Brokeback Mountain

It seems fitting to write here about the film everyone is writing and talking about. As I swam my laps a few minutes ago I had to stop to keep from choking while sobs swept over me briefly. It was a caused by a recollection of the last scene before Emmit's open closet door, with Jack's jacket and shirt hanging there in its rustic shrine. My momento is a wildly colored windbreaker once worn by my too early departed Dad. I still treasure it and always will, and sometimes imagine his touch and fragrance when I slip it on. Tears run now as I recall his beard on my face, his arm across my chest. He always gave me love and trust of a kind it seemed no one else would give. And it occurs to me as I think back on this afternoon in the hushed theater (it was the quietest movie audience I can recall ever being a part of) that failure to trust was the central tragedy of the story. At a deep level I feel clearly that Emmit's wife would have tried to understand, would have succumbed to Jack's charms, may even have welcomed both into her heart--could there have been a "Paint Your Wagon" happy ending, or at least a kind of instinctual, sibling love between three of them, or even a communal family in which love conquered all? Time's story on the movie referred to a scurrilous comment about "the homosexualizing of America". What my best friend and I partook of together this afternoon was perhaps, at long last, the beginning of the "de-homophobizing of America."

Over half a year has passed since my last post--Cindy Sheehan will be in Honolulu this week. It was the death of her son on my birthday that provided part of the impetus to get this blog going. I'm looking forward to hearing Ms Sheehan speak (and to meeting her I hope) at my church--Church of the Crossroads--for years it has been Honolulu's most liberal and politically active U.C.C. congretation. It is only natural that Cindy Sheehan should come there to deliver her first messages in 2006. This is the year she says the Chickenhawks will be sent home to roost. I hope this is the year some of them will be removed from their gold plated perches, and cooped up to serve long prison terms.


I've neglected this blog mostly because of the hectic pace of events this year. My last posting detailed the excitement over John Michael Kainoa's first prom date. That event almost immediately developed into a whirlwind romance. One of the high points was John's publication of his first volume of poetry in honor of Lindsay Wilhelm's 17th birthday. It was a top secret project that of course he failed to keep hidden from "Big Brother" (read "Dad".) John was angry that I snooped (we use the same computer, for Pete's sake) but I think he forgave me when he saw how profoundly his work moved me. It is wonderfully creative, eye opening stuff, and I hope before long he will be sharing it with the world. He started guitar lessons this year and I see him as a songwriter in the Rufus Wainwright / Fiona Appell mode. No doubt John's first songs will be about Lindsay--what a star! She's a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist like John, and Editor-in-Chief of the Kamehameha Schools student newspaper: KA MO`I. At her young age she's already a world traveler, having visited Europe a couple of times; this fall she attended a convocation of high school publishers in Chicago and visited the University of Chicago campus, which she's very excited about.


I have big plans for 2006. I'll be finishing my thesis on privatization of public services, and mounting a campaign for readmission to the U.H. Manoa Public Adminsitration program. If you have some knowlege of what I've been doing with my life over the past seven years and would like to add your name to my "petition of support", please contact me at teachlaw@gmail.com .
Sylvia Law is coming to Honolulu to present a high profile Colloquium for the U.H. medical and law schools, and I have been invited to participate in an observor/contributor capacity. I plan to be doing a lot of traveling this summer while I teach my online writing courses; let me know if a visit from me would not disrupt your life to an unacceptable degree. My dreams of real estate development in Honolulu may finally be coming true. This time next year I hope to be sending out inviations and solicitations to visit 3916 Sierra Drive. I expect it to be newly renovated with an awesome gourmet kitchen, a sauna and jacuzzi, and sleeping and party space for groups as large as 8. What fun!
Laterz--
Mike / Misha