TURN THE RADIO OFF

anselm kiefer

It's been something of a day of rest. So beat down and worn out by a never-ending project I foolishly got myself into, yesterday drained my energy like pulling the plug in a sink. Today, I performed the next step like an automaton and got it in the mail. I've settled into this project going on forever and have quit looking forward to it ending some day in the far distant future. Today I have slept until I can't sleep and had to get up. Up is back in that mind drained of energy. Watched an Australian film from 1976, Picnic at Hanging Rock, story made from something that happened in 1900. Girl school summer picnic at a beautiful outcropping of rock called Hanging Rock. Four girls disappear, vanish. One was found four or five days later barely alive. She can't remember what happened. It falls into an unsolved mystery and the survivors are changed. Directed by Peter Weir. Well made film and well conceived. Read some in the van Gogh biography. And slept. Brought three bales of hay from the barn to the donkey lot in the trunk of the car. I've heard talk of snow in the next few days, but didn't pay it any mind, the source not credible. The weather report predicts rain tomorrow and rain Saturday, mild temperature all week. We could use some rain. The ground is dry. It was mud for so long, dry is good. Couldn't work on any art projects today. Paralyzed by weariness of mind. I know not to involve myself in the world of human busyness. I jumped in, knowing better, it went up over the top of my head. I've become so indifferent to this project I don't even pray for it to end. If this project ever has an end date, I will take a quart of liquor out into the donkey meadow, sit on the ground and drink. Sounds awfully romantic. Even too corny for a movie. And presumptuous to think it may someday end. 

anselm kiefer

I've caught myself being presumptuous so many times, I tend to articulate meaning so specifically there is no place for presumption. I don't like to presume. I do, but don't like to. Pulling away from presumption, it seems like it brings me closer to the moment, the now, seeing what is, not what I suppose. This one clue toward finding the now, not supposing, allows the moment to be as it is, instead of wanting it to be some other way. I feel like this endless project is teaching me something about supposing, presuming. Each time we have a communication, I presume this is the time it will be fixed, and I'm always wrong. From here on, I accept it as it is and project no hopes it will ever end, let it do what it does. I still can't believe how complex this project has become. I don't even remember everything that went wrong. Everything. Nothing has gone right after two months. Rather than groan and moan about it, I must accept it as what is happening now. Allow it to be what it is. Can't turn on the radio without hearing about the 100+ kids killed in Pakistan by the Taliban. I don't like to hear it, and turn the radio off. Internet news is full of cops killing unarmed black men someplace in the country every day. Police have become the kkk. Afraid for their lives. This is obvious acting out of John the Revelator's prophecy of the end time. In youth I hoped to live long enough to see what the end time will be like. Now I see what it is like and I don't like being in it. A good time not to be of it.

anselm kiefer

I followed the prophecy years ago, interpreting by the best interpretations I could find, though have not paid much attention to it in the last several years. In my reading of it, I see that everything is done, the vials all poured, all of it, but Armageddon. Small wars in defenseless countries, annihilating them, the US military takes on the people of destroyed countries and calls them insurgents. USA has brought so much misery into the world, at home and abroad, surely some kind of karmic return is happening in US. Tighten up the borders to keep terrorists out, and they break out in school shootings anywhere at any time, inside the border. We don't need them coming at us from outside. Our society has become so dysfunctional, we don't need to worry over doom coming from outside. The depersonalization of the human being has created a terrorist war inside our borders. We have police state now, so it's only going to get worse. Fascism always self-destructs and it takes the whole country down with it. I hope to be in my next lifetime somewhere in Asia when USA self-destructs. I see the whole world coming down on USA like was done in Germany after WW2. The rest off the world will stop USA, after it self-destructs, from ever again having a military. This is the murder capital of the world, incarceration capital of the world, the mood enhancing prescription drugs capital of the world, the cocaine and heroin capital of the world, the homeless capital of the world, the deception capital of the world. It's shocking to me, as one not tapped into television, to see how central television is to the people of the world I live in. Separate from it, I can see it a propaganda device, in ways few everyday viewers would see as such, even if they self-examined. It's subtle, hyper-advanced propaganda. A century and a half of the science of psychology, police state is where it's applied. 

anselm kiefer

All the more reason for me to stay at home, stay off the roads, stay out of town, stay out of involvement in anything. One thing about living with myself, I always have somebody who agrees with me. That can be a setback too, but I look for balance. I stay in touch with my friend Carole, we talk every day at the beginning of the day. It's kind of like morning meditation with the feminine. Many days I feel like the day is complete once we've talked, the rest of it is what's left of the day. A couple of art projects are growing. I must give more attention to my everyday life and less attention to the fascist takeover of the American government. At the same time, it is so interesting to be witnessing the most significant time in American history since the founding, I can't stop paying attention, something more horrific happens every day, here and everywhere. I've had to resign myself to allowing it. It's bigger than me by so much I don't even figure. I have no say in any of it. All I can do is the boycott of one with television and Walmart, a game where I am the only player and the only one to care. I can't take an interest in social causes in a time when everything is about money. America is the new Babylon. I think of Burning Spear's reggae song, Babylon Will Fall. I'm seeing it now in the news every day, the crumbling, the breaking down from a cancer within, the fall of Capitalism. I have a hard time not paying attention to current events for what I see happening. I like seeing it from a mountain glen in a place where a little bit of wildlife is left, a place where hawks and buzzards circle in the sky, a cellphone dead zone.

anselm kiefer

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