misery, we must first, find an individual healing.

Turn off the media...tune into the soul of one’s self and learn to live again through artistic expression of the pain that has been experienced. This can happen through many ways beyond the traditional thought of Art being about drawing, painting, sculpting, music, writing, it is simply tactile and can be cooking, gardening, weaving, and stamp collecting, but bottom line, bottom, each person needs to be reminded that there is an artist inside themselves that must find a way to express themselves in order to process all that has happened.

And for Christchurch, there has been a lot happening. It is time that we provide a way for everyone to process the collective pain that is oppressing our community to the point where people like me jump in their car and chase rainbows and think seriously about just leaving.

I am fortunate to be able to do so. Many cannot go anywhere, and therefore, we must find a way to provide spaces all around the Cantabrian area to help every individual find a way to release the artist inside themselves which can process the ‘horror or absurdity of existence’.

And, what I have discovered about living here is that it is far easier to do so when I am allowed out of Christchurch every now and then, like time off for good behaviour. It is important to go outside of the devastation and reacquaint ourselves with nature that is not threatening to us. To rebuild our faith in the fact that we are not really all dead and dying, it just looks that way in Christchurch for the moment.

'This too, shall pass'.

But until it does, I will be working on creating a submittal for how to instrument some type of movement that might be injected into Christchurch City that will release its citizens to their own genius that creates a healing individually, then collectively that will eventually reflect itself back into the world as a dynamic tension of the greatest art imaginable, the art of healing.

Watch this space, I mean it, we have the perfect opportunity to re-create ourselves, I sure hope we take it and make it into a Southern Cross that guides all those navigating dark waters, into the reality of a land that can feel like home again or at least, a place we are willing to visit.

Christchurch rocks and I am rolling with it for now...that is as much ORDER as I can find on any given day in a land down under, down under, trying to remerge itself out of CHAOS.

Cleanliness Too

As I am giving Cleanliness my last efforts before moving onto Tranquillity next week, I aspire to deserve my next eleven weeks without giving consideration to the deep cleansing of coffee pots, refrigerators, blenders, toasters, lawn mowers, garbage containers, closet spaces, personal drawers, garages, cars and other modern appliances and conventions that are supposed to be helping us, but make me a singular slave to their cleanliness.


Whew, it is only 5:38AM and I have been up since 2:20AM, so no need for my typical 5:15AM enterprise. I get up earlier than most, go to bed long after most, and now, at fifty five years of age, I have to wonder, is that my nature, or is it how I was made, in order to survive all the things that require cleaning?

Meanwhile, I read intermittently Tom Peters book Thriving On (not Amidst) Chaos (italics mine) in order to comprehend how I myself, have been managed. It is a shocking tale, but an enlightening one.

There is so much to clean up, it makes the young lethargic, unless of course they can join in some kind of army to organize themselves...to help the oppressor...oh my, it’s time to clean something again!

The Real Aftershock Gallery

Right now, the real Aftershock Gallery has no set anything.  People come and do what they need to in order to regain their ground of being...one person paints, another turns the sprinkler on and runs half naked through it...we don't care here what you do to bring the art of life back, just do it. 

Some drink endless cups of coffee, some smoke like chimneys while others up and quit.  There is no set anything, nor should there be...we all have to find our level (Brother John is bringing his) and the only thing I do to help is to make sure there are no useless rules, and no one here to tell anyone the one word that shuts us all back down....NO.

YES, I say to the person who wants to rearrange my cupboards, just because it makes them feel better, it doesn't matter to me anymore where any THING is, just as long as all that lives is allowed to express that through artistic endeavours that is the impetus to go on in the face of so much tragedy, so much crisis and the endless aftershocks that will certainly continue to plague many human animals alive at this point in time and hereafter, because let us face it, there always has been a part of the world no man can control.

In so many ways, change has to be embraced and not resisted, it is this resistance to the changes we all need to intuitively over-ride and make a space in some way that provides the ground of being for artistic expression, which heals the savaged soul that has been for so long told NO, you can't do that, NO, it must be this way, NO, this and that are the only ways... 

There are no room for "experts" in the aftershock gallery, we have become "friends of chaos" here, realizing that there are things in this world no "expert" can predict, control or alleviate...

but, "friends of chaos", can generate new and interesting ways to live in the midst of all that is...anyway that makes them feel better with only one rule in place...

do and say nothing that stops another person from giving a go at generating an expression that might make sense only to them, one is enough, one is...what we all are anyway, coming in and going out, it looks different, but is always, and always has been....this same way, individually, even when collectively extinguished in earthquakes and tsunamis.