blake c's blog, part 94

good golly miss molly, it's been a long while. things have changed and things have remained the same.

the changes:

my cousin's husband was killed in iraq in early may. this was the "grief beyond words" i referred to in my last post. it was too hard to articulate at the time, and the emotion of it isn't easy to place or describe. grief is a hazy and pervasive emotion, finding its way into the hidden depths of ourselves to huddle in a corner and whimper. the whimpers echo long, and fade ever so slowly.

Capt. Brian Letendre was one of the bravest men i ever knew. He leaves behind brothers, parents, my cousin his wife, and his son. a Google News search of his name will find several articles written in his memory, but the best are probably the washington post article here and the npr audio clip here. he was buried at arlington, with full honors.

brian's death had a tremendous effect on my family, of course. also as a result i have been forced to reevaluate my opinions on the war in iraq. my mind is not made up on it, and i will not sully what i have said here by half-formed opinions.

i guess that that was the largest change in my life i'll be sharing w/ the general public at this time. emily was ill for a while, then i was. work is chaos. i find solace in books, music and art as usual. i have started to take photography seriously, as a hobby. a friend of mine and i meet once a week (or try to) to discuss art. i am trying again to reconcile my artistic impulses to myself, and give them an outlet. i am trying to cultivate my thought again.

i have grown a beard.

i end w/ a quote from mother night by vonnegut, because i like it:

"i have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random. such a snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell."