ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A MIND WITH AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PAST?! Where’s ARIANA GRANDE? someone write an album on talking geckos and magical past selling men instead of toxic ex-husbands :P

Hey everyone! Im super excited to discuss this week’s reading, “The Book of Chameleons” by Jose Eduardo Agualusa! 

Immediately my mind goes to the movie Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. With Ariana Grande’s album coming out and everything, I have been thinking about that movie a lot and how interesting the concept is. A world where you’re able to alter your past and change your memories, a little more specific in the movie towards a certain person rather than in this week’s reading, but the concept itself is so intriguing. Isn’t our past what makes us the people we are today? If we change our past, are we the same person in the present? Ugh I love it and this whole concept of memory and development SO MUCH. 

Firstly, I loved the twist of the narrator in this book LOL. I did not expect a literal gecko to be a narrator but it was a nice change and made the book that much more unique and stand out from our other readings. 

The book made me think back to our first book of the course “Combray” by Marcel Proust. I think this theme of memory really brought me back to the start of the course which I guess is kind of full circle considering we’re reaching the end here. They both focus on the past and memory but I guess in very different ways with Proust’s being more of a reflection and Agualusa being the reluctance to want to reflect and rather change in a way. 

I liked the aspect of dreams in the book and how Felix Ventura and the gecko share dreams which really amplified the realism of the book just as Proust created this reminiscence through the madeleines dipped in tea. 

I think the title is really important here as well, where the fuck are the chameleons LMAO. Like of course you would go into it, like the lecture says, thinking it’s about chameleons even remotely but they are only mentioned once. I think it is pretty easy to, however, while reading the title’s significance and how all of the characters are inherently chameleons, changing their pasts like chameleons change colour. Again relating to The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind if you remove, or alter your memories, are you the same person? When a Chameleon changes its colours, it is the same chameleon but could be perceived as an entirely different chameleon to someone who didn’t see it in its original colours, its true colours if you will. 

I think we are shaped by our memories and our past so much and that is so important. We all have negative experiences and bad memories, but those make us who we are and allow us to reflect on the good. Yes in the book he changes their entire past but still, that is who they are now, it is so interesting to think if this was a possibility in the real world, would people do it? I know I wouldn’t but maybe that’s just me or maybe I’m just saying that because it is only hypothetical right now. 

My question for you, a pretty obvious one:

If this ability to change your past, or remove parts of it, or buy a new one entirely, was real, would you change anything at all or would you not change a thing? Why or why not?