"Let us weep together..."

Bloodstained friends and enemies.
Revolutionary leaders Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore de Robespierre and Georges Jacques Danton were intimate and loyal companions during the Reign of Terror. When Danton's wife died, leaving her husband the prey of grief "as excessive as were all his other emotions," Robespierre was still his loyal friend. It was on this occasion that he sent him this tender expression of sympathy and undying devotion:

MY DEAR DANTON,
If, in the only sorrow that can overwhelm a spirit like yours, the knowledge that you have the devotion and tender sympathy of a friend affords you any consolation, I offer you mine. I love you more than ever and until death. At this moment I am one with you. Do not shut your heart to the voice of a friendship which shares all grief. Let us weep together for our friends and let us before long demonstrate the effects of our sorrow to the tyrants who are the cause of our public ills and private woes. My friend, I have written these words that spring from my heart to you from Belgium. I should already have come to see you except that I respected the first moments of your great affliction.
Your friend,
Robespierre

Less than a year after this affectionate letter, the friends became enemies.


I imagine that it was right about the time I noticed myself begin to sweat, and the intense burning in my thighs from squatting and sifting through 1970's vinyls that Kallie found it. Right about the time i settled on a number she was pulling two dollar bills out of her bra and tucking the seventy year old book under her arm. Right there in the dank air is where I found the sum of my thoughts.

Barely over two years ago it was letters like these that assured me of something bigger than myself. I'm far past unsure now.

Letters. lately it's been about letters.