Brokeback Bits

I saw brokeback for the first time tonight - how many years since release? Anyway, there's a fragmented story if ever there was one.

At the end of the film, it emerges that Jack Twist requested that his ashes are left on Brokeback Mountain - a place neither his wife nor parents know anything about, but which Jack himself considered to be the most important place of his life. Jack's situation contrasts with Ennis'. Whilst Jack is clearly never reconciled with his fragmentation (continually striving to overcome it, whether with Ennis or someone else), Ennis is reconciled to it (though not exactly happy with it).

Fact is, after so long trying, we've reached a point where people can hold their most treasured possessions in different places for an entire lifetime, never bringing them home for all to share because it's no longer clear who "all" is anyway.

For sure, that's a huge achievement compared to what was around before. But still, it takes some thinking about, even if you're born into it.

So, I'll start with some questions about how far us humans can stretch:

- Can you function as a social human without sharing your whole person with any one significant other?

- Are the bonds of love and loyalty possible if a person retains disparate parts of his or her core being?

- Can community exist in a truly overlapping and geography-neutral pattern?

These questions aren't meant to be , I should add, specifically about homosexual cowboys. Rather, just about the self-questioning liberalism that we're living in now. They sum up my confusions about the relations between people, groups of people, countries and groups of countries.

What do we do now we've done liberalism?