LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD

JANUARY IS COMING, with its celebration of Janus, the two-faced god who looks in both directions. Janus or Ianus stood at the origin of time and guarded the very gates of heaven. Here is Janus Bifrons, with his two fronts, at the Vatican museums -- an image captured on Wikipedia.

According to the Wiki, Janus may be traced to Sumerian solar gods, where one twin faced southeast to greet the sun at the coming of winter, and the other twin faced northeast to greet summer. Eventually the two fused into a single body with two heads, facing in opposite directions.  Regardless of what details you believe, we clearly have a case of yin and yang -- each side contains and balances the other; there's no looking forward without looking back. At every transition we enter the new, but never without a backward glance.

And so today we ponder the past year. Because you can't just shut the door and start over.

Among some wondrous books I've been reading is the voluptuous The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock. It tells the amazing story of Mary Delany, who began her life's work at the age of 72 when she was inspired to capture an entire botanical garden, each patiently cut from hundreds of snippets of colored paper, then cut and fastidiously pasted onto black backgrounds.  If you haven't heard of this remarkable woman, I recommend her story and the book's the astonishing images of her nearly 1000 collages, now in the collection of the British Museum.

I love the lushness of this Papaver somniferum, the Oriental opium poppy. And her  portrait of Pancratium maritimum, or sea daffodil, offers an incredible elaboration on nature.

Mrs. Delany was a "late bloomer" in the best sense -- and her story provides a delicious role model for late bloomers everywhere. And it's especially apt on December 31: in tracing the arc of Mrs. Delany's life, Peacock observes how one phase builds upon another:

Wholesale throwing out only closes a door against the past... You have to sort through the details of the past in order to process what happened, and then to move ... [forward in a pattern of] slow growing, that layering upon layering that is growth in maturity.

That does NOT mean tomorrow is not a new slate. It is -- both a miraculous way to reset the counters, and a way to connect to one's best by applying the lessons and experience of earlier years.

That process is different for each of us.  Whatever your definition, may you be happy, healthy, and fully at ease in the coming year.