Eternal sunshine

just made my ilx debut.. no longer a virgin

we are almost all doomed to be forgotten, no?

what a total mind fuck of a movie; I enjoy the writing, and the unexpected element of jump cuts

Hello Fadii. Your post inspired me to look up the backstory of this poem -it is terrifying and amazing.

― felicity

in the meantime your post inspired me to delve a little more into the story of abelard and heloise, which i was already familiar with. it was interesting, because previously i had tended to focus more on the tragedy of abelard. well, except that i didn't see it quite as "tragic". honestly i sort of envied abelard a little bit. you know. There Were No Signs. it's real actual work for me to try and frame what happened to abelard as calamitous, even though within the historical context it clearly was.

it's interesting because the way i can understand it is by looking at the effect it had on heloise, who, on reading more, is the figure i identify _far_ more with. she was this absolutely brilliant woman in an age where... her having _access to education_ was so exceptional, in the context of the times. the other thing that is interesting is... my understanding is that in medieval culture, the idea of women was that we were all slutty seducers. so heloise has to deal with that, too, this idea that what happened to abelard was a result of her own sexual desire. her desire for abelard, within the context of the times... i can imagine someone responding "oh yeah she can do all that reading but in the end she's just like all the other women, isn't she? incapable of temperance, controlled by her base carnal desires."

and from what i read of heloise's letters, there's so much of her trying to navigate that... her unapologetic insistence that her love for abelard is _not_ sinful, while simultaneously attempting to take responsibility for his castration. it's almost like a DBT thing, where she's blameless but also her actions led to this outcome. which my personal bias is that it's probably the best way to handle something like that?

and then abelard just doesn't seem to get it and spends all his time beating himself up to the point where heloise is like "well no point talking about that anymore, got any thoughts on how to run a priory abelard?"

again this is me making shit up in my head, i haven't read the letters

we are almost all doomed to be forgotten, no?

― jpeg (Fadii), Thursday, February 22, 2024 5:46 AM (nineteen minutes ago)

well we're all going to be forgotten. it's just a question of when. i don't find value in endings but on what happens in the meantime.

felicity, hi! great perspective. i laughed out loud reading your narration of Heloise and Abelard post-castration. while I haven't read much of their letters I agree Heloise is a liberated bad b paving the way for her time and era.
thougghh I can relate to Abelard's inability to let go; one of the reasons I love this quote is that it convey's that as painful as our memories might be, as much as we would like to forget them, they make us who we are. You can't lose your bad memories without losing the very essence of who you are.

I also really loved Kate's take.

2x