No, I understood you meant that was what Annie is telling people. It's none of my business either if anybody is stuck in his or her first emotional reaction to Brokeback Mountain. I took your comment to suggest that Annie doesn't understand how some people haven't been able to "move on," and I honestly don't understand it either. If I were close to somebody who was still as torn up as some of us were when we first saw the movie, I'd be concerned about that person's well-being.
I am sure Jeff, that most of us have "moved on" in some way, from the way we initially felt when we first saw the movie. That first breath taking, gut wrenching turmoil of emotion was something that we at first thought ripped our heart out, drove us crazy, left us walking around with it pounding in our thoughts. We awoke with it, and we slept with it.
And I guess, like when anyone goes through a life changing experience, we think we will never be the same again, and we will never get over that feeling. We even think that we are crazy, that there is something wrong with us, for a lot of us, we thought we were the only one feeling this way. We were even embarrassed to talk about it to family and friends and some of us bottled up our feelings, which in some cases only made it more intense.
Our "therapy" or "councelling" was to to come into sites like Bettermost, to talk to people who were reacting the same way, we at last realized that we were not alone, we read stories of how people were feeling, and it was exactly how we were feeling. So we new we were not going crazy, or rather, if we were, we were not going there alone. We were able to talk about it, we learnt to understand it, and we learnt to accept it.
If
accepting it means we have "moved on" then most of us have, if enjoying the experience instead of fearing it means we have "moved on" then most of us have, if instead of it taking over our life completely, but now infiltrating it into the way we live day to day, is "moving on" then we have done that too, if we are better people now than we were before then we have "moved on".
"Moving on" is not something that can be measured or has a use by date, its as individual and private similar to how someone grieves. We all do it differently and should be allowed to do so, without someone thinking we need help or we need "to get a life".
I personally, have never been a fan of Annie Proulx, I have not read any of her other books, I do not like her "hollier than thou" approach to her ownership of BBM, I dont like her attitude towards the people like us, who she seems to belittle because of our obsession (for want of a better word) with the story and the film. SHE is not responsible for how I feel, I do not give her any credit whatsoever for the wonderful journey I have been on since seeing the movie. I AM who is responsible for that journey, it is MY life's experiences that caused me to grab hold of the words and the meanings in the story to make me feel this way, the only thing she did, was have the ability to put the words together to a story that was all ready MINE and YOURS and everyone else here. To her it was a story of fiction, to most of us it was actual fact. She didn't give me Ennis and Jack, I had an Ennis and Jack in my life all ready, they just had different names.She didn't give me Brokeback Mountain, it had been in my life long before she penned the words.