Both Sides Now

January is well-named after the double-headed god Janus looking in opposite directions. Janus Head comes to us from ancient Rome as the god of transition with opposing faces. One looks back and one ahead. 

 I don’t know why you say goodbye / I say hello.    Paul McCartney

The two directions could also pertain to our current divide. The country is more polarized than ever between people who agree with me (plus about 80 million of my closest friends) and those who don’t. It wouldn't surprise me if my ten best anything list is their ten worst.  Maybe by next year Janus won’t even bother giving the MAGA folks a glance.

On yet another level there are times when I know the Janus Head feeling. I don't always agree with myself. I swing between hope and despair; fortunately that's a vast space. It's not a bad thing to stand on a threshold looking at both the wreckage and repair.

Viewing it all in the rearview mirror, the world doesn't stay still for a minute. Nickel candy bars cost $1.50 but more than that is the challenge to see things again as if never before. Everyday our eyes are new to experience life with full consciousness. I think it is still possible and that will be my new year's wish. No resolution; I prefer to keep it unresolved and still becoming.

At the end of our exploring we arrive where we began and know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot

Putin's war on Ukraine brings out the love/hate in me. Of course, I honor the sovereignty and defense of democracy by Ukraine but every morning I wake hoping to hear that negotiations are underway to stop the carnage. It should also be noted that the money appropriated by Congress for weaponry can also be seen as a giant bonanza for Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and  Raytheon who must all be enjoying every minute of this needless war.

It's fair to say most folks my age are bewildered and threatened by the new technology. I know. I'm one of them. We are more comfortable looking through the blurry lens of what once was than aligning ourselves to confront the monstrous digital age. As I write this I'm reminded of these lines by the poet Robert Haas:

We asked the captain what course / of action he proposed to take toward / a beast so large, terrifying and / so unpredictable. He hesitated to / answer, and then said judiciously / "I think I shall praise it."

At this age I certainly have more memories than plans, more auld lang syne. Any excuse to raise a cup and bend an elbow, works for me. We sing with blood alcohol rising:

And there's a hand, my trusty fere! / And gie's a hand o' thine! 

And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught, / For auld lang syne.

It makes a lot more sense after emptying a bottle of bubbly. The song laid fairly dormant till Guy Lombardo, my least favorite big bandleader, popularized it on radio in the late 20s and then later on TV. Had Robert Burns known about this he might have disowned the tune. But he didn’t own it to begin with. Its origins go back before him.

On New Year’s Day I always talk to my old friend, Stanley. He promises not to reveal how I embezzled money as milk monitor and parlayed eleven cents into an empire of high-rise buildings in Manhattan. Like many memories this never happened but it could have been how a certain Bozo got his start.

This past year has been packed with notable events to record. I’ve been to dozens of countries thanks to the National Geographic channel, and friends Judy and Len with photographs of elephants (not in the room). Traveling is far less strenuous from the couch.

Everyone I know will be a year older next year but only in the calendar of our bones. If we manage to keep the child alive, we’ll remain at any age we dial. Like the Janus Head we look ahead and we look back and all the time we live in the moment. There goes another one.

I’ll end this ramble with a poem of mine apropos of nothing except that it was published in 2001 by Janus Head literary magazine. They describe themselves as a journal of interdisciplinary studies of literature and phenomenological psychology. (Not sure what that means but I'm impressed by the big words.)

 Deer of Denman Island

The big buck waited for his cue

Behind a green curtain overgrown,

listening for our motor’s purr,

the wipers metronome.

 

We had seen the yellow signs

along the road, half caution, half ads

but after all the no-shows

put him out of mind.

 

Winding through the rainforest

our talk went to musicals,

Kelly and Astaire, the one

joyously drenched owned the street

while the other slender and tailed

went cheek to cheek with hat rack and broom.

God knows, with cameras, anything goes

up walls and ceilings as he crooned.

 

The highway after all

was nothing more than a clear-cut path

of cut roots and severed stumps,

their wrath paved-over for predators like us.

 

As we took the curve,

Klieg lights in his eyes like stars

he choreographed his leap

reminding us whose woods these are.

 

One second had been split by screech

and balletic flight. There would be

no close-ups, no other takes.

He vaulted weightlessly without a trace.