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Reflections of a Housekeeper, by Angela Burnes, week 19

I caught myself staring at another of Ortega's mirrored objects. According to the card I found, it's a "neo-classical bronze bust of the god Janus."

I remember Janus from a course on mythology. Two faces, looking in opposite directions. One at the past, the other to the future. One young, one old. One male, one female, though in this instance both faces look androgynous.

What struck me is the lack of conflict between the two faces. The statue is in equilibrium, with no obvious tension between the two sides, despite facing away from one another, looking in opposite directions.

That seems right to me. There's union between the sun and the moon, between the two sides of a single coin, and there's really no need to choose one or the other because we all contain both. Some things just exist like that, and whatever contradictions people perceive only exist because language can't fully capture the reality of the world, the plural essence of being.

This statue embodies that sense of that unity. It's a divine dream where God loves all His children equally.