Jesse Arbor Illustration

Author: jessewrenarbor

  • Making a website too

    Second Blog Post

    July 7th, 2025

    Hey Y’all! this is my second blog post of my website 🙂 I’m still trying to figure out a lot of shit, but i decided to install wordpress in order to build the blog part of my website, as i hoped it would be easier. Still hoping it is! It’s been another learning curve though, but honestly knowing more about coding languages has made understand the ui of wordpress so much easier. I even was able to import the formatting currently on my website 🙂

    I’ve been putting work in on this site every week, at least once a week. this week 2 times because my internet keeps cutting out because the AC is using up too much power. (it’s hot here) Last week i got my comic pages really working, and i uploaded everything. The week before i did a bunch of stuff with my gallery. This week it is the blog. But enough about website building. ART!

    A Life Ruled by Oil will never mix with Water Root or Soil.

    My friend and I wanted to go wheat pasting together recently, I had never done it before, and they wanted to advertise their event happening. The news about the potential war in Iran had just happened and i decided to screen print a new poster. Something to get my frustration out, make my voice heard. Say something about the systematic injustice I see in this system of the occupying government, the Untied States.

    I had been reading a bunch of books and zines about indigenous world view. How to become indigenous to a place. I have felt a disconnect from place for most of my life. I moved around a lot growing up, lived in a few abusive and neglectful households, I have never felt at home in a place. The closest I’ve felt was from when I was 2-9, living in a small brick house in the Shenandoah valley. The air was clear, the Appalachians were the backdrop of the fields I played in, eating fresh fruit from trees, making friends with livestock off the back of our property. I think there I had built up a trust in the earth that has continued to define my worldview.

    the top of a hill in a cow pasture by my old house

    When I went to visit in May, I realized that, while I did feel a deep connection there, I still felt foreign. There was this language barrier that I hadn’t crossed, I wasn’t able to fully understand the place I was in. I didn’t feel native. So I came to the conclusion that my people are wanderers, and that this detachment makes us who we are. My grandmother was dropped off in an orphanage, we have been transient ever since.

    Then I read this zine, “Land and Freedom an old challenge” by Sever. I realized that this transience that has defined my being is not unique to me, although my family’s history is a unique one. This quote stuck with me:

    If you would not die for land or a specific way of moving through it, don’t bother: you’ll never be able to find a home. But how can we build that kind of love when we are only moving on top of the land like oil on water, never becoming a part of it? Everyone yearns to overcome alienation, but very few people still enjoy a connection worth defending.

    Iranians think of a potential war with America as an existential one, defending the land of their ancestors, Persians. They have embraced that culture, that identity, and the land that holds it’s stories, into their very DNA. That connection they have gives them meaning, and its something they wouldn’t hesitate to die for. This emotion is completely foreign to the average American. There are expectations built into our system that prevents us from becoming to attached to place.

    Moving to the city for work, for school. Renting preventing you from becoming too attached to a place. Demands of work causing this social isolation creating a populace that is unable to repair conflict. Suburban living and car-centric infrastructure causing people to not even know who their neighbors are. The privatization of land making existing outside a financial decision. There is this sick obsession with succeeding in this system, achieving that American dream, all you need is more money. When really money is the cause of all of these issues in the first place. People need more, so people find ways to monetize whatever they can, which results in further fragmenting of society, which causes people to need more to hold onto that dream.

    Recently I’ve learned a lot about geopolitics and economy anecdotally from my partner, who keeps up with that. The US dollar has held global dominance since WW2, it is the most used currency in the global financial system, it is the exclusive currency used by most oil producing nations, which means that in order to buy oil every nation on earth needs massive reserves of USD. This has resulted in the US dollar’s, and therefore the United States’, dominance over the rest of the world. A power they have exploited to an extreme degree.

    The United States had transitioned away from an industrialized economy, fully embracing a finance economy. The so-called “debt-ceiling,” is essentially meaningless, because there is this built in demand for USD. The government can print as much money as they want, and so at least domestically, money loses its meaning. I think it has caused this dissonance in our value system and inflated our egos. This topsy-turvy disconnect that can be felt in all areas of our lives. You can see it in the way we evaluate labor. The best jobs you can get are the ones where you are doing the least, administrative work, managing teams and projects, having meetings where nothing gets done, the work never ends, and nothing ever changes.

    I say that as someone who has a meaningless administrative job. I produce nothing, there is no meaning in the work that I do, yet I am considered successful. If this void I feel in my chest is a result of me lacking connection, of purpose, of place. If it’s true that this alienation isn’t unique to me, but is a common experience among all Americans. Then the system needs to be rebuilt. I feel like the things that have helped me process this, is realizing that our money system is addictive and designed to keep you hooked. Decentering money, and the making of, and prioritizing community, building a bond with the earth beneath my feet, doing mutual aid, using my unique talents to help people, learning about how survive outside of an economic system(ie homesteading shit, plant ID), learning a different value system. I feel more grounded then I had in years. Not since I was a young child, who’s full trust was in the earth, who felt provided for, who felt safe in those valleys. And the more I’ve learned to opt out, the better I feel.



    I had these for the autonomous Philly zine fest (that’s held the last Sunday of every month at 3pm) and I refused to accept money for them, if someone wanted one they had to do some kind of trade. I was willing to take anything, and was offering it for free too but people got creative. I got water that I desperately needed, some other peoples art, chapstick, a nice marker, some weed. It felt really good! we don’t have to use money! We just have to get creative.

    Thank you to my partner for helping me learn stuff, Julia who helped me create the perfect phrasing for this poster, Petals for wheat pasting with me, Miguel who letting me borrow his book for over a year now, Susannah who told me about Braiding Sweetgrass.

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