Too many of us prize the place over the person.
When I dream, I dream of hobos--6 to 8 of them--huddled around a make-shift fire next to the railroad tracks eating warmed cans of pork and beans. We chat, tell stories and jokes, and sometimes break into laughter. Maybe Woody Guthrie is among us.
Other times, I dream of the **** death camps, not an easy, not an enjoyable, thing to do. But that did happen, and not by economic circumstance. And even if fleetingly, they were together. I think that's what draws me to them.
Sometimes I dream of the Lakota Ogala Sioux before Wounded Knee put an end to them and their way of life. I see Crazy Horse, one of my few heroes, always self-effacing, and as true as the arrow he just shot as he was to his word.
And when Martin Lither King, Jr was murdered on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee by a single rifle bullet to his head, 4 April 1968, I dream of standing over him with others, crying.
The ugliest place I've ever seen is Versailles. Opulence on top of opulence on top of even more opulemce. Made me want to throw up.
Often, maybe too often, we prize the place over the person.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, a novelist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
