Mapping Chaos

Post-Operative artist book (WIP)

“…the work of living is creating [a] map for yourself” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

In the midst of the world holding its collective breath, I’ve been creating a map of myself. Charting the small steps forward when the world seems to be slipping backwards into chaos. I know from history, that within chaos the seeds of new growth emerge. It’s about radical trust, hope and staying the course.

This week I’ve been finally reading a book recommended to me titled Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer who expounds a First Nations perspective on human and the natural world relationships. This ‘long’ view is wonderfully cheering, she writes about how creation myths embed the idea of responsibility in humans, to take care of the land as if our lives depend upon it, which of course they do.

She poses the question: “How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability If we cannot even imagine what the path feels like?”

Imagination is the key factor here. We have to imagine what we want and create a map to move forward towards that goal. Creating a visual map of how you want the world to look like, how you want to personally and collectively move forwards helps it feel real.

It has been hard this week knowing that the USA elections have dominated all media and conversations. What will this outcome mean for the rest of the world? What influence will it have on those in Australia or the UK, Europe and beyond?

This is where I need my own map of pain, where I can chart my incremental progress post knee operation. It may seem like such a micro map, concentrating as it does on six weeks of learning to walk again, yet I draw from this a metaphor of how we can move forward as a nation, as part of a world of nations. Through this pain, a strength will emerge, like the phoenix from the ashes.

I take great heart from Maria Popova’s The Marginalian post this week where she writes about systems under pressure going through discomposing transitions and collapsing into a state of entropy. Within them is the creative force which “that makes order, makes beauty, makes a new and stronger structure of possibility out of the chaos of such times.”

My personal map emerges as a way forward through the chaos of pain. I chart each of the first six weeks following my knee replacement operation and from this visual record I draw strength, eventually standing on my own two feet, ready to tackle the world again.

For me, it is in this map of endurance and retreat, that my strength can be nourished. Better to grow stronger in retreat, to gain collective strength so we as humans can survive chaos and emerge into a future of reciprocal responsibility to each other and life on this precious planet. To make and create. To keep going.

Making an edition of two of my Post-Operative artist book (WIP)