On Keys

Keys with mysteries. Ones that don’t engage, need coaxing or slip to the bottom of the bag. Passwords that don’t connect. Streets that won’t turn right, or left. Secret solutions defying permissions. Ianuarius, like all months, was entered invoking Janus, god of beginnings and endings, standing at the year’s turn governing doorways, transitions, passages, past and future tenses. Protector of keys.

            I wonder if it’s better to focus on beginnings rather than endings. Everything falls away from its first glory, and the past is filled, as Milarepa warns, with events concluded in sorrow. All worldly enterprises fail at last. Better to remember the beginning, appearing in hope and joy?

            Peter held the keys to heaven: are they future keys? Like Janus, Peter could open the way to the divine: Christ’s door-ward. The ancients believed the future lurked behind, ready to overtake you unawares. Surely the future is a key: will it turn in the lock?

           The two-faced god, acknowledged at the start of any action, also represents a present continuous, a point in time engaged with change: it travels with you. Other times fall away. Be attentive to beauty. The only valid key is the key to my heart.