Heroes Not Zombies

Happy New Year! I know, I’m a bit late, but, hey, I haven’t been well. Back to health now, though, so time to start blogging again.
Some time back I was learning a bit of Japanese, and was amazed to discover that the words for the days of the week had the same root as the French words for the days of the week. To cut a long story short, I discovered that in multiple cultures and languages we name the days of the week after the sun, the moon and five planets. Not only, the same five planets, but across cultures exactly the same ones for each particular day (Monday is associated with the Moon, Tuesday, the planet Mars, Wednesday, Mercury, Thursday, Jupiter, Friday, Venus, Saturday, Saturn and Sunday, the Sun – it’s less clear in English as we’ve swapped the planet names for Norse Gods on Tuesday through to Friday). Given the rich symbolism of the planets for human beings I thought it would be interesting to explore how the actual name of the day might influence our experience of that day (I’m not talking astrological influences here, but semantic ones). I then wondered about the months of the year. What’s the naming pattern behind the months? Are they planets too? The answer turned out to be immensely unsatisfying – it’s a mess! Some are named after Greek or Roman Gods, some Roman Emperors and some after a number – and not even the right number out of the twelve possible ones for a year of twelve months!
So, I thought, why not come up with a symbolic, or semantic marker for each of the twelve months? I could then interact with that throughout the year.
Here are the twelve themes.
So we start the year in January, named after Janus, who looks forward and backwards at the same time. Janus, the god of gates and gateways. It’s the month when people reflect on the year gone by, and resolve to do something different in the year to come. In other words, it’s a time for both assessing where you’ve got to and having some thoughts about where you might be going.
Here’s my image for this month.

It’s a photograph of a sculpture at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. The sculpture looks like goalposts, so it made me think about the whole notion of having goals (something I’m pretty ambivalent about to be honest – I see their value, but think they can be overdone). When I took this shot, I was struck by how the sculpture framed the little tree and the idea of planting a seed, and nurturing it to full blooming was an even more appealing image for me.
So here it is, the combined ideas of a gateway, to pause and look back before venturing forth, of goals or targets or hopes, and of seeds planted with a vision to work towards, to nourish, cherish and bring to fruition.
I hope some of these ideas, and this image, might colour your January.