judysez.co.uk

My heart, my light, my (much) better half left us on 25 October 2020. This is the best I can do for now.

I lock the bathroom door. Privacy matters.
I don’t put my peanut-butter knife into the jam. You don’t care for that salty goop.
I switch the lights off when I leave the room. The electric bill doesn’t pay itself.
I vape outside. God, that stuff stinks.
I shrink Bruce-time to just one album per day. You could listen to something else.

Do you know how attentive I am?
Do you observe the attention in each gesture?
Do you appreciate my economy?
Do you?
Do you?
Do you?

Do you see me from the great beyond?
Do you hear the sudden sobs?
Do you feel the rawness of my skin?
Do you mind the absence of crying?
Do you notice how bloody careful I am?

Do you love me still from that place above the clouds?
Do you entrust me with your

Without wanting to misquote Simon or Garfunkel, there really is something to that old friends idea. Something different from, not better or worse than, new friends.
Like everybody, I’ve pretty much seen nobody in the past four months. I have seen lots of people in those nifty little Hollywood Squares-style cages. But I have not hugged or touched another human in so long I’m not sure I remember how.
Yet I have no doubt that my friends are there, will be there, as shall I. Leeds friends, London friends, colleagues from a job I did until this spring. I shall be there for them.
Old friends: University friends, Paris friends, Washington friends. I’ve relied on them more in the past 16 weeks possibly even than in the preceding three years. Example: A group of three of us who met when Clinton was president (as opposed to when Clinton should be the

The king on his golden throne has tried to forbid governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance.
Wait a minute.

The king in his hideaway has tried to keep peacetime standing armies without the consent of legislatures.
Wait a minute.

The king on his island has tried to cut off trade with many parts of the world.
Wait a minute.

The king with no law degree has been accused of obstructing the administration of justice.
Wait a minute.

The king of trashiness would plunder our seas, ravage our coasts and destroy our lives.
Wait a minute.

The king of paranoia has threatened to take away charters, abolish valuable laws and fundamentally alter the forms of our governments.

Wait a minute.

Who appointed this guy king,

Eight minutes. 480 seconds. Multiply it by 180 and you have a day.

The commercial-break allotment on primetime tv. Buy our sneakers, buy our booze, buy, buy, buy.

An eight-minute catnap. Snooze away the heartbreak and the shame.

Eight minutes. The time it takes a clock to turn from 17:52 to 18:00. Tick tock, tick tock, nothing changes.

Eight minutes. An intense abdominal workout. Build that core, stack that six-pack, be gorgeous, be healthy, no matter how ugly the world.

Eight minutes. I read a chapter of a novel. Did I learn anything?

Eight minutes. The interval between closing my book and falling asleep. The world shuts down for eight hours.

Eight minutes.

Sshhhhhhhh – you talk too much.
Watch it, you’re sounding aggressive.
Think before you speak. And don’t talk so damn loud.

Opinions come and opinions go and they escape my mouth,
My mouthy mouth.
Poetry comes and goes and it escapes my pen,
My busy pen.
Anger, fury, distemper, oaths curl like the remnants of tear gas.
They vaporize but sometimes they breach the levees of my good-girl defense.

Sshhhhhhhh – you talk too much.
Watch it, you’re sounding aggressive.
Think before you speak. And don’t talk so damn loud.

The world is sprinting, the news cycle refreshes before the stale news is read.
Opinions come and opinions go and the facts behind them shapeshift in seconds.
Words come out and they retract in fear of the momentum of change, of fake and real news colliding to create spaces with no news.

Sshhhhhhhh – you talk too much.
Watch it, you’re sounding aggressive.
Think before you speak. And don’t talk so

Some things have no funny side. Try as you might, smiles refuse to shape, jokes and bon mots fail to materialize and chuckles all sound hollow. Sadly, this is one such moment.

Twenty-two years ago, I was in Paris and looked on aghast and helpless as the cities on hills of the American landscape self-mutilated. The riots that followed the death of Rodney King were brutal embodiments of the hatred and distrust and discomfort that have not yet ebbed. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and James Chaney and countless others had died in vain. I prayed to leaders that someone intervene. Someone please be smart and engineer some truth, some reconciliation. Please, please. The deaths must end.

And here we are 28 years later. White cops hate black felons and they see a potential felon in almost any black man they cross. Black residents distrust white cops and see