Whitherward

New year, new options, new potential commitments. A few days’ contemplation spawns countless questions, inklings about other directions. I’ve lost my klaboutermannikin for now and am led by a Janus image like this, which no sane shipwright would ever place on a ship. It’s January after all.

 

January would not be called January if we weren’t vulnerable to conflicting visions. In fact the conflict is helpful; it forces a deliberateness without which we’d be like water, flowing only where gravity dictates, without choice, agency, ability to resist.

 

One option is upward, opposing the drudge of water and the shackles of gravity, to the tops of the watershed and look longingly skyward, where hawks and eagles play in front of even more heavenly bodies.

 

But I can stand longing here only so long before I notice the limitations of the eagles, the rut of thin air, and the monotony of the stars. Like Robert Frost, I have promises to keep.  It’s only a matter of time before I assemble a new vision–and a new one assembles me–and I embrace what’s beyond the archway, before I rush back into the swim.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.