Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
<-- Introduce Yourself -->
FuzzyChanny:
Hey Isabelle
Thank you for the welcome. Yes, my name is French in origin, but I am not French at all (shown in my shocking attempts at O Level French). :)
EnnisLovesJack:
Hello friends, my name is Keren. (Del Mar...jk) Feel free to call me Keren or ELJ. Whichever floats your boat. Or, um, pitches your pup tent.
I'm a 29-year old woman living in a small town near San Diego. As above, I plan to move to Boston this summer. I have been trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up ever since I graduated from college. Any suggestions??? Jk. I love languages and language in general, words, etymology, linguistics, etc. I need music to live.
I, too, am a Tremblay/IMDb refugee. I won't get into that situation, because it is too upsetting an infuriating. Thanks to Phil and his helpers for taking in us in and helping us start over. I am excited about all this impressive board has to offer.
I fell in love with Brokeback Mountain the first time I saw it, read the story, and then proceeded to see it a total of 15 times in the theater, between January and late March. It has moved into my heart and my head, and taken over my life in various ways. (Not to mention taking over the walls of my bedroom (poor me. not!) and maxing out (in only about two weeks) a big filebox I purchased for the express purpose of storing countless threads, discussions, and articles I had printed out. Either ones I loved and wanted to hold on to, or ones I wanted to read and hadn't had time to. I've since learned it's saner, and better for mobility within a crowded bedroom, to email threads and articles to myself, and drown in a virtual, rather than physical, paper chase.)
'Course, y'all know that feeling. ;) Um, the one before the big parenthesis, that is.;D Since the movie my radio is set almost exclusively to the country station. I pepper my speech with southern accents, words like y'all, and verbiage from the movie, from "friend" to "husbands don't never seem to want to dance with their wives," which I quoted to my mom last night during a relevant conversation. I've made some very good friends through my obsession and involvement on the IMDB boards, both the main BBM one and the Pierre Tremblay underground railroad. Which in fact has functioned like a railroad, ushering us here to worship Brokeback Mountain in freedom, in the safety of our brethren.
I need to add a disclaimer up front: I may not be on here all that much initially. Though I'd love to be able to spend 40 hours a week on this, I have yet to find a patron to enable this. I don't have my own computer - cry for me, go on, cry - so my access is limited to time stolen at work, and begging at my sister's door, and local library labs. To further complicate matters, I'm about to move across the country, 3,000 miles away to Boston. So you can imagine the insanity of job-hunting in a city you don't yet live in and preparing for a huge move like this. It's the biggest move I've ever made on my own. This stuff will consume a large chunk of the next three months of my life.
Please know this is no sign of rudeness, indifference, or lack of interest. I love you all, I love our community, and I hope to get to know all the people here that I have yet to meet. Also know, it eats me up that I can't keep up with all the awesome discussions, posts, articles, videos, and general movie-related info-frenzy. I would LOVE to be able to participate in and stay on top of all of it. To quote a good friend, sucks being finite. But I'll revel in fact that whenever I do find the time, I can come here and pitch a pup tent on the QT with all my fellow brokies.
Well, looking forward to some great chats around this virtual campfire. Pass the whiskey. :)
Love,
Keren/ELJ
isabelle:
Keren - fantastic post!
I do remember you from the other board. I used to be Milena-covic, don't know if you'll remember. We seem to have a lot in common indeed, not least that interest for languages, words, and etymology! I thought I was reading something I wrote elsewhere when I read that part. Which languages do you speak?
I'll wish you good luck for now with your job hunting and moving places, and will look forward to meeting you here from time to time!
Isabelle.
YaadPyar:
--- Quote from: EnnisLovesJack on April 14, 2006, 03:06:48 pm ---
Hello friends, my name is Keren. (Del Mar...jk) Feel free to call me Keren or ELJ.
--- End quote ---
Hey there, ELJ. So great to see you here. And so great to see so many familiar names and old friends. I don't want to name more names at the risk of leaving any out.
And...so GREAT to be meeting new friends. Thanks to Stripey and Impish and Phillip and Aussie Chris and Lynne and BBM Grandma and....to all, for your warm, warm welcome.
Chaplin_fan:
Hi everybody. I just wanted to introduce myself, as I was just sent this link by a friend, and I'm thrilled to be here among you all.
I am, of course, a HUGE Brokeback Mountain junkie (eight viewings so far: five in the theatre and three on the DVD).
I also want to say, odd as it sounds, that this film and short story have changed my life. I was just reading something in this site that ended with: "The movie may be over, but your new life is just beginning," and my jaw dropped. I have been telling people for weeks now that I feel like I have come out of a years-long coma.
The first time I saw Brokeback Mountain (in January), it hit me like a Mack truck. I was almost uncontrollably sobbing in the theatre, and had to wait beyond the end credits before I had composed myself enough to go back out into the real world and face people. Over the next few weeks, my emotions were very surface. It was hard to get through work, or to focus on anything at all. I felt like I was experiencing honest-to-goodess, genuine grief: I was in mourning. But beyond that, I was affected in a way that I have never been affected by any film (or any other work of art, for that matter), and I couldn't figure it out. If not for the message boards where people shared stories of having been moved in the same way, I would have thought I was losing my mind. It was that powerful, that real. Like a punch in the gut, over and over. I cried in my car, I cried in the shower, I cried while I was making dinner at home.....It was all overwhelming. Subsequent viewings I found of a healing nature, but the sense of loss, regret (for what, I had yet to figure out), and indescribable longing haunted me mercilessly. I would awake from sleep, in tears, and then spend several minutes (sometimes longer) finding solace in the imdb message boards, because that would give me enough comfort to get back to sleep.
I finally figured out that one reason this amazing film affected me so deeply was that I just wasn't happy with certain choices I'd made in my life, and felt lost as to the direction I was going (mid-life crisis, perhaps?). I'm almost 40 and was feeling very down about myself, my job (I'm one of those overly-educated people, the unfortunates, who works a demeaning, unchallenging job in order to put food on my table, when my real joy is the part-time teaching gig I have in the fall semesters at a local college), and my life in general. I decided that it was time I make a few changes in my life, just to see what would happen.
So, I began working out more often (four times a week now), I signed up for a creative writing class (which I LOVE and is making me tap into all kinds of things that lay dormant in me for years), and I have "met" (in quotes because we communicate on-line but have yet to actually meet) a wonderful person in France who lives very close to the town where I lived with a host family when I was in college. My partner and I are going to visit her next year, and she is coming to the States in the fall, through school (she's a teacher), where we will actually meet for the first time. Additionally, we will set up an e-mail exchange between our students in the fall, which may lead to all kinds of wonderful opportunities for them (friendships, relationships, travel...). Plus (it just seems to keep getting better) I am now writing a short story centered on fictional students who meet as a result of this real (and future) e-mail exchange, and the journey that that takes them on. On top of all of these positive life changes and wonderful new adventures I find I am embarking on, my relationship with my partner of eight years has never been better.
I feel more hope for myself and my future than I have probably ever felt, and the catalyst for all of this is Brokeback Mountain. I wish that I could personally thank Annie, Ang, Heath, Jake, Michelle, Anne and every other person who was involved in the creation of this masterpiece, for bringing this amazing, magnificent story into my life, and helping me achieve a self-awareness and sense of fulfillment that I long-ago stopped believing were even possible. I have never been so moved, and I will treasure this beautiful film as long as I live.
And now I have found this forum, where I can gush about my beloved Brokeback Mountain to my heart's content, knowing that I won't be derided by trolls, and that you understand. Thanks for reading; I look forward to our communications.
Peace,
Tom
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