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The coordinates of confusion. Where, When, Why, How?. MEET ME IN MONTAUK. Signs in journal/signs in consciousness.
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The coordinates of confusion Where, When, Why, How?
Signs in journal/signs in consciousness Obviously, the erasure of the signs in his journal is bound up with the loss of signs in consciousness, because he gave over a grouping of “all signs of Clem” to Lacuna Inc. so they could finish the mapping procedure in a way that was most "advantageous" to him. In some reduced fashion, his not being able to find his entries is, at some level, related to his anxiety about not being able to find the memories his journal cues.
Signs in journal/signs in consciousness But the anxiety Clementine evinces is much more dramatic, as we can see from the following quotation from the film:
“Now, Let’s go Now” • IN CLEMENTINE'S APARTMENT • Clementine watches out the window as Patrick nears. She's crying. He makes his way up her front stairs. She swings open the door and hugs him. • PATRICK Oh, baby, what's going on? • CLEMENTINE I don't know. I'm lost. I'm scared. I feel like I'm disappearing. My skin's coming off. I'm getting old and nothing makes any sense to me. • PATRICK Your not getting old. • CLEMENTINE Nothing makes any sense. Nothing makes any sense. • She pushes herself out of the embrace and looks at Patrick.
The disturbing aspect of Clementine's anxiety is felt but not known to her: that Patrick is using her in the most despicable manner because he not only knows what has happened to her memories, but helped to create that condition in the first place. If that kind of withholding of information was not problematic enough, he also walks around repeating Joel's words in the same locales where Clem and Joel established their ties in the first place.
When working through this anxiety, Clementine maintains a one-pointed desire to go as quickly as possible to frozen bed of forgotten dreams to look up into the void in the same way she did previously with Joel when they were a couple. This desire speaks volumes about her unanalyzable attraction to Joel and the unfinished "business" they have around the dissolution of their relationship.
When Clem goes with Patrick to her Ice-Shelter, something shifts in her consciousness because all the elements are the same except…
the locale remains the same, but now it points toward an absent sign of erased memory.
She wants to relive the scene of past happiness, but its absence creates a terrible anxiety, a kind of terror pointing to something that is nothing!
The nothing of a feeling that is felt but can’t signify, can’t make meaning so the meaning can pass from the register of feelings to the register of cognition. The body feels; the mind’s eye is blank.
The mapping process Blank as a result of this process.
