матрёшки / matryoshkas

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counterargument

the original painting part of this project is unavailable for purchase.

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this one is a rollercoaster. do pay attention, but do not take anything too seriously.

yes, the text is meant to be ridiculously non-sensical.

when I think, ideas come to me almost intuitively, and I perceive the idea very clearly. but then, something like this happens:

we have already established, or at least previously agreed to behave as though we had established, that the body may be understood as part of the mind and vice-versa, and that from this follows - if one is willing to follow - that they are both therefore part of you.

this much was settled (or rather, it was declared settled, which is not the same thing, but will suffice for now).

what wasn't settled was the arrival of a thought that behaves badly. I will recount it here as it presented itself to me, which is to say: incompletely.

as I have already alluded in in my previous projects, thoughts are not always owned. on occasion, one finds oneself not even thinking a thought at all, but watching the thought think itself. this raises an inconvenience.

if a thought can think, it implies the thought has a mind, and if the thought possesses a mind, and if we know that the mind has a body, does the thought also have a body? and if it does, where is that body located? does it reside within my body?

and if the thought has a body, does the body also have a mind? and if it does, is that mind housed within my mind, which we tentatively described as a collection of thoughts? and if that is an appropriate description of my mind, then what, precisely, is doing the housing?

*at this point, I feel the mind attempting to gesture at itself.

for if my mind is nothing more than an aggregate of self-thinking thoughts, and if some of those thoughts aren't even mine to begin with, and if some possess bodies and minds of their own, then the question becomes unavoidable, and also deeply impolite:

where the hell is me?

and if I cannot be located, if I exist only as an administrative fiction - a bureaucratic system with no central office - then do I, in any meaningful sense, have a mind? or a body? or are they both merely other thoughts I learned to persist?

this question in the form of a collection of questions, upon being asked, turns away, moves slowly, stubbornly, in the opposite direction. it migrates toward the far side of the mental space.

I suspect it is not trying to escape.

I suspect it is simply continuing to think. without me.

and the wholeness of the original idea goes out the window.

𖦹

I am exercising simplicity. explain, don't justify. and when nothing needs to be said, do not say anything at all.

• ''counterargument'' - gifted to and currently in the possession of a meaningful person in my life. the painting is not for sale.