When I was a child, every year I had my eye exam. The doctor would always say, "Tell me when the line on the left meets the dot on the right." It never did. I always told the doctor this, and every year, he would say nothing, just go on to the next part of the exam.

In 4th grade, my best friend was Bruce Patrick. His father was training at the Menninger Foundation to become a psychiatrist. Bruce was very smart. He sat across from me. Ms Perrin, our teacher, would devote part of every school day to reading. Each student had a copy of the same book. Ms Perrin would say, "Start reading." As we all began reading, I immediately saw that Bruce was ready to turn to the second page while I was only half way down the first. This puzzled me as the two of us were pretty much equal in every other subject.

Because I was pretty much a straight-A student during those years, my Dad had me apply to Andover, often considered, as I was to find out, the best prep school in the USA. I had never heard of it. I went to Kansas City to take the entrance test. When the results came back, I had done well except on the reading section. Out of 15 reading sections, I was able finish only 3 or 4 of them. I was rejected by Andover, so dad had me attend Andover summer school. No ordinary summer school was it. It was eight weeks long and we had class on Saturday mornings. Two of the classes I took were English classes--a lot of reading. It took me twice as long, or longer, to read each
novel than it took my classmates. But I got good grades notwithstanding.

Dad had me apply again to Andover the following year. Same thing happened I now know for the same reason. I was rejected. So Dad sent me again to Andover summer school. Same thing happened there, too, including both my need to spend twice as long reading a book, but getting good grades, nevertheless. When my Dad came to pick me up at the end of summer school. we both went to the office of Dean of Admissions. I don't know why, but we did. The first thing the Dean--I can't remember his name--said to me, the very first thing--was, "You're in! We have accepted you for the fall of 1960. You don't even have to apply."

In those days, if you graduated from Andover, you just decided which college you wanted to attend, and come Fall, you just walked through their gates. It was that simple, because Andover had such clout. I chose Columbia over Yale and thoroughly enjoyed my four years there, but I still had to study more than twice as much as my classmates.

One evening back in Topeka where I had grown up, I sat in a booth at Pore Richards sipping coffee with my friend, Michelle, who was a psychologist at Menninger's. I was 27 then. She was telling me about a workshop she had attended the previous week-end in Tulsa. I found the things she had learned most interesting. The more she shared with me, the more I began to feel that she was talking about me. Finally, I interrupted her. I said, "Michelle, what you are describing, what you are telling me about, sounds like what I have dealt with my whole life." I elaborated. She said she thought I had been suffering from monocular vision, the eye doctor's specialty. Michelle said I should drive down to Tulsa to see him. I did.

The doctor put me through a three-hour series of exams, the final one being when he hooked up both eyes separately to tracking machines that recorded on tape the movements of each eye, then asked me to read a paragraph. When I had finished, the doctor got the long, narrow tapes that had recorded both eyes separately and showed me both. The first tape showed the movement of my right eye. I was fascinated. The tape I looked at reminded me of an EKG. For about an inch-and-a half, the line on the tape showed my right eye reading, but then flat-lined (as when your heart stops beating when you die). Then the doctor showed me the tape for the left eye. Then line indicated my left eye kept reading, but not like a normal eye. The doctor said my left eye was moving "in a jagged manner," which meant it was not functioning properly. I shall never forget what the doctor said to me at that moment:  "Tod, I'm surprised you can even read a book, let alone get through college."

As I drove back to Topeka, I thought about the eye doctor whom I had seen every year through grade school "Tell me when the line on the left meets the dot on the right." And that doctor never responded for years when I told him every year they never met. That condition is a classic symptom of monocular vision.

That *******, I thought, as I made my way home.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Prizes, awards, ribbons?
How about a kiss, a hug, a "thank you,"
a memory instead, knowing inside
that you remained true to yourself,
to the inner worth that is in everyone,
sacred and inviolate?
The prizes, awards, and ribbons
remind me of the shiny stars
your 3rd-grade teacher stuck
on your paper after you had answered
all the addition problems correctly.
We have turned our existence inside-out.
We still do not know the locus of our worth,
which is within each of us.
Shakespeare and Michelangelo--
how many prizes and awards and ribbons
did they win? No wonder Hemingway
shot himself dead in Ketchum,
as have so many others.
Remember always the poem is the prize.  

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Toward humanity, we all should have at once color-blindness and moral acuity.

TOD HORWARD HAWKS

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