A Mountain of emotion

It's 2006. And one thing I look forward to this year is the release (finally!) of Brokeback Mountain in Singapore (I hope the censorship board won't do anything nasty to the film). I didn't read the story in The New Yorker back in 1997 but chanced upon it when I was selecting anthologies for my creative writing class in 2004.

The one I chose - The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction - included the short story by Annie Proulx (whose last name I still can't pronounce, though this isn't the reason I didn't use the short story in my syllabus, or maybe it was, I can't remember) and I read it without knowing how famous it'd been or would be. The story may not be for everyone, but it got me.

Spoiler ahead:

The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
~ from Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

There were many good ones but I was knocked out by this paragraph. Twenty years of meetings that were few and far between, and all Ennis had at the end were his memories and two shirts, one hung inside the other. You can teach your students - or for that matter, yourself - again and again about detail; creating small, telling details or a power-filled one that never feels tacked on by the author but actually emerges from the story and the characters. But they often fail to accomplish this, and the truth is, so do you.

In the trailer for Brokeback Mountain, you can catch a few seconds of Ennis Del Mar (played by Heath Ledger) holding those two shirts. It's heartbreaking, knowing what those shirts mean to him. Yesterday, I found a thread on imdb.com. I didn't read the whole of it but it began with a poignant observation by one writer, Jeff Mallory -

how many of us are out there?

i see them at each screening, and i've been to see the film nine times now.

men sitting alone, women sitting alone. wrapped up in that film like an old blanket desperately searching for something. weeping. finding new meaning in the subtlest of sentences or glances by the actors.

...catching the under-the-brim glance that Ennis gives to Jack, dreading his reaction, after he tells him he can't make it back until november. he bites his nails knowing that he's making his lover sad... we're hoping.

we catch these moments, we sit until the last line of the last song is uttered, "get along little doggies, get along," then we leave the theater to what?

I almost asked a sad looking young man if he wanted to get coffee and talk.

we're all out there. we feed on this movie and take it home, to work, to our friends and family, and for some of us, we take it home alone and wonder..."did I make the right choices these past 40 years? Is there a brokeback mountain for me? is it too late?"

then we sleep and dream, waking to the hope that these feelings have subsided---but for now, they haven't. the world is still here, and this movie is still only a couple miles and couple dollars away. instead of a lonely brew at the bar, we're going back to brokeback...one more time.

it's got us good.

I suppose I might be one of those who'd watch this film alone. I don't have a Brokeback Mountain of my own but I know the pain, the disappointment, the yearning. There are some films, some songs, some stories and poems that uncannily know the correct turns and openings to reach the soul and pluck out every secret, memory, and shame. That's why they're loved, because people recognize themselves or some shade of themselves in those images, words, and music.

On an entirely different note, I'm supposed to locate a male stripper. I'm not the one organizing the hen night, but I promised the organizers I'd ask around for names and numbers. If anyone out there knows of strippers in Singapore, please write me at mae_chern@hotmail.com. I'd really appreciate any help. I won't ask how you know of the stripper or whether you're the stripper himself. Just a few contacts and recommendations if you have seen the display. Much obliged.

Posted by Monoceros at January 1, 2006 10:50 PM