What Am I Doing Here?

The Question Emerges and Refuses to Go Without an Answer

I created the image that graces the post on the Ghost Light burning some 21 years ago. I had just taken on a position as a technical writer on the staff of the Enterprise Architecture Program Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It was, at the time, one of the larger Enterprise Architecture Program Offices in the Federal Government. The lead for the contractor team with what was then “Apogen Technologies” was a retired Air Force Colonel. I’d go on to have a similar role as he by 2008. A decade later, I’d be back in that same role and maintain it until 2024. The team there at CBP had been involved in writing the Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture practice and were attempting to do what it outlined. I’d serve with that group for 13 months during which time I’d become certified in Enterprise Architecture.

The image itself, created with the primitive tools at hand represented the self emerging from out of the chaos of the pleroma emanating from the monad. It required running the image through multiple filters layering images onto themselves. It conceptualized 12 rays emanating from a central point. Doubling these gives rise to the 24 vectors through which the personality is expressed. The figure is dual in that it has both substance and substancelessness as part of it’s being whole - light and shadow.

So we emerge from nothing into being something but what is it? Earlier today, I posted a note:

It’s a simple quotation along with a photograph of Fernando Pessoa. He seems to me to be a kindred soul and, due to the very fact of our ability to bind time, we are able to know each other at some level or another. I don’t know, really. I just know how he, and everything, seems to me.

Recently, I have written:

…and today I have learned that Mom had yet another fall while in Memory Care and required three staples in her head at the ER where she insisted that she had not fallen. She was returned to Charter Senior Living where she apparently has been refusing the Physical Therapist’s attention. I’ve made myself available on Sunday and Monday if needed but heard no reply from my sister who has sole responsibility for Mom’s care. It cannot be easy.

For myself, tomorrow, I will go in to work again at Daily Provisions from 9 AM to 4 PM. I can clock in as early as 8:50 AM and so will try to do so. I am a bit worried about getting enough hours to off-set the spending that I do as part of my role as a cog in the wheels of the economy. Every cent spent is a vote for the world we are co-creating as I like to remind the viewers of the passing show. Let’s be mindful of the impacts we are making here and now. We need to be “good ancestors” as the late John Perry Barlow indubitably was.

So, I come back to the question, “What Am I Doing Here?” and the answer comes back up from my past:

and from still earlier in my past:

I am showing up in the most unlikely places. I arrived at 3:21 AM on February 4, 1963. I entered history like an eight pound explosive in many ways, although I was quiet, or so it is said. I was fairly deaf as an infant until fluid was removed from my ears. I am still somewhat hard of hearing, or so it is said when I have my hearing tested. I don’t know. I just know how it seems to me. That is my recurring theme here.

What I am doing is:

I slept most of the day away - from about 10 AM through 7 PM anyway. I arose to find the news from my sister about my mother’s condition. Her falls are increasing in frequency apparently. The answer seems to be in letting go.

Onward!

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