Jean Cocteau
There is no Combat! blog today, as you have probably gathered by the lateness of the hour. I am in my ancestral homeland, helping my grandmother in the last days of her life. “Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk,” Jean Cocteau wrote. “It is walking toward me without hurrying.” The day of my grandmother’s birth was a long time ago, and perhaps the arrival of the ponderous walker remains days off. Grandma dying is not the important part; Grandma’s living is the important part, and I am glad I could be here for that good and ongoing project. But man, I am sad. Probably, you should take the time that you might have spent reading Combat! blog today to hang out with someone you love, or at least like a little. The internet is ageless, if paradoxically ephemeral; it will be here when you get back. I’ll be here, too, perhaps in some different state of sadness or maybe just as I am now. Both would be okay, I think. The important thing is to be together a little while. Let’s be together again Monday.
