p=mv
in the bathroom at tea lounge, closing time (midnight), I lift the seat up deftly with the inside sole of my shoe and as I piss away I look at the requisite cafe bathroom scrawls. someone's written "I hold these truths to be self-evident" in silver paint-marker. it's actually quite neatly written, in fact, fitting cleanly in-between a line of bricks.
and suddenly suddenly, voiding my bowels, suddenly I have changed my mind and now think that the phrase is actually quite refreshing, actually, this idea of 'self-evident'. on one hand it's a stubborn insistence on truth but on the other hand it's an open admission of groundlessness. like: a kid saying "because I said so." like: a kid answering every answer with a "why?" because. why? because. why? and so on. self-constituting constitutions, I am created because I have created.
and I think, when's the last time my values were upended? if there was some sort of guiding text to my own inner model of the universe it was kurosawa's rashomon, or rather it was a post-facto alignment with that which was always there. and I think, do I have the ability to break from that? could I change altogether, suddenly? have these core processes be altered: that is to say, immediately go into this process of: 'x is y, what's x, y, and is? and what's this "what's" as well?'
on facebook a few years ago I watched a strongly-liberal politically-driven high-school acquaintance date a strongly-conservative acquaintance and suddenly turn conservative as well. there's nothing 'honorless' in modifying one's values necessarily, it's just that this idea of mental change itself that is simultaneously completely mundane and horrifically compelling to me. perhaps it's because a) on the one hand people do change all the time, yes, and b) on the other hand to see this performed identity double back on itself so fluidly is to tangibly verify the masslessness of these vectors we call theses, ideas, cores, movements. it's like there's a thought-related p=mv, and so even with the strength of a thesis's velocity, without mass there is no momentum, just a collection of styrofoam packing peanuts thrown into the air, colliding together gently before floating to the ground.
later I am unlocking my bike and I think, of course it's not to say that this masslessness is bad. it's just that I am simultaneously worried and glad about this default model I have; glad that it likes to tinker and pull things apart, worried because is this it? when will the ability to change the kind of change I wish to have change? will I, ten years from now, be thinking with the same meta-processes? I hope not, I say, I hope I have made 'progress', and by 'progress' I mean being-somewhere-that-I-was-not-before, maybe. new ground stepped on. having-moved-elsewhere.
tin ceiling
and it occurs to me while looking at the tin ceiling with fleur-de-lis-es on it that this is it, whatever 'it' is, and I feel the start of a sentence form in my mouth, like I juuust took a bite of a sandwich, or I'm about to blow a large bubble (medium: gum and saliva, june 2010), and it forms there like a coalescing chunk, and it goes something like: "if there's truth, here, then --"
and the rest of that sentence is cut off by a chorus of internal voices hemorrhaging out from my consciousness asking 'truth? capital-t truth?' and another voice says something like: 'no, I know, it's a philip-larkin-high-windows kinda truth.' and noises silenced with a buzz I look upwards at the ceiling covered with tin and I think of things I should do and places I will be, and I have an anticipatory nostalgia, and while everything is lovely and quite lovely, I know that the best bestest besterest part of the evening will be the bike ride back, the spaces not quite mentioned, the part of an evening that's never shown in the film version. abridged from the book version.
and it is as if: I am here always thinking of centers that are not a center, the absence of a center itself being the organizing principle which becomes a center, ala derrida, the idea of brennschluss that is this persistent idea of having-combusted-fully and leapt forward, the gaze at the yellowish-gray skewed parallelogram-ized window looked up at from a street sidewalk; these things all conspire to be this image of desired absence that pulls me towards this night's end. I say my goodbyes and go home and dream about crashing into cars on my bike, dream against it, dream about piercing people-bubbles and talking about things that rather shouldn't be talked about;
and lately I've been doing this thing where the last two (mild) bike accidents, near-punch and near-mugging I've been in have been so fresh and crisp that I can imagine the sensation of immediate danger arriving too rapidly to to think, the little will-o'-the-wisp of "is this really happening to me?" followed by "yes, it is" happening on one-two-succession, like a rapid punch. bam bam. and then I tumble, and then the world turns about and a hypothetical turns into the cold flesh of reality, and I check myself, reoriented. do I know myself? is my body okay? I've always said, when getting up shakily with adrenaline coursing through my veins, looking at myself. is my body okay? and so far I've been luckily enough to say "yes, it is, it is. you are awarded the invincibility of your youth, again."
the point is that I imagine these things more lately, and I don't think that it comes out from a fright or an apprehensive dread but more of a subconscious will to puncture this invincibility of youth that I live in. a friend recently said more accurately that this invincibility was to take one's body for granted, and I think that's definitely true, and resonated with me, the bodily flesh-and-organ and presence that I have is just here, operating on its own level, being taken for granted. sometime in the future I will call it once in a while, tell it that I love it, send flowers on body's day, visit once in a while, but not enough.
but that itself is another center that comes from an absence-of-a-center, the anticipation of the absence of youth, along with the anticipation of the end of an evening. and yes, the ride back was wonderful, and yes, that image of the tin ceiling painted white stayed with me, for some corporeal tangible reason, and after seeing some wonderful, wonderful friends the ride back is filled with traffic lights (points that elongate into lines) and roads (lines that elongate into volumes), and such and such and such and such.
orphan nodeS and reading cities
ideas for new domain:
continuation of the orphannode idea, a handful or more of domains here and there. each node is a legit node in of itself, self-sufficient, no central server or database. super-rudimentary algorithm serving to share new domains or the death of old domains. not p2p, more like a complete graph.
lets see:
key: (#) = domain
==
operation cycle of a domain:
check if successor. if successor {
check if there's updated information: if so, send to all other domains. }
}
check if alive. if dead { choose a domain at random. notify as successor. send message to all other domains of death. die. }
else (if alive) {
check for death-messages. if message exists { delete domain from database. }
else (if message doesn't exist ){
ping all other domains.
if a domain is dead { delete domain from database, send message to other domains }
}
}
==
or something like that.
nomadic site.
there's this joy riding a bike that I get every time I hop on the saddle. in quick succession: I'm balanced -> pedaling is surprisingly easier than I remember. every stroke propels me forward, forward -> I am reading and riding the city.
there's this rhythm that I know now, I feel my whiskers extend. I am looking behind me over my left shoulder, to my right, to my left, for car doors to open, for cars to turn left across the lane, people to cross, potholes in the ground; there's a million things going on and I pass by all of them, I'd like to think, with a graceful awareness that catches just enough. I stare at the sides of glossily dark cars at night to catch reflections of faraway headlights coming down the road. there's an indentation in the ground, a slight swerve. I feel traffic accumulating over there, so I take my lane already. traffic will loosen and bunch this way, and so taking my hand off the braille pad that is the city with its asphalt protrusions and streetlight chroma I move this way because I am reading it, more than legible it is readable, seeable, findable, graspable.
readability without a perceived legibility is intuition.
legibility without a perceived readability is barthes' third meaning, the strain of eyes squinting, signification divided by its unit vector -- amplitude without direction, intention without results.
stuffcalendar: korea until the 11th of june
things of interest going on.
upcoming shows:
may 30, club ta, 3호선 버터플라이, 7pm, 15,000원
may 31, yogiga, 불가사리 - experimental noise, 4pm
exhibitions:
대학로 100번지
arko art center
http://arkoartcenter.or.kr/english/01_arko_on/exhibition_view.asp?exhibi...
오인환 개인전 "TRAnS"
artsonje center
http://artsonje.org/asc/
新오감도 ( -- jun 7)
2009 미술관 봄 나들이_미술관 습격 사건
서울시립미술관
A.L.I.C.E Museum 2009 (new media stuff)
Soma 미술관
Mobility Immobility (-- may 31)
Como Story (을지로입구역 4번출구)
http://www.comostory.com/mobility/main.html
THE PRESENT
--June 7
The Library - 건국공예가회 14회 정기전 -
--May 31
[상상 두:드림 CHOICE #8] 종이팥빙수 展_ 인간시장
June 10 --
Paradise Lost
June 3 --
Cloud, after rain
June 2 --
at: Sangsangmadang
thought
idea: single-line power devices, with line acting as both positive and negative, with a capacitor?
---[diode>]----| capacitor | ---------
-----< | LED |
---[