Time sits on his throne. He rests his long pointed hands, jointed like the hands of a clock, on his legs. His face round, his nose, like a sundial, eyes like little stars – they move in his head like constellations. When he opens his mouth, galaxies fall out.

His tasks keep him very busy – beginning love takes quite a bit of his time, as it were – there is so much love in the world, really. Every time a child is born, a love affair begins between parent and child and so many are born every minute, it is no wonder that occasionally, Time misses one out and a child is born who cannot love or a parent does not get their jolt of love at the birth. Time usually tries to make up for his mistake by giving them all love elsewhere later – but he knows it is not as good.

Then, too, he is charged with bringing friends together, and lovers. Sometimes he even touches a shopkeeper and her customer, though that is not the strongest dose.
Pets, cities, co-workers, strangers with expressions that move other strangers – it is a massive job for Time to accomplish – there is no end of love that he begins. Even if it’s just the love of coffee in the morning.

Love for a father does not usually have to be earned. Most people are born into it, loving their fathers whether or not their fathers have done anything to deserve it. Love for a father has to be wrung from a person, by neglect or mistreatment. People love their fathers even if they do not like them.
I love my father, and he’s done nothing to shake that could or should shake that love loose. My love is well earned. Meanwhile, I have known many children whose fathers really did not deserve their love and admiration – but they had it anyway.

You know who was probably a painting of a sorrow and a face without a heart? Probably you, Claudius, when you went to your brother’s funeral of which you were the cause. I’ve recently learned, due to the current political climate, what a standard gaslighting procedure this is – It is a pretty effective way to accuse someone of something.

Claudius sure knows how to ask an inflammatory question. My god.
This one reminds me of kids I’ve known, usually somewhere on the autism spectrum. It makes me wonder what would happen if you played Claudius on the spectrum. Would he engender some more sympathy that way? Would he make different kinds of sense? He’s smooth enough to get social interactions right a lot of the time but the times where he steers wrong, those are pretty wrong.

The problem with this migraine situation is that there does not appear on “out of this” to be. Now that it has reared its head, it appears that this will be my new normal. This is the situation now. I have moved into a place where my doctor says a migraine once a week is pretty good actually, compared to other migraineurs. There is no eliminating them entirely. Even if they vanished, they’d still be an ever possible threat. There is no cure. It’s just the this that I will never be out of.

The picture Claudius is painting of Hamlet is incredibly infantilized. It’s like – he’s this child wishing and begging for his friend to come over to play with him. As if they were going to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or jacks or Cowboys and Indians or Danes and Swedes or whatever games the children of Elsinore might play with each other. Wishing and begging are not particularly adult behaviors.

So the story here is that Laertes is so good at fencing that anyone who steps into the “ring” with him becomes a clumsy fool.

This makes me think of an incredibly cool French woman I know. And I actually know quite a few incredibly cool French women – but this one, for some reason, always triggers incredibly clutzy behavior in me. I spill drinks, drop food, lose the ability to bring my fork to my mouth. She is somehow grace personified and I become ineptitude. But it is curious that I feel not the slightest bit of judgment from her when this happens. She’ll just hand me a napkin and continue asking me respectful interesting questions.

One thing that the current moment has taught me is how easily some people are manipulated. I have seen men especially vulnerable to this sort of flattery. The fragility of masculinity is such that any bolstering or diminishment of its symbols is extremely effective.

Hillary Clinton told us 45 could be baited with a tweet and she was right. Today I read about him blocking a veterans group and Steven King on Twitter. Which, sure, I guess that means they’ve challenged his masculinity sufficiently to have him (or his staff) shut them down.

But simultaneously, that display of loyalty, the “which of you doth love me most” cabinet meeting shows how any flattery of 45s masculinity can secure the most loathsome sort of folks a seat at the table. 45 has surrounded himself with Iagos, Claudiuses, Aarons, Richard the Thirds, Gloucesters and Cassiuses. 45 is not only Roderigo and Laertes and Clarence and the little princes and Lear but also Bardolph, the gravediggers and the Dauphin. He is Leontes. He is Lear. With much shittier language. He is toddler Lear and baby Leontes.