Ages

Ages
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Introduction

Introduction by Olivia E. Sears

Time-keeping systems were originally based on cycles of nature. The Mayans used the cycle of rains. Ancient Egyptians based theirs on the rising of the star Sirius, an event that coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile, giving rise to three seasons: Inundation, Going Forth, and Deficiency. Months in ancient Athens had names related to activities: month of boiling beans, month of shooting stags, month of helpers, stormy month, month of the sacrifice of 100. These were natural events. But they were also deemed important by human judgment.

There are sacred beginnings to time-keeping as well. The creation and maintenance of dating systems was entrusted to religious authorities to mark the religious days and coordinate festivals to celebrate holy days. In ancient Rome, the pontifex maximus (high priest) was responsible for announcing the calendar. Each month, he would watch for the new moon and then stand on the Capitoline Hill to declare (calare) the new month and its length. The first day of the month, therefore, was called calends. Our “calendar” began with another religious figure, the Abbot of Rome, who decided in what would be 532 to re-count the Christian era from Christ’s birth. The abbot, Dionysius Exiguus, calculated Christ’s birth by averaging the conflicting dates provided by the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. We now recognize the inaccuracy of this date, but we still use it as the beginning of the Common Era (CE) because of the complications a change would cause. This “birth” became year one, unlike western birthdays which begin with zero. Christ’s first birthday, retrospectively, coincides with year 2 CE; this millennium therefore concludes in December 2000.

Translating life and time into a universal language that we can all keep track of has always been a complex venture. The history of calendars throughout the world traces all the different ways proposed to resolve the discrepancy between the lunar cycles used to measure months (which add up to 354 days per year) and the solar cycle which determines the seasons (~365.25). Nature’s precision does not conform to a system for translating its movements into numbers. As in all translation, we have had to rely on exquisite approximations to communicate.

The rhythms of our lives often vary from that of nature. Even the beginning of the day is subjective. For the Hebrew, Greek, Celtic, and Saxon calendars -- in fact, for most ancient societies -- the day begins at sunset. Imagine staring into the sunset and thinking “it’s a brand new day.” This sensibility still has an impact on our culture around religious holidays.

The importance of time is a conceit. Ages are defined by events and our interpretation of them. Life implies age; therefore things may accrue meaning naturally, simply by aging, collecting the impressions of time. But it is human judgment which makes age valuable. Age gives flavor to wine and cheese in storage, maturity to fruits and vegetables -- it also adds value to antiques, as well as copies of TV guide and Barbie dolls, all because we see meaning in time.

Ages are large-scale appreciations of the rhythms of time. They can be determined by natural phenomena, but the beginnings and endings of ages are always determined in retrospect: after the meteor hit, after the death of the queen or king, after the conquest, after the discoveries. And they usually betray our judgments: the Dark Ages, the Age of Innocence, the Age of Reason, the Industrial Age, the Golden Age.

And these ages are filled with dates of significance; signposts of meaning and change. As this century began, the year 1914 meant nothing more than some time in the future. In 1915, it was the beginning of horrific troubles as yet unnamed. By 1920, it marked the start of the war to end all wars. From 1945, it was viewed as the opening of World War I -- the beginning of an age of world wars for which we could see no end. Time and life translate numbers, the signifiers which follow one upon another to measure time, into human terms. The meanings of these signposts change for every age; they change as the time in which they occurred recedes.

But the dates which send shivers down our spines are also subject to localization, similar to the nuances of language, as is underlined throughout the literature in these pages. 1996 in the Balkans. 1989 in East Germany. 1973 in Chile. 1945, at noon, in Japan. 1937 for Jews in Europe. 1906 in San Francisco. Calendars contain many celebrations and commemorations. They generally have a meaning in the external world, a reason. The date is used merely to coordinate the event. By contrast, we are currently counting down to a landmark which is nothing but a number, the thousand-year mark that seems to gain importance from our base ten numerical system; our ten-fingered relationship with the world. The millennium “celebration” is the most obvious demonstration of our devaluation of time’s sacred nature. Perhaps cultures are so disparate that this abstraction is all we can agree validate our age -- not the passage of authority, not the crowning of a new king, not the creation of a new currency, nothing real. We will celebrate a sign. And our impatience will celebrate that sign a year early. We are so ready to put this century behind us that it will have been the only 99-year century since cultures started celebrating “ends of centuries.” The 20th century began in January 1901. Our need for a signpost to a new era will cut it short, will make all its technological revolutions history. Meanwhile, the Jewish calendar will call it about 5761 anno mundi; it will be year 5012 in the Hindus’ Kali Yuga age; 2250 in the Runic era; the Aztecs would call it 2 House; and for the Chinese, it will be 4697 for a month or so, and then 4698, the Year of the Dragon. And yet the world seems ready to create this event, to make it a unifying celebration.

The millennium’s significance for us is its predictability. This is one turning point we can anticipate, prepare for.… On the eve of the millennium, no one will break down the door and drag us out of sleep, no surrenders will be announced, no destructive ground-shaking, no explosions. We are used to defining our ages in retrospect; here we are trying to define them as we go -- presently. Will history agree?

One definition for our time seems certain: the Information Age, or the Digital Age. Our lives are measured differently because of our access to information and to global communication. As with the early millennial, these two categories are not always in concert. We have produced counting machines that will fail to count. Brilliant but short-sighted minds, those futuristic visionaries, developed a tool in the sixties and seventies that chose not to foresee a millennium thirty years away. We call ourselves the Information Age, but we cannot process the one piece of information we knew was coming, the year 2000. Does not compute.

Yet, increasingly, we are choosing numbers over what they represent. Information is circulating differently in our Digital Age: it is all being translated into numbers. Common systems for communication take precedence over natural states of occurrence (and decay). This code will be our new history, the truly new age we are rushing into. We will not be looking to the priest on the hill to translate the world. For it is a code waiting to be deciphered -- by those with the technology. This type of translation results in abstractions, which -- like the date fixed to represent Christ’s birth and our epoch -- are profoundly difficult to change.

TWO LINES strives to create its own ages, emerging anew each spring to mark the year in translation. As the journal matures, it too ages and ferments. At the ripe age of five, we are now planning a new era for the journal: we are creating a non-profit organization in order to be eligible for financial support. In this day and age -- when book contracts with authors are canceled while publishing giants maintain their profits, when public support for the arts is always on the verge of being slashed -- such support is rarely reliable, always necessary. We hope you will follow us into our new era.