When does a sigh hurt?

Perhaps if you have a broken rib, that release of breath could press on your injury and hurt you.

Or if your throat is sore and the air moving past feels like blades running into your tonsils.

Most of the time, though, a sigh is a release of hurt. It may open the floodgates of tears. It may crack open a heart. It may reveal a truth and that truth might hurt, I suppose.

And a spendthrift sigh? A wasted sigh? Why might a sigh be wasted? The sighs of an unrequited lover – are they wasted?

I think most sighs are for the good.

This is an incredible obfuscation of language. First the “would” is vague so he’s nowhere near what he’s actually saying. And then he takes a vague thing and makes a whole story around it. This “would” which he hasn’t declared is now subject to abatements and delays – thousands or millions of them – as many as there are people in the world and also accidents. It’s really quite masterful cloaking of intent.

This might be a way to engage in the current political moment – the madness of the speeches. Just by focusing on the language, on the obfuscation or bullshitting or elaborating, the content does tend to lose its sting.

Nice and vague, Mr. King. Nice and vague.
Way to sneak up on the murdering you have in mind.
Many murderers or planners of evil deeds have some of the best vague but purposeful language. I’d quite enjoy a side by side comparison of evil-doers and their vague-ness – that word is made of vague-eries that I just made up…but I’d put Claudius next to this one.
Macbeth can’t even be clear with himself, he’s so vague. “If it were done when tis done twere well it were done quickly.” Others in the canon don’t immediately spring to mind – but the famous “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” comes to mind and that same reference just recently came up in James Comey’s hearing about the things Lil Donnie T said to him. I’m starting to think that using vague language like this might be a signal that there is evil afoot.

And as I read this, over a year later, I have just heard an interview with former FBI director, Andrew McCabe, who mentioned that mob bosses have this habit as well. They don’t ever come out and say what they want done, they hint at it, suggest it, hope for it.

We fear this sort of thing – this dying of too much pleasure, too much joy – but I think it is only fear. Perhaps it is the fear of losing the goodness that kills us or at least kills our joy.

Movement and change, that is what is constant, nothing settles, nothing stops and nothing stays perfectly the same. We have to train ourselves to adapt to change and movement if we want to be ready for life.

It is curious that so much of education is NOT that, so much of it supposes that one reaches some plateau and just relaxes. That you should work your way to some goal and then it is happily ever after in a still, repetitive same-ness.

My God, Claudius is the ultimate mansplainer. He tells Laertes all the things he didn’t want to know, all the things that surely Laertes knows better than Claudius and a whole mess of bullshit. Claudius uses speech as a weapon. If he just keeps talking, eventually his target may just surrender.

Uh, Claudius? That’s ROMANTIC LOVE you’re thinking of. Familial love generally isn’t categorized with sparks and fire. Sparks and fire do die out, it’s true. But familial love is not a fire. It is more like an ocean that is always there, always something to return to, even when you cannot make the trip anymore, or the ocean dries up (heaven forbid,) it will always be there – the tide going in and out, sometimes providing solace, sometimes picking you up and throwing you into the sand. Familial love doesn’t die – even for those members of a family that might not deserve one’s love. I have a friend whose mother has always been quite wretched to her and last year she finally made a break. Last year, she was 42. It takes decades to shake one’s self out of dysfunctional horrible love – to extract one’s self from that ocean, if you need to.

I am mostly fortunate. The unkind members of my family were largely outsiders and so only temporary. When I return to the ocean, it is mostly to sit by it and muse.

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.