"I am a Brokebackolic"
I'm only slowly coming to understand why the emotions this story and film draw out of my innards are so profoundly painful, deeply liberating and ultimately stimulating to hope. This story of love that is so passionately embraced and yet so continually repelled is so much the story of my own emotional journey. It's as if I were born back broken by love, my heart in perpetual need, yet unwilling or unable to be wanted as much as I needed to want.
There are those for whom love is not a simple formula, laid out predestined to fulfillment. In our world, homosexuals have this path to blaze in each individual's pursuit of a relationship. There is a superficial and flippant map overlaying a rough terrain. In society's mirror we can and often do costume our feelings for the masquerade and only in our loneliest solitude see the hurting heart beating broken within. We know the truth, and we can't fix it, and often can't stand it, but we ride this thing because it's the horse we came in on.
Gays are not alone in this travail, but we represent it like diplomats from an alien world, wise in our knowledge of what love is not, and achingly naive of what it actually is. We feel love like a knife cutting our nerves, perhaps much like Jack felt as Ennis spit penetrated his rectum: damn sure it hurts and damn sure the pain is worth it.
I'm relieved to know there is a resounding recognition that Brokeback Mountain is a place we all understand and believe in. This masterpiece has awakened the depth of us, and we are grateful for the power of this art formed revelation. In this lonely world that seeks to condemn us and contract us outside the laws of love, we know that love is a force of nature, and its nature is always compelling, often cruel, but never ever unwilling to hold us and console us in our pain.
"Jack, I swear....."
We live forever on Brokeback Mountain, if only for an moment.
Can the pain of the heart be loved
Alone, alike in devastation
we grew apart through love
at last lost, forever longed,
only held there
in the clutch of cloth mementos
threads bound interwoven
from the beginning.
