eternal sunshine

Earlier tonight I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was nice, you should see it. There's no spoilers ahead, by the way. Later I was googling around for the poem the title was taken from, "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope:

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;

While looking for that I ran across a posting related to the movie over at Kuro5hin that told a really wonderful story about how we manipulate memory. The mechanism of human memory always fascinates me, especially concerning the relationship between dreams and long term memory, and now since reading Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle, our unconcious editing, censorship and fabrication of memories.

Anyhow, while reading the post I realized I had met its author once, at a Linux Expo in San Francisco. He was manning a booth and selling copies of his novel for $5 a pop. Turns out the book didn't floor me (but it wasn't as bad as I made it sound either, I think with a little distance). His Kuro5hin posting mentioned he also edited a book that won a Hofstadter Prize for computer generated fiction, so I followed the link to find out more about it. I haven't looked at the compuer-written stories yet, but the story Sundman unfolds in the introduction is perhaps the most fantastic introduction to a fiction collection I've ever read. I won't even try to describe it, just check it out for yourself.

Comments

[mie]

Just came back from our date movie. I would have held your hand a bunch if you had been sitting next to me in the theater. But it was nice thinking you had just seen it. Thanks for the date!

***for those who haven't seen the movie, you may want to stop reading now***

I absolutely loved the part where they get to play around as kids together. You and I are good at that together, but it would be so cool to take you back with me (under different circumstances). Remember when you once asked what my favorite memory was? And I answered, in addition to laying my head on Becky's belly, that I will always treasure how special it was when my mom gave me my lunch box one day and said there was a surprise in it for me. I can imagine we'd be on the school bus in Essex, CT. I'd get on and you'd be sittin' in the back. I'd run to you, slide in a seat (remember how big they were and how you couldn't see over the top?), and tell you that I had a special lunch. Then at lunch time, we'd meet at a table and I'd share it with you :)

[johnny]

Hello,

I was egosurfing on technorati when I came upon yer blog. I like it. Anyway, I'm glad you liked my Cheap Complex Devices more than you did AofA-- aparently. And thanks for the kind words about the K5 comment.

This note is just to mention that full texts of both of my books are available on my site wetmachine.com for free download (PDF) under Creative Commons license.