I hear the voice of God

The joker

He speaks to me in the ice floes

He writes down his words for the record

Here's one for the symbol minded

He says

I copy it down in my notebook

His voice is loud

And I fear him not

He growls

Like thunder

And waits

Like a man at a lady's door

Stamping the snow off his boots

It's all a release

He says

And then He smiles

This wise cracking God

A thorny point

The burning bush

From where the crackly Voice doth speak

I am who I am

detail: from Anselm Kiefer's Ich bin der Ich bin

now showing at Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria

In Salzburg in 2003 Anselm Kiefer said: Science cannot tell us where we come from. Nor can theology, which purports to be a science. This is why stories exist and mythology which tries to explain something in a non-scientific way, knowing that there is no ultimate explanation or meaning.

The point here is that we are, or at least I am, 4,000 years after the burning bush event, dependent upon the veracity of a few words written in a much manipulated book called the Holy Bible; words pertaining to the identity, or the name, of a mysterious speaker claiming to be the LORD and also therefore my God.

I'm sorry but I fear the evidence is sadly lacking and I cannot accept the tale as anything other than an allegory, that is to say a symbolic and ancient narrative.

I am, if truth be told, being asked to accept one man's story, which may be pure fiction, as an actual event. Call it lack of faith if you like, but I cannot go down a path which asks me to believe that God, the supposed Creator of the universe, was hiding inside a burning bush, or was speaking through a hidden pipe from a nearby cave.

For me, the God of the Universe, is vastly greater than the one offered up in the so-called Holy Bible. I prefer to see a God who has no need to resort to conjuring tricks, hallucinatory drugs, threats, fear mongering, and tall stories in order to recruit some followers.

The God of the billion billion galaxies is not hiding in a thorn bush in the Middle East spinning mysterious riddles . . . that's what spiders are for.

Red Sea 2005

detail: Anselm Kiefer's Red Sea 2005

the creator himself

would go mad given knowledge

of the world's ignoble ways

we must assume that he is

The above haiku (for lack of a better word) is based in part on the following quotation from the artist Anselm Kiefer: "Every human being would go mad possessing full knowledge of the despicable ways of the world. As it is, every child is born into an empty space. That empty space is both empty and full: just as empty factory halls are full of traces and sounds of work once performed there. Every empty theatre is a space brimming with images and condensed words. Full emptiness is like loud silence."

My comment on Anselm Kiefer's excellent exhibition is that we ought all to be captains of our own ships of destiny, or at least that is my general idea; or it was, or it used to be, except that today the ships, that is to say the ships of state on which we all travel, are foundering on the dangerous reefs of avaricious and "despicable ways" and it has all too often been so. The echoes go before us.

Anselm Kiefer is currently showing at Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, nr. Vienna, Austria.

______

On May 13th 2005 there was a great sandstorm in the Red Sea

haiku tao

Am I a man imagining

I am a shadow, or a shadow

imagining I am a man?

in deep thought

haiku self-portrait

the obscure

self-portrait in shadow

haiku

the obscure self-portrait

haiku superimposed

my shadow

goes before me

a bit part in a movie

photo of Andrea Fraser addressing my shadow in Projection
level -2
4.2 - 28.5.12 mumok, vienna

inthebeginning

"there came three priests . . ."

in the beginning

the people

looked into the sky

and saw the moon

and the stars and the sun

and the cycles of nature

and they fished

in the rivers

and in the sea

and they moved

from place to place

with the migration

of the birds and the fishes

and they gave thanks

to the gods of the heavens

who lived in the sun

and in the moon

and they named their days after them

but then

from the desert

there came three priests

who spoke to the people

there are too many gods

and you the people are becoming

confused

and so the people

destroyed the old gods

who lived in the sun

and the moon

and the rivers

and the sea

and created the gods

of the three hells

and three heavens

three gods

to make them

make war on each other

and the people fell

before the new gods

and became as their sheep

tractable followers

through gaps in their walls

without even a dog behind them

and when the gods saw

that the people

were sheep

they were

all

well pleased

______

mouse masks and other claes oldenburg exhibits at vienna mumok 4.2 - 28.5.12

haiku

a rustle in the reeds

vamoosed the wild pigs!

now nothing stirs

This is the final picture in this series of 5 photographs from the frozen lake in the Lobau.

Some of the unseen wild pigs may one day end up being simmered and stirred in the stewpot, hence the wordplay in the last line of the haiku. This is also a play on the apparent devastation seen in the photo for the pigs turn up (or stir) the earth with their snouts, even the frozen earth, to get to the roots, and so with the ground made loose the surrounding trees eventually fall.

Obviously too there's the third meaning of nothing stirs - nothing disturbs the silence. This reminds us that there was nothing moving in the reeds, not even a gentle breeze.

Vamoose is a Spanish verb which I though might add a little spice ;).