Back to back
Savoring the Janus days
The holiday season is over, and the Belgian school holidays are, too, as of this evening. Back to life, back to normal, and a whole year stretching out in front of us.
I still feel like I haven’t quite shed the old one yet, though. The image that came to mind about these weeks (the last fortnight before the New Year, and the fortnight after) is that of Janus, the two-faced god ruling bridges and passages, one face looking ahead while the other is looking back.
The years are back to back, and we are right in the middle, at the wedge between the two.
There’s an eccentric astrologer going by the name of Kaypacha, a goofy old hippy bird I like to listen to sometimes because he often has wise things to say. 2017 he called ‘the year of the End of Illusion’. Old patterns, both on a personal level and a societal level, were being forced into the open. There was no more hiding the ugly old wounds and practices from the past… We have all seen and experienced some of it, from very close up or further away, as the world’s political and environmental shifts brought a whole truckload of upheaval, and some voices that had been silent for far too long (#Metoo, anyone?) were making themselves heard loud and have no intention of leaving again.
At the same time our strength and personal truths were also forced into the open, for ourselves and the world to see, whether we were ready or not. We had some very hard confrontations and shocks to digest, both with ourselves and our surroundings. But we also found strength and beauty ready to sing and soar, in the most unlikely of places.
Now what does my astrology bird have to say about 2018? Fasten your seat-belts: he calls it ‘the year of Alchemical Transformation’, a time in which everything that we have envisioned in the previous year is taking more concrete, solid shape and wants to be put into practice for real. Like all transformations this can be intense and sometimes frightening because stuff is getting real. It might even be a tad explosive (I get this image of a cartoon character staggering out of his laboratory with a face full of soot and his hair standing on end), but it can also bring great reward and satisfaction.
On a personal level, I can see a lot of this working its way into my own life. 2017 was indeed a year where I had some deep and old fears and patterns to face, but it was also the year where I stopped hiding and stepped forward in many ways.
And for 2018 a number of concrete steps have been taken or are being set in motion.
At the office where I work, the rhythm of publication has changed from two-weekly to monthly, and the nature of the articles we write has also changed considerably (more screen-friendly and reader-centred, less in-depth editorial or journalistic). This is a major change of the most hands-on kind and it’s not an easy one. I am still digesting the consequences it entails. Also the temporary extension of my work rate to 3/5 has been recalled, so I am back at 2,5/5 as of this week. But organised intelligently in a series of clustered days, this is a rhythm that really suits me and allows me both focus at work and free creative time at home.
On a spiritual, creative and stepping-up-using-my-voice level, things are moving as well. I am going to give a very nice lecture on my work later this month (in the Netherlands, no less), we have a concert with the band I play in coming February, and I am planning to host four Season’s Circles in the course of the coming year.
Jurgen and I have been talking business and are planning the production and publication of both a Sapling Volume#1 booklet and a series of postcards (any interest in English versions? Let me know! I’m curious if there is…). We have been working on photograph-based Saplings as well as drawing-based ones, and we are exploring ways in which we could have those published as well. We are edging closer to a Dutch publication of the graphic novel Stream (for a glimpse of that one, take a look at the artwork in this post). There is a collaboration with an artist friend for an installation in the mix, a café that’s interested in hanging some of our stuff on their walls, talk of a webshop…
Yes, 2018 is announcing itself as a year of practical work, and in most cases that feels absolutely right!
(On the other hand, there is also the hall that needs repainting, garden work that is very urgent, rearranging the kids’ bedrooms to be done, laundry that keeps piling up and buckets more of that other kind of pure practical work that I’m far from keen on. But hey, you can’t have it all…)
So I am savouring the last of these Janus days, wedged between the old year and the new. I am looking back at everything I have learned and come to know there. And I am looking forward to everything that is about to burst into bloom, come into actual form, and alchemically transform into something solid and true.
I’ll keep you posted on the risk of any spontaneous combustions, too. ;-)
