Redtree Times

Chaos & Light — At Principle Gallery

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.

—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

I am running way behind this morning for some unknown reason. Wasn’t going to write anything but this line from Tom Robbins that I came across a few days ago was stuck in my head and I wanted to get it out. I think it’s relevant for these times when it often seems that the balance between order and chaos is way out of whack.

How we get back in balance is a question that I doubt anyone can answer with any degree of accuracy. When it happens– if it happens– it will come in an organic manner that is filled with unexpected events and actions. I think it will seem to many like labyrinth where we will sometimes feel like we’re further and further away from the end as we feel our way ahead in the dark when in fact we are near emerging from the maze. Conversely, there will be a point where we will feel like we’re nearly through it and we aren’t even close to the end.

Don’t know if that makes any sense to you this morning. Like I said, I am late and rushing a bit as a result. I thought the painting at the top, Chaos & Light, now at the Principle Gallery, would align with Robbins’ passage along with the song below from Chicago. It’s from their first album and is titled Saturday (August 29, 1968). It is about the riots at the Democratic National Convention that took place in Chicago in and around that date. This includes the Prologue which is an address to the anti-war protesters that ends with them chanting “The Whole World is Watching!”

It was a time out of balance, to be sure. And certainly not the last. I sometimes wonder if we truly regained balance at any point since then.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Got to go try to get things back in balance– here at least. For once.