Eternal Sunshine

of the Spotless

Mind[1of 4]

“How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd”

Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard"

Click icon to add picture

Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind

Questions:1. What is the

quality of sunshine that is void of light?

2. What is the quality of

sunshine that projects its own

absence?

“QUEST”-TIONSThese are some of the provocative questions that

the film The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind delves into when studying the disintegration of the protagonists' relationship.

This set of questions is connected with other related questions.

“QUEST”-TIONS

1. For instance, what is the quality of a sign that is

absent to consciousness?

4. And what is this thread that follows a step-by-step process which need be

traced if we are to understand the twists and turns of such a significatory

transformation?

“QUEST”-TIONS

(1) Here is a more concrete indication of what I mean:

(2) A massive set of signs was there.

(3) A massive set of signs was erased.

“QUEST”-TIONS

(4) Yet, although erased, something remains, something still signifies its own absence.

(5) Something is there in its own absence, and it has the power to indicate as much.

“QUEST”-TIONS

(6) Some ghosting of signs lingers, some associational presence of erased signs

relate to their associational absence & the mixed up mature of a present-absence that cues both Clem and Joel in strange

and indefinable ways.

(7) This indicates that a complex, multi-stepped process occurred at

some time in the past because it has left a ? in the present

“QUEST”-TIONS

(8) The full presence of sign-presence is gone.

(9) The full presence of significatory mental representations are gone.

(10) Oddly, the full presence of absence is gone as well, because both characters know to “Meet

me in Montauk.”

“QUEST”-TIONS

(11) Something remains that is neither the full presence of memory or the full

absence of memory’s erasure. Although erased, something still signifies its own

ambiguity.

(12) What remains is a present-absence and an absent-presence: not as

entities, but as a process!

“QUEST”-TIONS

(13) What remains is a present-absence/absent-presence that

signifies a process occurred!

“QUEST”-TIONS

(14) A process that can only be recovered as a process!

“QUEST”-TIONS

(15) A process of presence, absence, present-absence and absent-presence!

“QUEST”-TIONS

(16) Look for full presence and you will find you-know-not-what.

(17) Look for full absence and your intuition will tell you that something is more and less

than what you are looking for.

(18) Look but you will not be able to “see” in the usual way we use the

word.

“QUEST”-TIONS

(19) Joel and Clem learn how to move from absence-to-partially-felt-

presence and back again to a present-absence.

(20) That breaks up into presence-disintegrating-into-absence and its reversal, but

not in any way that a rationalist logic can determine.

“QUEST”-TIONS

(21) When logic fails Clem and Joel in piecing together their world, all they can do is

experience life anew and feel their way through it.

“QUEST”-TIONS

(22) They must rely on their intuition and feelings, which show them the-know-not-what of

life.

(23) Of a life not knowable, of a life in fragments, of a life felt but not seen.

“QUEST”-TIONS

(24) They are left with fragments of a process that repeats itself, although some

of its elements are missing.

(25) A process that repeats itself -- driven by the engine of their love,

which is felt but not known.

“QUEST”-TIONS

“QUEST”-TIONS

(30) “Their worlds” forgot

“QUEST”-TIONS

(31) The world of their consciousness forgetting and forgotten . . . sort of . . . .

(32) the forgetting of memory

(33) the forgotten lacuna

“QUEST”-TIONS

(34) which knows not how to remember its traces except in

the witnessing of the process by others who knew them.

“QUEST”-TIONS

. . . .

“QUEST”-TIONSAs I indicated above, all that is left of this

sequence are the remnants of a process — a once there/now gone progression of significatory traces, which formed the signs of consciousness as they changed with the erasure of unconscious memories.

The result of this final transformation is absent signs pointing toward a void indicating a process which, forgotten, nevertheless occurred to produce this result.

“QUEST”-TIONS

Here is the same thought put in a slightly different way:

“QUEST”-TIONS

. . .

“QUEST”-TIONS

all that is left in Joel's mind after his procedure is a void of signs that once were but are no more

even though they still signify their own absence in some strange

manner.

“QUEST”-TIONSFinally, all of these questions lead to a larger one: what is the quality of an

eternal sunshine of a spotless mind?

. . . .

what exists . . . When all is process with no points of logic or frames of reference?

what exists . . .

what . . .

. . .

?

Who, What, Where, When, Why, How?