Monday, August 25, 2008

pathos as physical pain

for 3 years i have put off watching 'brokeback mountain' | a pattern of mine to ignore perceived popular culture experience until i want to consume it | for some reason i came across shorts of the film on youtube & got hooked into the film & bought it mid last week

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strangely i have been seeking a cathartic crying experience for several weeks | not easy being an emotional control freak & i kinda believed that if i watched this film the catharsis would occur & i would experience the needed crying

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putting off watching the film until last night | i hopped into bed & glued myself to the laptop from beginning to end ...

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the result was one of intense physical pain ... in my chest, the oddest feeling of both emotional torture as the observer & of a profoundity that hasn't yet left me | i don't buy into love stories & believe the word is so ridiculously inadequate for the plethora of feelings one can have for another | i actually didn't see it as a love story but as a tragedy so personal, so near experienced by myself, so invisible to the world and such a intimate grief | a real sense of the experience of being an other in the world | & i don't believe that unless one has spent a significant amount of one's life being an óther' that real understanding of the gravity of this pathos occurs

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perhaps some of this is the projection on the film by myself, of the exquisite pain of intense feelings for another & how shockingly close one can be to having that rent asunder by fate or circumstances | all i could think about today is of the monumental & indefinable level of grief i would experience if my man disappeared, died or was taken away from me suddenly | i realise that we are separated physically, often, with occasional re-unions of passion, lust & emotional intensity, most likely all the way through until to the end of 2009 ... perhaps this also contributes

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but to even contemplate that i may never see or be with him again due to some freak of fate | stops me dead in my tracks ... | it is immobilising me & makes all other cares in life seem irrelevant

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i had coffee with my great friend wendy today & she made the observation that her view of us is one of a highly entwined emotional connection that is rarely seen | interestingly enough a number of friends have commented that they would hunt us down & kill us both if we ever broke apart | douglas & i seem to have created some unique phenomena that elicits this fervour of threat by others ... i feel both empowered & frightened & scared | my emotional resilience & my "i am an island" psychological view of self has been significantly dented

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i would have not believed a cinematic experience would lead me in this direction

3 comments:

Dank Monster said...

your words surrender me to your fear

IR said...

I find it totally amazing the impact a film such as brokeback can have on ones sense of being. You and Douglas are integrally one - you would not be the Garry I have come to respect and know without him, your strong love and loyalty is very very evident, and I have to concur with Wendy - if you two ever split - you would both be hunted down and killed

Dank Monster said...

may i add: thank god that love is so irrational that no one will ever manage to control it. Not everybody melts with the smell of hand soap.