Amazing the simple things we take for granted, like being able to sit in the midst of others, yet undisturbed, on a Sunday afternoon, collect our thoughts, and maybe even commit them to paper or to disc. Before leaving the city almost five years ago, for what I innocently thought would be a relatively idyllic life in the country, I wasn’t particularly drawn to test this truth in Houston, Texas. In fact, I didn’t even use the laptop that I had already owned for a year. Back then, although I had periodic urges to keep a journal, I was too distracted—perhaps unfocused, perhaps lazy, or even lacking purpose. That’s a scary thought—living quite literally in the middle of the 4th largest city in the United States, exposed day in and day out to all kinds of stimuli, yet feeling no compulsion to simply document or purge, examine or raise an angry fist. It took almost five years of routine, frequent isolation—oh, if only life were as uncomplicated as relative isolation would afford—to hit the wall and discover that I have to collect some thoughts and put them into words, if for no other reason than to maintain my sanity. If memory serves me well, this is one of only three epiphanies I’ve known.
This epiphany hit hard in the pre-dawn hours of December 3, 2005. I experienced a flash—call it spiritual—that would change the way I viewed myself and what I am doing with this precious life—or what remains of it at age 62. I’ve looked over this precipice before, gotten a glimpse of resolve, but then become lost in the day to daze of earning a living, chasing this dream or that, taking the road more traveled. So on this day of December 3rd, I realized that I had to make some changes, unload some excess of things, and get rid of some baggage. I understood anew that I simply can’t go on in the same way. Does this mean I volunteer—not more, just volunteer? Does it mean that I give away more of my worldly gifts? “For Sale—All My Earthly Possessions”. Does it mean that I consciously seek to influence those around me in a positive way—be a positive role model? Does it mean that I stand in the window and shout to the world, “hey, I have something to say here”? Does it mean that I just need to grow up?
So here I am this Sunday afternoon, waiting to see “Brokeback Mountain” for the third time. I didn’t expect to be here in College Station, Texas this afternoon—humorously yet sadly referred to as Closet Station. So someone described this bastion of conservatism on one of the blogs carrying discussions of Ang Lee’s 21st century rendering of a late 20th love affair, set in the desolate and apparently deadly world of West Texas and points farther north and west.
It is a homosexual affair. The lovers are both men, cowboys even. They fall in love in 1963 while sheepherding over a summer on Brokeback Mountain, somewhere in beautiful Wyoming big country. Later, the widowed wife of one of these still relatively-young men is caused to reflect that she thought Brokeback Mountain might be “some pretend place, where the bluebirds sing and there’s a whiskey spring”. Her husband Jack’s long-time affair with his friend Ennis has escaped her, at least to some degree. Jack always traveled to Wyoming from Childress, Texas to “fish and hunt” with his long-time good friend Ennis Del Marr.
When these guys met they were just short of 20. Poor, mostly uneducated, feeling their seed, and for some reason fate had brought them together. When Jack dies on a lonely back road, apparently at the hands of “gay bashers”, he’s only 39, yet still dreaming of a life more complete than what he has been dealt thus far. We’re talking about life unrealized—life only marginally fulfilled, chronically repeated poor choices—choices that numb, living in fear—fear of living from the heart and gut, blind sacrifice, indecision.
After their first coupling, one is quick to say, “I’m not queer.” The other, “Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.” The summer ends, each goes back to other lives already in the making, and for the next 20 years they steal chances to meet and love, making havoc, robbing not only themselves but the ones whose lives are closely linked with theirs. Jack would have them together, making a ranch of their own—“Listen, I’m thinkin’, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calf operation, your horses, it’d be some sweet life”. Jack marries prosperity, the spoiled daughter of a spoiled, ignorant man, and Jack and Lureen have a son. Ennis married only three months after the summer on Brokeback—a plan that was already in motion—and quickly fathered two daughters, whom he loves and adores. Sadly, his wife Alma gets the truly short end of the stick. Her witness of Ennis and Jack’s first reunion—arms locked and lips devouring, only partially hidden in the alley behind their apartment—stuns her, but doesn’t really prepare her for what follows. At this point she’s lost her man, temporarily lost her sense of herself as a woman, and she’s immediately forced to come to terms with this realization on her own as Ennis goes away with Jack, first for the night, and then for the next few days.
This story ends tragically, of course. How could it be any other way? Ennis and Alma divorce while their daughters are relatively young; she remarries and has at least one other child. Ennis doesn’t escape the scrape-by mindset that has defined his life. In spite of Jack’s efforts to bring them together, Ennis can’t come to terms with it. Early only he has told Jack that life has taken him down a different road, with a wife and two children. It just can’t be. “I’m stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop.” And “if you can’t fix it you got to stand it,” Ennis says. If you choose not to fix it, then you’ve chosen to try to stand it.
Remember, though, our setting is the American West, conservative, God-fearing country, one where Ennis as a nine-year-old boy was made to witness what happens to men who try to live together, even ones who are “tough old birds”. This is West Texas in 1983, where a seemingly regular guy like Jack Twist can catch the attention of the wrong eyes and wind up beaten to death with a tire iron on an isolated back road. Not so different than the Wyoming of 1998 where Matthew Shepard was savagely beaten to death by two men claiming to be gay who lured him away from a campus bar. Or for that matter, pick any city—New York, Houston, Chicago—where anti-homosexual crimes occur on a regular basis.
Hate is so much larger and more pervasive than Jack’s untimely, brutal, hate and fear-filled death. Hate is waged on a world scale in the name of some God. Hate apparently is in the human genes, it is generational, it is infectious, it is a killer. Hate comes at us from the pulpit, from the stadiums filled with revivalists, from the political stage, from the neighborhood café, from the school board meeting room, from the playground. We stand proudly on our ignorance and prejudice, so proud that we want to model it and inculcate it. Some are so bold as to attempt justifying it by turning to the Scriptures and using proof text to make a hate-filled, self-serving point.
So what is this epiphany thing? Could it just be a conscious decision to make a difference? Repentance is associated with sin and Biblical New Testament teachings. The Greek source is Metanoeo, meaning “to change one's mind and purpose, as the result of after knowledge.” Do we have to become born-again Christians to escape the shackles of hate and fear? Some would say so, but as a friend said to me some weeks back, “I suppose that’s fine, if that’s what you believe.” Decency, tolerance, compassion, respect are not the sole property of Christians, or any other faith. How much do we have to witness to realize that we can’t make this journey failing to escape ourselves and fighting to cling to our self-imposed ignorance? What does it take to wake us from this sleep walk that so easily becomes a way of living?
Brokeback Sunday Afternoon
Harold Hollis (January 11, 2006 - Normangee Texas)
This epiphany hit hard in the pre-dawn hours of December 3, 2005. I experienced a flash—call it spiritual—that would change the way I viewed myself and what I am doing with this precious life—or what remains of it at age 62. I’ve looked over this precipice before, gotten a glimpse of resolve, but then become lost in the day to daze of earning a living, chasing this dream or that, taking the road more traveled. So on this day of December 3rd, I realized that I had to make some changes, unload some excess of things, and get rid of some baggage. I understood anew that I simply can’t go on in the same way. Does this mean I volunteer—not more, just volunteer? Does it mean that I give away more of my worldly gifts? “For Sale—All My Earthly Possessions”. Does it mean that I consciously seek to influence those around me in a positive way—be a positive role model? Does it mean that I stand in the window and shout to the world, “hey, I have something to say here”? Does it mean that I just need to grow up?
So here I am this Sunday afternoon, waiting to see “Brokeback Mountain” for the third time. I didn’t expect to be here in College Station, Texas this afternoon—humorously yet sadly referred to as Closet Station. So someone described this bastion of conservatism on one of the blogs carrying discussions of Ang Lee’s 21st century rendering of a late 20th love affair, set in the desolate and apparently deadly world of West Texas and points farther north and west.
It is a homosexual affair. The lovers are both men, cowboys even. They fall in love in 1963 while sheepherding over a summer on Brokeback Mountain, somewhere in beautiful Wyoming big country. Later, the widowed wife of one of these still relatively-young men is caused to reflect that she thought Brokeback Mountain might be “some pretend place, where the bluebirds sing and there’s a whiskey spring”. Her husband Jack’s long-time affair with his friend Ennis has escaped her, at least to some degree. Jack always traveled to Wyoming from Childress, Texas to “fish and hunt” with his long-time good friend Ennis Del Marr.
When these guys met they were just short of 20. Poor, mostly uneducated, feeling their seed, and for some reason fate had brought them together. When Jack dies on a lonely back road, apparently at the hands of “gay bashers”, he’s only 39, yet still dreaming of a life more complete than what he has been dealt thus far. We’re talking about life unrealized—life only marginally fulfilled, chronically repeated poor choices—choices that numb, living in fear—fear of living from the heart and gut, blind sacrifice, indecision.
After their first coupling, one is quick to say, “I’m not queer.” The other, “Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.” The summer ends, each goes back to other lives already in the making, and for the next 20 years they steal chances to meet and love, making havoc, robbing not only themselves but the ones whose lives are closely linked with theirs. Jack would have them together, making a ranch of their own—“Listen, I’m thinkin’, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calf operation, your horses, it’d be some sweet life”. Jack marries prosperity, the spoiled daughter of a spoiled, ignorant man, and Jack and Lureen have a son. Ennis married only three months after the summer on Brokeback—a plan that was already in motion—and quickly fathered two daughters, whom he loves and adores. Sadly, his wife Alma gets the truly short end of the stick. Her witness of Ennis and Jack’s first reunion—arms locked and lips devouring, only partially hidden in the alley behind their apartment—stuns her, but doesn’t really prepare her for what follows. At this point she’s lost her man, temporarily lost her sense of herself as a woman, and she’s immediately forced to come to terms with this realization on her own as Ennis goes away with Jack, first for the night, and then for the next few days.
This story ends tragically, of course. How could it be any other way? Ennis and Alma divorce while their daughters are relatively young; she remarries and has at least one other child. Ennis doesn’t escape the scrape-by mindset that has defined his life. In spite of Jack’s efforts to bring them together, Ennis can’t come to terms with it. Early only he has told Jack that life has taken him down a different road, with a wife and two children. It just can’t be. “I’m stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop.” And “if you can’t fix it you got to stand it,” Ennis says. If you choose not to fix it, then you’ve chosen to try to stand it.
Remember, though, our setting is the American West, conservative, God-fearing country, one where Ennis as a nine-year-old boy was made to witness what happens to men who try to live together, even ones who are “tough old birds”. This is West Texas in 1983, where a seemingly regular guy like Jack Twist can catch the attention of the wrong eyes and wind up beaten to death with a tire iron on an isolated back road. Not so different than the Wyoming of 1998 where Matthew Shepard was savagely beaten to death by two men claiming to be gay who lured him away from a campus bar. Or for that matter, pick any city—New York, Houston, Chicago—where anti-homosexual crimes occur on a regular basis.
Hate is so much larger and more pervasive than Jack’s untimely, brutal, hate and fear-filled death. Hate is waged on a world scale in the name of some God. Hate apparently is in the human genes, it is generational, it is infectious, it is a killer. Hate comes at us from the pulpit, from the stadiums filled with revivalists, from the political stage, from the neighborhood café, from the school board meeting room, from the playground. We stand proudly on our ignorance and prejudice, so proud that we want to model it and inculcate it. Some are so bold as to attempt justifying it by turning to the Scriptures and using proof text to make a hate-filled, self-serving point.
So what is this epiphany thing? Could it just be a conscious decision to make a difference? Repentance is associated with sin and Biblical New Testament teachings. The Greek source is Metanoeo, meaning “to change one's mind and purpose, as the result of after knowledge.” Do we have to become born-again Christians to escape the shackles of hate and fear? Some would say so, but as a friend said to me some weeks back, “I suppose that’s fine, if that’s what you believe.” Decency, tolerance, compassion, respect are not the sole property of Christians, or any other faith. How much do we have to witness to realize that we can’t make this journey failing to escape ourselves and fighting to cling to our self-imposed ignorance? What does it take to wake us from this sleep walk that so easily becomes a way of living?
Brokeback Sunday Afternoon
Harold Hollis (January 11, 2006 - Normangee Texas)
1 comment:
well,
harold you pose alot of questions, and i dont have any answers.
i do sometimes wonder as a christian if the world looks funny to an atheist or agnostic. all these folks who have spiritual beliefs hating and killing in the name of god, alla, etc.
i remember a song from the 60s/70s that joan baez used to sing called
"with god on our side"
it seems we have been hating and killing in the name of god for centuries. i'm surprised, sometimes that god still believes
in us.
but i'm glad he does.
love,
fran
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