Origin Stories, The Empire of Stuff, and the Light of Consciousness

 I've always been fascinated by origen stories.  As I have navigated my way into middle-age, the questions "Where did I (we) come from?" and "How did we get here?" (as well as the subsequent Gauginist query--"Where are we going?") have, in the wake of the first major (nuclear family) passing-away the I have experienced (my mother passed at an untimely age in late 2021) grown to an occupy an even great part of my thinking, and my art practice, than ever before.

As someone who has created things of some sort for their living, there is a familiar rubric that was put into overdrive the last few years, and which I feel provides a sort of monumental insight into the nature and rhythm of consciousness, among other things.  It can be summed-up as the discursive-evaluative mode of consciousness, and it is a very distinct end of what I believe is a spectrum of consciousness, at which other terminus lies what might be considered the transcendent-consciousness, sub-consciousness, god-consciousness, or some other similar thing.  And, as we all instinctively understand, and comes to bear in very concrete ways, this spectrum is in reality a ring, a loop, an ouroboros, with each opposite again shading into the other, by degrees.

So, on the one hand, we have our evaluative moment.  We identify something that can be gleaned from its surroundings as a discrete object, we hold it up literally and figuratively and examine it, and go through a query list: What is this? What is its function? What is its value? ie How often must the function be performed, and by whom, and where in space does this occur, and is it worth the effort it would take to put this object into the place in space time where it will then have its optimal value?  When you are dealing with an Estate--the physical and psychic architecture of a life's worth of this process produces--there is also a dual-locative component to this process--the ghost (s) of all the ancestors whispering, coaxing, dancing on the static on the edge of the current light of consciousness that one is bringing to bear on an old microwave, or giant roll of bread-bag-tying wire, or box of first-grade art projects, or winter-jacket, sheet-metal-press, tub of glaziers putty, or what have you. So, you have to sort through each of the voices in a similar way; whose voice is this? Do I respect and admire them?  Do they have my best interest at heart?  Does their idea of the good and right way to live life align with my own?  Should I now become a glazier/sheet metal worker/microwave owner/person to whom this object and its function has an optimized value?

This process went on and on and then bled into all process and began to 

I journal religiously every morning, and will periodically do read-throughs as an orientating exercise.  I use my cell phone to capture moments of particular beauty to me and will often do scroll-throughs of years of my life, a sort-of herky-jerky home-movie in timelapse digital technicolor.  

Nostaligia and mythology weave and blend into each other, and there is always a sense of investigation, like some mystery is afoot, and I must be careful not to trample over the potential clues...but what is the question?

It's the question I posed yesterday: What should I do? Where ought I to-go? What, and how, should I paint?  Who should I show those paintings to, when finished?  

There is this part of the imagination that appears to be extremely important to us, as a species, and it is the purpose-sensing part.  In myself, when I align to it, I feel somewhat similar to when I am watching a protagonist in some production deal with a tricky situation with prescience and ability and strong moral character.  It could perhaps be described as a mixture of pride and relief.

But, in consideration, deliberation, what, indeed, should one do with their life?

I've struggled with this.

Mine has been a uniquely syncretic experience.  Since earliest childhood, I have been shuttling between and around world-views, cultures, families, roles, identities, religions, moralities, and sub-cultures.