It took my over 30 years to discover Johnny Mathis's recording of UNBREAK MY HEART. I had been a big fan of his in the the late 50s and early 60s. I, like millions of other teenagers then, had fallen in love under the spell of his beautiful singing. My favorite songs were CHANCES ARE and THE TWELTH OF NEVER. I begin every morning now listening to his musical magic on YouTube. Why do I comment on Mathis' UNBREAK MY HEART? Because my sense is that Mathis emotionally enters the song as he sings it. This results in a transcendental experience, which one rarely has either in listening to a song or in viewing a painting or in reading a poem or in experiencing any other kind of artistic endeavor. It is virtually unique for anyone, and that is why I wanted to share it with all of you.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I cried not for two days, but for two years. "I've lost my best friend," I said to myself as I walked through the snow to the fields in the park. Of course I loved her. For two years I cried. I sat down in the snow leaning against the trunk of of a tree. That was forty years ago. I still do not know how and exactly why I could have cried steadily for two years, but I had. Maybe I was unconsciously mourning the loss of the love I never received from my mother who remained deeply depressed throughout her life. I don't know. Cara never knew anything about this. I remember the evening when I stopped crying. I just stopped. I guess I had cried enough. But two years crying every waking moment of evey day. Unbelievable. What happened to me so long ago makes me think of Steinbeck because he had an exquisite sensitivity to life. He is my favorite novelist because I sense he felt powerfully about what he was going to write. So many writers contrive. The great ones feel first.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Each human life is but a raindrop in hurricanes or a stream of sunshine days. Every infant ever born, each breath ever taken, every toddler's many steps, each word ever uttered, every fact ever learned, each friendship ever forged, every delight and sorrow that made us happy or sad, every love that did endear us, each death that we shall mourn--all are integral parts of the whole of countless lives. These moments and millennia are the catalogue raisonne of humanity. There will never be enough books ever written, enough museums ever to capture, enough memories ever shared to achieve a full accounting of what our ancestors experienced or our descendants will discover. Each life, therefore, is a microcosm of all that has been, is, and will be. So remember, live, and envision as best you can, and be thankful you were one of many to feel raindrops and sunshine streams.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Truffaut was an auteur. He was the "author" of the French New Wave in cinema. His first film, the autobiographical THE 400 BLOWS (an idiom for "raising hell") was made in 1959. Many critics consider it one of the best ever.
As I watched THE 400 BLOWS tonight on YouTube, I found myself identifying and empathizing with the troubled young protagonist of the movie. Why is that? I guess it's because I have always had a propensity to sense, as early as grade school, the unconscious angst of those classmates who exhibited untoward behaviors. There was, for example, a classmate in 3rd grade at Gage Elementary School, Darrell Chandler, who bullied other students. Rather than scorn Darrell as the vast majority of my classmates did, I said hello to him, wound up talking to him, asked him how he was doing, and in time, became friends with him. Truffaut came from a difficult childhood, and in the end, directed many great movies during his comparatively short career that made him not only rich and famous, but more importantly, saved himself from darkness. Truffaut was an auteur both of remarkable films and his own life.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawls

We are they. All of us. 7.5 billion of us. But some of us do not want the rest of us to soar. They want us grounded, permanently, by hunger, by illiteracy, by homelessness, by hopelessness. The some of us to whom I refer are ruthless. They are corrupt officials worldwide at best;  at worst, they are autocrats, tyrants, dictators--all oppressors of the first order. But they have a surprise waiting for them. There will be a revolution of love sweeping over Earth that will free all of us from the inequities and iniquities that have in truth enslaved us for millennia. Earth itself has been enslaved. Ask our air, our rills and rivulets, our streams and rivers, all our oceans. They are dying, and with them, all of us, and Earth as well. Love that all of us will shortly embrace will break the chains of worldwide oppression. Then we shall soar like a convocation of eagles.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

There is nothing but the murmur of your breathing, the moonlight
spreading its luminous light cutting through the darkness across the
white sheets. I am the keeper of the silence. You, Sarah, are the
keeper the sensuous. Now you sleep, but gently I begin by kissing
lightly your forehead, so lightly you do not move. I kneel on the bed
beside you gazing at your long, flaxen hair that the generous, silver
moon graces with its silver streams. There is nothing wrong with
silence or the darkness of the the rest of the room, a chiaroscuro by
the ghost of Giotto. I slowly pull the white sheet from your shoulders
to below your knees without awakening you, a panoply of pulchritude.
With only my eyes, I touch you. I am enraptured. In silence and darkness
and silver streams, there is no time. I am the keeper of silence, an august
post, more regal than any throne, any crown. Sleep, dear Sarah, as long
as you wish, for there is no time when we are at the epicenter of love.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

A politician makes a calculated decision.

A leader makes a moral one.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks