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.