Hegel. The dialectic. A thesis, an antithesis, a synthesis. The foregoing is lucid, intellectual thinking, but ultimately does not bring you to Truth.
Geist, Hegel's word we call 'Spirit" in English, is a step forward, but does
not go far enough. It is amazing to me that philosophers through the ages,
from Socrates through Sartre, have been so smart, so intellectual, that they nonetheless all missed the core meaning of human existence:  LOVE.
In the end, it is not "thinking" but "feeling" that makes all of us one. And
to quote Hamlet, there's the rub:  untold numbers of human beings either
are never loved, or not loved enough. Truth is love. Love is truth.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

So we call a human being a peasant. How demeaning of us!
You and I are **** not to some, but to many. How is it that
the world is so contorted, so denigrating? There are millions of
us living here on this planet, and when millions call each other
beggars, rapists, thugs, how did we get that way? The answer
is we lost our way millennia ago. There have been those who
chose to enlighten us, but in disgust, we murdered them and
their messages of love. Jesus did not tell those who gathered
round him how to get rich:  He told them to love one another.
Gandhi showed the world that all are one, regardless of the
color of our skin or our religions being different. And Martin
Luther King tried to turn his dream into reality, a totality of
human worth, and died on a balcony for his courage. The
scourge is in our hearts. A peasant is as worthy as a king.
His pleasantry is his inviolate, sacred worth that he shares
with all others.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

POETRY AND PAINTING

I write poems the way Van Gogh painted paintings
the last two years of his life. Wild, frenzied, crazy,
incredible, unique masterpieces that only his inner
genius could appreciate. Theo tried, but with few
successes. Self-portraits after self-portraits, the
potato eaters, a chair somewhat skewed, an old
man in sorrow, madness on his palette, yellow, blue,
and aquamarine--mixed up, all together in blends
and ways only a genius could create by scores.
Or was his madness the result only of a gift no
other artist had? Maybe my words and phrases
are phases only craziness can open. Maybe Van
Gogh did not know how to be ordinary, a ferry from
the sky, a mystical message he could not hear but
only feel. Cypress trees, sunflowers galore, paint
more he said. So many cannot see, the glory of
the stars that are ours only if we are blind to the
mundane but open to unorthodoxy he alone
perceived. Van Gogh poured himself on his can-
vases that Theo could not sell, paintings by the
hundreds that now hang on walls around the world
so those who eschew society’s mores are free
and unafraid to know Van Gogh and how he
understood the universe as no one else ever will.
Poetry and painting, you see, are one in the same.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

PASSION

What is life without passion? Life without
passion is not living; it is subsisting. It is
emotional malnutrition. We slowly starve
ourselves over a lifetime. And as we grad-
ually die from the inside out, we take with
us those whom we are closest to. What a
pity! What a shame! And those we call our
friends, we betray them when we fail to
share our real selves with them. We
turn them into props in a bad play. And
what of our community? When we join
others in prayer, do we lie to ourselves
and others in silence? If we are apos-
tates, are we not committing blasphemy
to all those around us, and to God?
And when we wish for better times, when
we hope for change for the good, how
can we begin to be an instrument in
that effort if we are not truly ourselves?
Without truth, our actions are vacuous
at best, harmful at worst. We owe it to
ourselves, our loved ones, to all really,
first to follow our hearts where passion
lies so when we die, we might have a
moment to remember a life well lived.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

HUNGRY, HOMELESS, HOPELESS

Mankind has suffered through a pandemic
from when it first set foot on Earth:  not only
killing and torture and slavery, but also hunger
and homelessness and hopelessness  Why
has it taken thousands of years for human
beings to realize, and then to create, a just
world that is still as impoverished as its poorest,
as healthy as its sickest, as ignorant as its most
uneducated? All lives on Earth are meant to be a
collaborative effort, which is called love. To love,
one must first be loved. If loved, one then has
love to give, This concatenation, this progression,
once begun, will grow exponentially, endlessly:  
it will be a pandemic in reverse:  love, not hate;  
compassion, not revenge;  sharing, not hoarding.
This is what Earth was meant to be, a lonely planet,
yes, but a home for all living creations where love
increases the more it is shared.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

TO SEE THE SUN

Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, says only guardians
become philosopher-kings. I disagree. Everyone is
a philosopher-king if ever one finds his inner-self and
adheres to its truths. Socrates says the sun is the
Form of the Good, the source of everything in the
intelligible world. In a figurative sense, Socrates is
right. With few exceptions, everyone lives in the
Cave. Forms, not appearances, are reality. Plato’s
best form of government leans toward the autocratic,
but Plato’s arguments are meant to provoke, not
dictate. Plato, and Socrates through him, miss the
most cogent message, I believe. Shakespeare,
through Polonius to his son, Laertes, hits the bulls-
eye:  “This above all. To thine ownself be true, and
it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not
then be false to any man.”

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

LES MISERABLES

Are we all not in the cast of Les Miserables?
A bishop, a thief, a ******* so beautiful she
sells herself to save her child. An obsessed
gendarme so full of rage he does not know it
is he himself whom he is seeking. A loaf of
bread to spread among his family. Twenty
years he spends in hard labor because he
cannot bear to see his child die. I cry. What
is this book about, I shout? Does not everyone
descry that he is she, that all are one? Here,
says the bishop, you forgot to take the other.
It is not silver that changes this man. It is
love. It is always love, the precious mettle
of the heart.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks