Know truth by untruth.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Titles are like band-aids. In short order, they fall off.

The progress of humanity toward egalitarianism over millennia is best characterized not as "slow motion," but as virtually "no motion."

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Knowledge won't get you there. Wisdom is there.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Wetopia.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

All people live downstream.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

The most important vote cast in any attempt to resolve differences is the last:  the lethal bullet fired from the assassin's weapon the enters the intransigent opponent.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Less commerce, more mercy.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Things cling.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

APHORISM XXXII

If you add all the numbers in infinity, the sum will be 1.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

APHORISM XXXIII

You don’t need a policeman or a teacher or a priest to teach you right from wrong. You need only to have been loved.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

My religion is LOVE. So is my politics.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Those who remain silent in a democracy are complicit in its destruction.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Living in the USA is harder than dying if you are hungry and/or homeless and/or hopeless and/or if the color of your skin is something other than white.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

More than 80% of human beings unconconsciously are afraid to learn about their inner-seleves, and therefore don't.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I have 7.5 billion friends on Earth. It's just that I haven't met them all yet.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Wealth is not worth.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I saved a billion dollars today. I didn't buy a Caribbean island.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

April Fools' Day, 2020, will be brought to you by all those who voted for **** Trump.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Disparity and desperation are not synonyms, but they allude to the same suffering.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

If every human being knew her/his locus of worth and embraced it, no one would ever feel abashed.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Do you want Peace on Earth through Love or would you rather love to have a piece of Earth?

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

How many friends does a person need?

One. Her-or himself.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Am I a Democrat or a Republican?

Neither. I belong to LOVE.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

There is only one Supreme Being. Her/His domain is the infinite Cosmos.

Yet we have on Earth myriad religions all praying to the same Supreme Being, but calling the Supreme Being different names (e.g. God, Allah, etc.), thereby creating artificial religious divisions among humanity that sow discord, even creating wars at times.

Will we ever see the truth and embrace it? If humanity did, the likelihood of Peace on Earth would increase exponentially.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

It is never too late to find your heart.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

The only way to become a traitor is not to be true to oneself.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

When you lie with a lie, sometimes it's hard to get up.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

I will die for anyone, but will never **** no one.

Copyroght 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

LOVE is the religion of all peoples on Earth, whether they're conscious of it or not.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,400 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometime seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders, but an Earth that has one land, one sea, one sky, one people. The boundaries that have simplistically divided us for eons are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. The air and water of Earth, even the pandemic, take no notice of national borders, nor should we, the Citizens of Earth. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but by sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. No more wars, no more corruption, no more dictators. Only Peace on Earth forever. This is the quantum leap of which I speak.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Are we all not idioms,
peculiar to ourselves
in construct and meaning?
Are not all of us
syntactical anomalies?
Do we not all have elliipses,
lacunae, egregious gaps
in our beings? Lack of
parallel construction in
our lives, dangling like
participles, a pronoun
without its antecedent?
Are not our lives run-
on sentences handed
up by unconscious wishes
and unmet needs? Too
bad we could not be
more declarative and
less rhetorical or
imperative.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

My friend has had a sad and tragic life, and I do not know exactly why. Well educated was he, handsome as well, but never able to love a woman long enough. He has traveled the world, but beaches and oceans and birds and squirrels and a cat were all his best friends. I just read his book of poems, fraught with unrequited life as well as love. I am sorry and saddened for him.
I may be his only friend.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

The air is thin. To begin
again, I must breathe. My head
is wreathed with thorns. I hear
celestial horns calling my ascension.
I must rise above this dissension. I
must put aside the flood of memories
that endear me. Blood drips from my
side where you spread me. I must
wipe the wound clean. I must flush
the meanness from my soul, to make
me heal, to make whole again.
My sins I repent;  I am spent.
O Holy Host, deliver me:
forgive her, forgive me.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

Lincoln came to hate slavery. When Lincoln was 19, his friend and he watched a slave auction in New Orleans. Lincoln's fists, his friend said, were so tightly clinced that his knuckles turned white. Suppose it had been whites who were slaves, not blacks. Suppose you saw your 14-year-old white daughter being ***** right in front of you by your black slave master. Suppose the woman you loved was sold one morning to another black slave owner who took her away from you forever. Suppose you tried to learn how to read the Bible and your black slave master caught you doing that, so he he tied you to a tree trunk and gave you 60 lashes on your bare back. Suppose you thought slavery was morally grotesque, but there was nothing you could do about it, because you had no legal rights of any kind, just like all your forebearers. What a shame you were born white. What a shame that the U. S. Constitution made slavery legal when it was drafted and ratified. Life is, after all, not fair, even if you're white.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

As the wave of Coronavirus rolls toward us, we rush into the arms of
our beloved ones to protect them, to hug them, to tell them how much we
love them. This apparition of potential death threatens all us indeed,
but paradoxically, at the same time, it is perforce bringing families
together, both genetically and non-genitically. Certainly grandfathers
and grandmothers, wives and husbands and their chilren, aunts and uncles
and cousins and nieces and nephews form centripetal emotional groups that
are held tight be love. Dear friends, co-workers, golfing buddies, Thursday night poker players, congregations of different religions, various fraternal organization, sowing and knitting gatherings-- every imaginable kind of
group will bond. Out of this worldwide castastrophe, the whole world
could learn the limitless scope of love, and when we discover a vaccine
for it, or when the pandemic finally dissipates, humanity could remain
bonded by love, and there would finally be Peace on Earth, forever.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Pardon me, sir.
May I borrow
your squalor
for a photograph?

I love
the repetition
of those wrinkles in your brow.
Hold it, please.

The contrast
of your brown skin
against the white plaster chipping
is marvelous.

When I
get them developed
I'll send you a print.
They'll look great in my portfolio.

Thank you
and your wife
and your eight kids
for this pose in poverty.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

Do I need a mountain peak
and have my visage chiseled
in it? Or do I need a continent
named after me because I
conquered it? Or do I need
a religion I fostered by mysteries
and miracles to have multitudes
follow me? Or perhaps only a
touch of kindness, my hand upon
another's heart, that will reverberate
throughout all endless ages?

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

SUNRISE

The eoan skies of early morning have always
captivated me, their milky blue soft presence
presages hope of another day. Stars that were
there just moments ago have disappeared. The
sun will ascend slowly. There is a sunrise in every
life. For most, it is fraught with keen anticipation
of good and happy times, a precusor of future
fruitful endeavors. But these propitious moments
are not shared by everyone. On earth, sunrises
never come to millions and millions of unborn beings.
Many call abortion a woman's productive right. I call
it ******. Yes, there are overriding reasons to take
a human life:  ****, ******, an imminent threat to a
mother's life. But never should it be used as a
convenient form of contraception, though, of course,
it is. A malady of many. Love is the motif of sunrises.
Loving is the message a sunrise brings as it continues
into day. Soon the sunrise will disappear as did the
stars, but its promise will be realized by billions as the
sun climbs higher in what is now a bright, blue sky.


HIGH NOON

High noon is when the sun is directly
above your head. The sun is at the apex
of its ascension. A man's high noon is
the precious period when he is most
promising and productive, the center cut,
as it were, of his adult life. His children
are growing and learning. His marriage
has found equilibrium.. His worries are
at low ebb. He is at the golden time of his
life, just as the sun shines brightest at high
noon. He is reaching stars that are not yet
in the sky. His is one of satifaction and
self-pride. Enjoy it he should. He has
earned his high noon.


SUNSET

Sunset is when the sun is falling from
the sky. For a man, it can be a time of
retrospection, a time to evaluate one's
life, one's successes and defeats. It can
be a time of an intimacy unlike that of
much earlier years, a close, quiet time
with the one he has loved for a lifetime.
The pain of sorrows and sufferings of
the now distant past have abated. He is
left in the glow of his yearnings and
earnings. He would wish to apologize
for all his mistakes and misgivings, but
he also deserves to be proud of his
many good deeds and generosities.
His is a time before night falls. His
sunset is a time for silent appreciation,
and yes, applause.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

You know what the world needs after it recovers from this pandemic
is a universal family picnic. You know we're all related, don't you?
There's a nice little TV show that shows different people where they
came from, using DNA and that sort of thing. But you know that
little TV show doesn't go back far enough to tell you the whole
story, to show you the big picture. I'm not just talking about ****
sapiens. That would be missing the big point, the point being that
regardless of our evolution, all our forebearers were still related to
each other even as they evolved as far back as 6 million years ago,
not just several hundred years ago, which is pretty much what those
interesting little TV shows talk about. The point is that we human
beings now don't keep in mind how long we've been related, even
as we have gone through the evolutionary processes. Now we have
the Internet. Now we are able to go half way around the world in
seconds, not months or longer. Ecologically we are forced to realize
we are all in this together, that we are one, but this critical realization
is true not just ecologically, but also genetically, and most importantly, spiritually. We have been connected, related, God knows how long, and
our survival is dependent not just in realizing our interconnectedness,
but acting upon it. So let's have a universal picnic, have fun, get to know
each other, laugh with each other, break bread (and some ice cream maybe) with each other. Wars are insane. They are anachronistic. They **** our
distant, and not so distant, relatives, as well as our close family members. Good old USA spends over half our money (taxes) on killing machines.
Crazy ****. Let's clean our air, our seas, our fallow lands. Let's cure all diseases. Let's stop profiting from others' pain. Let's stop hunger and homelessness and hopelessness. Let's stop killing each other and start
saving each other. And after we right all our wrongs, let's celebrate by
having a universal family picnic, maybe every month. There are about 7.8 billion human beings on Earth right now. Let them vote using smart
phones to see if they would like Peace on Earth. Let them govern Earth.
We are all Citizens of the Earth.  

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Most people don't know this, but as a boy, Criminal Trump worked at the
Auschwictz-Birkenau death camp where from 1940 to 1945 the Nazis murdered 1,100,000, mostly Jews, the largest number of murders committed  
in any of the other 15,000 death camps spread over Europe in World War II.
Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was locacated in the province of Upper Silesia in Poland. The camp used Zyklon B to ****** these men, women, and children in their gas chambers. Criminal Trump had multiple duties. He would help the **** guards force the Jews out of the railroad cars, enduring somehow the yelling and screams of the Jews who, for the most part, had already heard the fate awaiting them. Criminal Trump laughed with the **** guards. Criminal Trump, even though he was just a boy, was allowed to carry a club to beat any recalcitrant Jew who would resist getting into line. One of Criminal Trump's most favorite tasks was to watch the women and their female children be forced to take off all their clothing. Criminal Trump enjoyed staring at these naked females, choosing for himself those who were the most beautiful to him. He would wait longer than most of the **** guards before turning on the Zyklon B gas. One of his least favorite jobs was carrying the corpses covered with human excrement to the ovens where they were to be burnt. The smell was almost too fetid for him to do his job. Though Criminal Trump showered after each of these horrid, but necessary, tasks, he never could get rid of either of the smell or the memory of what he had to do hours each day in the gas chambers. In fact, as a man, he would awaken with a start from recurring nightmares of these atrocities he had participated in as a boy.
What Criminal Trump did as a boy at Auschwitz-Birkenenau death camp shaped how he would treat virtually every human being he encountered later
in life--with lack of any empathy at best, with sociopathic cruelty at worst.

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

I'm walking down a country road just west
of Silver Lake with my dog, Cinder. Just east
is the Kansas River, woods between it and me.
I'm not alone exactly. With me are Sherry,
Stephani, Kathleen, Susan, Cara, Anne, Cynthia,
Nancy, Kristin, and Patricia--at least in memory.
As I amble, I'm in a trance. Moments of laughter.
Afternoons of picnics--hotdogs, potato salad,
lemonade. Trips to the Rockies. Steamboat Springs
was my favorite destination. When you got high
enough in the mountains, not only could you see
their majesty, but even better, you could smell
the fragrance of the evergreens, the ultimate high.
Rafting down the Arkansas River sometimes,
down the Colorado other times. A melange of
memories. Decades of intimacy, nights of passion.
Some tears, but more kisses than tears. Cinder
kept up with me as I would occasionally kick up
dust as I continued my country walk. If was as if
I were walking through my past. I guess that's
exactly what I was doing, remembering the mountain
air, the tender touches, the silence lying side by side.
I was taking a walk down a country road with Cinder,
but we were not alone.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

We had a special play for the game against Highland
Park. It was called 36X. After some razzle-dazzle in
the backfield, Mike Gentry got the ball and ran 65 yards
for the winning touchdown. Frank Sewell was a power-
ful lineman--the center, actually. I played linebacker
on defense, and I was lucky, because I played right
behind right tackle, Ted Melinick, who wound up
getting a full football scholarship to KU (the University
of Kansas). My best friend, Ralph "Sandy" Sandmeyer,
half the size of Melinck, but the most tenacious lineman
on the team, was elected co-captain. I was the other one.

It matters not at what level you play. What matters are
the memories that stay with you for a lifetime--the snapshot
memories of special moments that flash through your
mind for the rest of your days. The camaraderie of your
teammates, particular plays--tackles, touchdown runs,
interceptions, even injuries you sustain--all form an
indelible montage. My favorite memory was the one
where, as a wide-receiver on offense, I went into the
flat to catch a pass, but was intercepted by Loyce Bailey.
I jumped on his back to tackle him, but he rode me like
a saddle for 40 yards. Loyce happened to be black, and
therefore lived in the black ghetto on the east side of
Topeka. He was also the best athlete in all of Topeka.
Bailey, like Melinick, got a full ride to KU to play foot-
ball. He was their starting saftey.

Several decades later, I saw Loyce again, this time at a
reunion. I reminisced with him about my futile attempt
to tackle him. He remembered the play, and we both
laughed loud and hard. We gave each other a big hug.
Another indelible memory.  

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

A WINTER’S DAY

I counted all the snowflakes
as they filtered through the sky.
They landed on the bare limbs,
the bushes, the eyelids of busy
rabbits, squirrels gathering
supplies. I walked through banks
of snow that seemed to grow
at least a foot an hour. Our fields
in countryside became blankets
thick and cold and no longer
grew green and yellow grains,
but gathered only snow. I know
that birds took cover in woods
not far away;  they say all
animals are wiser than we
know. We see them not, though
they are there where snowflakes
by the trillions fall through frigid
air.  

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

A WOMAN IS A LONG DESIRE

A woman is a long desire.
Open her up like a wish, legs
as white as egg shells, thighs
as firm as terra firma, as
soft as a soft landing on the
moon. Her lips kiss you twice.
Her hair is a pillow. Lick her
as a mustang licks a salt lick,
her salty-sweet stream now a
flash flood, a rivulet gone wild,
her tiny mountain an earthquake,
paroxysms of purple and rose.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

A recrudescence of inhumanity. ****** from 33,000 feet. The **** of children. Clandestine wars served with false narratives to placate the masses. Malnutrition, the meal of millions. Water once pure and clean now poison. Air we now breathe is toxic:  fumes are not perfumes from flowers. We cower at annihilation:  nuclear winter is not for skiing. ****** we used on plants and people like jelly on toast. We roasted dead bodies of millions in ovens. Slavery was de jure, racism its progeny. Genocide was soup du jour sipped by despots round the world. Oceans once full of fish now filled with plastic. UN now a prefix, not a fix for world problems. No Peace on Earth in sight. Night is all the while, supplanting the light of hope. What unites us now is pandemic of despair. It's in the air and water. It's in our hearts and souls.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

No more nations. No more wars. No more killings. We all
have almost 8 billion (8,000,000,000) friends on Earth. We
just haven't met them yet. Why not a pandemic of love, a
worldwide picnic of peace, not for a week-end, but for a year,
or maybe forever. We live on the only planet in our solar system,
the one tiny planet we call Earth, that allows human beings, and
other living creations, like animals and plants, to live. Our solar
system is the only one we currently know of that permits our kind
of life to exist. There are, on average, 8 planets in each solar system,
but there are an estimated 100 billion (100,000,000,000)
solar sysrems just in our one galaxy, the Milky Way. Further-
more, there are an estimated 2 trillion (2,000,000,000,000) galaxies
in the universe. So do the math. Approximate the number of planets that plausibly could sustain life in the universe:  take the number 1 (the mumber of planets in each solar system that might be able to sustain life) times one hundred billion (100,000,000,000),  the estimated number of solar systems in each galaxy) times 2 trillion (2,000,000,000,000) the estimated number of galaxies in the universe. Whatever that end product is is beyond the capabilities of my computer's calculator, and is, for certain, mind-boogling. The end product gives each one of us a mind-
bending sense of enormousness of our universe and informs each one of us how many neighbors we have yet to meet. Why is the speed of light so fast, you ask? It is so fast, so when we discover how to travel at the speed of light, or even faster, we can scoot around our universe and meet all our new friends. Picnics galore! Think of all the hot dogs and hamburgers and scoops of ice cream we can share with them! We have lived our lives myopically for millennia, and we remain blind to the potential of the future. It is out there waiting for us. Put your assualt rifles, your hydrogen bombs, down and pick up your piece of interstellar peace, a veritable Cosmos of peace, but please go easy on the mustard and relish.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

A WORLD WITHOUT WARS?

A world without wars? Why not? How
about  a worldwide picnic of peace. The
boundaries that divide us are not on maps,
but in our minds and hearts. Humanity is
as impoverished as its poorest member, as
healthy as its sickest, as educated as its most
ignorant. There is only one land, one sky, one
sea, one people. If we pollute the Mississippi
River, ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian
Ocean. If we pollute the air we breathe anywhere,
we shall pollute it everywhere, and thereby die.  
Don’t you get it? There is only one world. Its
citizens are humanity. No one owns Earth except
the Supreme Spirit. Humanity owns only
the right to be treated well and the responsi-
bility to treat Earth and all creations on it well.
If all of Earth’s precious resources were shared
equally among its peoples, there would no longer
be a need for wars, only rejoicing. Love would
rule instead of despots. Life would become a
lasting worldwide celebration of love and loving.
Love-based relationships and endeavors would
obviate aggrandizement and avarice, the prime
movers of wars worldwide. Wealth is not
worth. Jesus wore only a robe. When those
who gathered around him, Jesus did not tell
them how to get rich. He told them to love
one another. Love was his message.
The multitude of differences on Earth--languages,
skin colors, cultures, religions--are to be shared,
explored, enjoyed, enriching, not reasons to fear,
exclude, persecute, and ****. Are you blind?
Don’t you see? Are you ignorant? We now
have technologically the capacity to communicate
instantly around the world, to share our ideas and
concerns with our fellow Earth citizens, our brothers
and sisters. We are all one family, and if we join
hands and hearts, we--not presidents, not dictators,
not multinational corporations--can create Peace
on Earth and enjoy it forever.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks