On a shelf in a Quito, Ecuador I saw
this little statue of a God. When I tried to ask the owner about the statue's name her shrug told
me she didn't know as she wrote down his price in dollars. Then
nodding with a smile she also wrote,100 BC. For what I thought must
be a copy I talked her down with just my hands and later took my
little God thru customs in a bag of dirty laundry.
At home an expert at the Sackler Gallery told me my little God was real and that he was even older. But she also didn't know his name.
Unlike a pipe or a piece of fruit that's real, like all the Gods we have today and perhaps all of the Gods we've ever had, how many people had to die so many centuries ago as a way of somehow proving that my forgotten God was really real.
At home an expert at the Sackler Gallery told me my little God was real and that he was even older. But she also didn't know his name.
Unlike a pipe or a piece of fruit that's real, like all the Gods we have today and perhaps all of the Gods we've ever had, how many people had to die so many centuries ago as a way of somehow proving that my forgotten God was really real.