Admittedly, we got nothing.

I would say this is a little something to stop the bleeding, but writing this feels heavier than anything I've written in months.

Rest assured readers, that Tom, Cate and I are well aware that there hasn't been posted anything here for a week. For some of us, it has been a rough week or so, I can only speak for myself having exclaimed, "lover, my muse has left us" and "muse, my lover has left us" at different times, so our ability to write about responsibility (or anything else) has been impaired.

But. To continue the theme of responsibility, to pick up that broken flag, I write. I held a crying woman (twice) in my arms, and was held by a different one attempting to explain that I really didn't know if I was doing "Okay" or not. I can watch as my friends, for one reason or another, tear themselves away from the group and school, counting and crossing off the emotional pillars I have come to count on fall away.

(I'm writing this listening to Thrice's MySpace page, or specifically, Come All You Weary and Broken Lungs. It's very Christian, but hell. It's Thrice. Give the songs a shot. Broken Lungs makes me wish I had a guitar and could sing "are we fools and cowards all" half as well as Mr. Kensrue.)

My responsibilities, to those women I have held is to hope and ease their burdens, for a moment, by telling another human being. I have no answers to their problems. I hold no solutions, and can find or imagine none in my mind. I could offer advice, in one case, "consolidate what you've got, then use that to figure out what you want". In the other, of which I dare not speak, my two responsibilities (show up and don't ask important questions) seemed easier to do in retrospect.

I held one of my friends as he asked why a promise made was broken, between portraits of young artists. He knew why. It had to be vocalized. Just to know someone is there. Something, somehow. He asked if anyone would care. I outlined how, where and when it'd hurt me in the deepest detail I could offer.

I cannot take the pain away. I cannot wipe the tears from the young woman's face in the airport terminal, and it would take hours before it appeared she truly brightened up. I told the young man to press on, not to give up hope. I cannot wrap my arms so wide as to stop the cascading waves of culture and fear from those I hold.

I can't. I can only offer my shoulders and arms. I'm sick and tired of seeing how brave we can be. I've watched it eat up my friends. I'm watching it eat up me. But so long as there is still a banner, tattered, broken and dropped, it's my responsibility to pick it up.

My back is strong, my shoulders are wide, and we must press on, through the sadness, through the despair to whatever's greeting us on the other side of tonight. Let's talk on the way.