Crimes and recriminations, swear oath to the Constitution, so help me God, Charlottesville, good men on both sides, a merry-go-round of sychophants and con-men, love letters to dictators, not up, not in, partying with Epstein, ******* prostitutes and playgirls, Maga rallies and riots. turning Oval Office into black box, pulling kids, even babies, from mothers's arms, a wall too far, no bridges, can't read or write English, pandemic a "Democrat hoax," Mar-a-lago back swing, under the bus, orange skin and orange hair, no empathy, blaming others, one impeachment after another, take 'em to court 50-60 times, racists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, KKK, won by a landside, storm the Capitol, hang Pence, **** Pelosi, another day in democracy, Air Force One, America last.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Only LOVE can save Earth and all living creations upon it.

But to LOVE, one must first be loved. That is why it is imperative that the embryo must be loved. Then the infant, then the toddler, then the child, then the teenager, and so on.

If you have never been loved, or not enough, you will have problems, serious problems. But it is never too late to be loved.

I was not loved by my mom and dad. They had a terribly miserable marriage for 36 years. Neither was emotionally capable of loving me.

But our maid, Maggie Woods, bless her heart, loved me. Did I care that her skin was black? If you have a garden that is drying up, do you care if it rains?

Maggie loved me. She fixed me two poached eggs, grits (she grew up in southern Texas), and two slices of toasted wholewheat bread buttered every morning for years. She washed my clothes. If I needed a spanking, she spanked me. If I needed a hug, she hugged me. I could feel Maggie's LOVE.

My biological mother never entered my bedroom when I was in it. Maggie did.

I remember one incident in particular. I was a kid. I was sick in bed. I distinctly remember Maggie coming into my room with something to eat and a Squirt to drink. I had never drunk a Squirt before, but apparently Maggie loved it. (Maggie and Floyd, her husband, lived in our house in an apartment on the third floor.)  The Squirt unconsciously symbolized her LOVE for me.

In my early 30s, I entered psychotherapy with Dr. Patricia Norris at the famous Menninger Foundation. We used what I was to refer to as "unguided" imagery. (Most refer to this modality as guided imaginary,) I worked with Pat, as I came to call her, a long time.

In short, the way it worked was that as we sat in our chairs, we both closed our eyes and waited for something to come into my mind, which I then would share with Pat. The long story was that Pat became my surrogate mother. We experienced many loving moments in our "unguided" imagery. The LOVE I felt from Pat, though through imagery, was real. I was finally and fully loved, and that made me who I am today.

Hate is not the opposite of love. It is the absence of love. Those who suffer from the paucity of LOVE unconsciously try to compensate for its dearth through becoming wealthy, then mega wealthy;  by garnering fame;  or by accruing power. None works.

But LOVE works. The more of it you share, the more you have to share.

Earth suffers so greatly from the lack of LOVE that it is dying. But even if one human being feels love, that love can spread like wildfire.

Let's hope the wildfire of LOVE spreads over Earth entirely and soon.

It is utterly plausible that it can happen.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Would it not be wonderful if all human beings on Earth came to understand that each is as divine as the other--indeed, that all, all creations in the infinite Cosmos are imbued by their maker with the same indelible divineness of their same maker?

There are an estimated 4,300 "different" religions on Earth, each praying to the same God, but calling their same God different names.

Yet, there can be only one maker of the infinite Cosmos.

Why, therefore, do we continue this false notion, this illusion, through millennia, fighting wars over these illusory differences, killing millions and millions and millions of other human beings because we are unwilling to see truth, let alone embrace it?

These fake differences at best keep all of us on Earth separate, divided, and thus cause us tragically to see those of us with different skin colors, different physical features, using different languages and dialects, having different customs, at best appearing different from ourselves, and at worst, instigating untold killings of "others."

If ever you saw a beautiful painting, no doubt you would have seen in it many differences:  colors, forms, shapes, contours, all of which collectively you might have found at the least interesting, at most beautiful.

But what if you saw only a white canvass with nothing on it?

Would you find that beautiful, engrossing, mesmerizing, even to any extent satisfying?

But this is the canvass racists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, the KKK, the Proud Boys, and so many others like them, want hanging in their houses.

Hate, unconsciously of themselves because they were never loved, is their religion. And just like their religious forebearers of the Middle Ages, they are now fighting their Crusades against others who appear different from themselves, but ironically and tragically are not.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I write when the river's down,
when the ground's as hard as
a banker's disposition and as
cracked as an old woman's face.
I write when the air is still
and the tired leaves of the
dying elm tree are a mosaic
against the bird-blue sky.
I write when the old bird dog,
Sam, is too tired to chase
rabbits, which is his habit
on temperate days. I write
when horses lie on burnt grass,
when the sun is always
high noon, when hope melts like
yellow butter near the kitchen
window. I write when there
are no cherry pies in the
oven, when heartache comes
like a dust storm in early
morning. I write when the
river's down, and sadness
grows like cockle burs in
my heart.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

My epitaph will be:  "I wrote a poem."

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Ms. Gorman is a brilliant poet.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

The coming of Biden and Harris reminds me of one of the most beautiful and evocative songs ever sung, the first line of which goes something like this:  "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." It was written and composed by John Phillips and sung by Scott McKenzie. Implicit not only in its writing and composing, but also in its singing, this song emotes the most powerful message that can ever be delivered to and absorbed by humankind:  LOVE.

I would have been in Haight-Ashbury in June, July, and August of 1967, but I was a patient at the famous Menninger Foundation at that time, the best help of its kind in the world, and expensive (my father was a rich). But it was my mother who finessed my way into Menninger’s, not my father. He wanted me to become an attorney on Wall Street and make millions (now billions). That is, after all, why he had gladly paid a fortune to send me to the best schools in the world:  Phillips Andover Academy (prep school) and Columbia College, Columbia University. I attended law school after college, but began to have problems sleeping that only grew worse during my first semester. The less sleep I got, the more difficult it was to study. Finally, I couldn’t sleep at all. I dropped out of law school right before first-semester finals, an act for which my father never forgave me.  

But my sleepless nights continued even after I dropped out, which ******* up my mind and my life terribly. I had no idea why this was happening to me. If my mother had not surreptitiously intervened and got me into Menninger’s, I no doubt would not be writing this to you. Psychotherapy not only saved my life, but also allowed me, for the first time in my life, to realize I had feelings--my own feelings--my hopes, my dreams, my wishes, my needs. And after months, something magical happened when I unconsciously married my intellect with my new-found feelings:  out of me popped a poem, and I have remained a poet to this very day.

What does what I’ve just shared with you have to do with Biden and Harris? The answer is that both brought, and now bring, great promise, great hope. Out of total darkness comes the bright light of a new beginning--a caring, a compassion, the lack thereof almost brought me to my death, and our nation, democratically speaking, to the same. Now there are, metaphorically speaking, flowers in our hair once more.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS