Tuesday, January 1, 2019

2019

Janus, the god of gateways, of doors and transitions, two-faced--not in the sense of being a liar, but having literally two faces--one looking back, the other ahead. He is the god of the New Year, looking back and looking ahead. Guardian of thresholds. He doesn't really have much personality, more of an abstract concept than a fully developed deity, appropriate perhaps for a god who is never really there, always staring behind into the past or ahead into the future.

It occurred to me that we are invisible to him. He can see the things we left behind us, the things we shed like a snake sheds skins. He can maybe see some of our potential acts, possibilities for tomorrow or the next day. But we, ourselves, are always in the threshold, always between any past and any future.

Janus is blind to the now, to what is in the threshold itself, the perpetual transition that is us.

The doorframe slides along an infinite string of nows. We are not in the past. We are not in future. We are always and forever in the doorway, hidden from the two-faced god.

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