What is Anachronism?

(Note: Congratulations to Kim, who won last week's theme guessing competition. Her prize was a pygmy hippo. This week's post provides a whole new chance to win. Simply put your thoughts in comments below as to what theme I chose for the pictures and what they have to do with the subject of today's post. )

It was a sunny autumn afternoon in Cincinnati, the autumn of 2009, my quarter of courses as a PhD student. On this particular afternoon, I was hurrying across campus with a fellow grad student, Theresa. We were on our way to Langsam library to stock up on required reading materials. As we walked past Tangemann University Center, the clock tower began to strike three o’ clock in the afternoon. According to my cell phone, though, which is correct according to atomic time, it was only 2:52 PM. Somehow, this discrepancy made me ill at ease—even though I knew the atomically correct time, Tangemann’s clock was also correct in the sense that it was publicly displayed for the whole university. I was further agitated by the descrepance because Theresa and I were both supposed to be in class at 3PM, and I really hoped the professor was going by atomic rather than analogue time. 

As is often the case when one is a historian, or at least a historian-in-training, perplexing questions about present conditions caused me to wonder about the past, specifically my specialty: early modern Europe and Germany (1450-1700, roughly).

                “I wonder what people thought about time in the 17^th century,” I turned to Theresa, as she responded with a puzzled glance.

                “Probably what most people think about time, you know ‘what time is it?’” She responded.

                But by the time we reached the library, I realized they couldn’t have thought the same thing about time that we do. They didn’t have clocks that were accurate, and too many people lived outside cities, so they weren’t governed by the clocktower. People used sundials and hourglasses. They didn’t even have the same calendar acrossed all of Europe.

                “But that’s just it, Theresa, what time is it, really?” I asked her.

                “It’s almost three, Cole. And we’re late,” She sighed as we cuddled into the revolving door at the library entrance, which is always sort of awkward.

                “I think I’m going to write my dissertation about that,” I told her, smiling brightly. She laughed.

                Nearly three years later, and many changes, edited proposal drafts, research questions and papers and readings and head-bangings later, I’m in the thick of that dissertation. And I can tell you, as universal as time may seem, there are few greater mysteries in this world than it.

St Mary's Church in Wolfenbuettel. Construction for this building began in 1608--it was the first signifiant structure to originally be built as a Lutheran church in Germany (rather than merely converting a Catholic church into a Lutheran one).

The first time I learned the word anachronism was studying for my GREs, the exam one takes to enter grad school (similar to the LSATs for law school). I was studying vocabulary, and to learn the massive lists in the study book, I once tried setting a bunch of the words to music. I only remember one line to the entire song:
           Anachronism means "misplaced in time"
           like the iconoclastics in a new world of plastic.

Now, the anachronism part I get, but I have no idea why that line about plastic would help me remember the meaning of iconoclasm, which means to destroy religious images by crashing or smashing them. I think it had to do with how out of place people who practice iconoclasm feel be in a modern context, where everything is made out of plastic. It is really hard to smash things when they are made out of plastic. Better go back to the middle ages, guys.  You are ANACHRONISMS in this world that subsists on petroleum based structural substances. Desist, I say!

This is how my mind works.

Speaking of icons, now you can have Christ close to you at all times. He watches over the world, and the minute hand, all at once. I'm not sure if it's significantly symbolic that this watch has long stopped working. Circa 1600.

Besides the extremely kind librarian staff, the first person I had an actual conversation with the first day working at the library was Z. And the first thing Z. ever said to me, I kid you not, was “I hate anachronism.” She knew nothing about me, about my blog, about my secret love affair with that word. She just looked up from her computer screen and unfurled one of my all-time favorite words like a red carpet. That is when I knew I belonged in Wolfenbüttel, because it is full of historians, and historians are always worried about time.

“Are you a telepathic guardian angel sent here from heaven to comfort me with the salve of mellifluent time-centered words?” I wanted to ask Z., but before I could, she continued her thought. It turns out, she had been reading something online, which reminded her that she resents how a lot of historians don’t do good history, especially the Reformationists—she said this, probably not knowing I myself am being trained as a Reformationist.

“People just don’t bring the proper amount of nuance to things,” she said. “They just make very simplistic arguments, it’s quite frustrating. But I guess I’m just picky. I hate anachronisms. Someone told me I have anachrophobia.”

“A fear of mixing up the order of time?” I asked her, of course highly interested.

“Of course not, I mean a hatred,” she said. “A hatred for other people mixing up the order of time,” Her eyebrows raised sternly.

And suddenly I felt lost, not lost in time, but lost in the correct use of Greek root words. Last time I checked, phobia comes from phobos, which means to fear. Yes, we usually hate the things we fear—for example, I both hate and fear those Japanese lady bug beetles. Ugh!

But, I think what Z. was talking about was antí-pathos/e­ía, which in its anglicized form (antipathy) means strong aversion or hatred to something. I wish I hated anachronisms, too, because then I could describe myself as anachronantipathetic, which just seems like it could be really intriguing to people.

As it stands, anachronism is something of a hobby of mine.

The majority of this week was spent creating my own catalogue of the HAB catalogue. You see, there is so much material here that it is necessary to create my own database of sources I want to work with so that I know what to come back to in the future. Even though it takes a long time to do, it’s important, because otherwise I’m just forever picking and chosing what to work on next without having a large overview of everything that’s available, so that I can prioritize. In other words, I had to go through all the catalogues of the HAB with a more or less fine toothed comb, and type the bibliographic information for every important source into my computer.

 In case this doesn’t sound like the most tedious pastime possible in world history (and that’s coming from a historian), allow me to clarify through more painstaking elaboration.

Before arriving here, I was already overhwelmed by how many primary sources there are to work with at this library from the early modern period (1450-1750). As I had applied for scholarships from this library several times in the past, I was quite familiar with their online catalogue, which lists their holdings and collections. I was already wondering where on earth I would start with it all, how I would manage to survive the flood of sources without drowning. 

Then, at the beginning of this week, I had the customary meeting with the head of the archive to discuss my topic in person. This meeting is very important, because as I explained previously, archives are messy places to be. There are all kinds of nooks and crannies in archives, all kinds of idiosyncratic ways that documents have been stored and organized and catalogued. The head archivist is always the person who knows the archive best, who has the whole thing internalized on some inter-cerebral USB card.

“Have you looked in the card catalogue?” The head archivist asked me.

“Oh, yes. I’ve looked at the online catalogue many times,” I explained, ready to pull out my index of sources I had been looking at.

“No, no,” she smiled. “The card catalogue. On the second floor. Have you been there yet?”

“There is a card catalogue?” I asked her. “Like… You mean, with cards? Paper ones?”

“Yes, well, more like card stock, not paper,” she laughed. “We don’t have one card catalogue. We have three. And I think you will be very pleased by what you find there.” She smiled, as though enchanted by this news.

“But, that stuff is all online, right? That’s the same thing as the online catalogue, just a back up or something, right?” My heart was beginning to race. I kept wanting to peer over my shoulder to see if there was a tsunami coming. A tsunami of sources.

“Oh, no,” she smiled heartily. “Oh, no, these card catalogues were arranged in the 19^th century. They are so systematic and so much work went into them, we haven’t seen a need to touch them yet.”

The next day, after sort of wandering about the library in a depressed stupor as I melancholically ruminated over the amount of work that lay before me, I finally sucked up enough courage to enter the room of card catalogues.

As my weapon of choice, I brought my gun (computer) which I stowed safely in its holster (computer bag), only to be used when explicitly challenged to a duel. I didn’t have to wait long. In the room sat about six long rows of card catalogue drawers. Them was fightin’ words, in and of themselves.

“This archive ain’t big enough for the both of us,” I whispered, fretfully pulling my gun out of its holster. “I didn’t want to have to resort to this, but a man’s got no choice. I’ma gonn’ hafta shoot you.”

And with that, I entered my first index card into the computer. Bam. Several days and several hundred sources later, I’m not finished. But at least, if I die, I will at least be able to say that I know most of the sources in the HAB that would be relevant to look at regarding perceptions of time, calendars, nature, the heavens and sundry other boolean keywords.

Enjoying a saturday afternoon with a (decaf) coffee from a bakery  that found a canister of decaf in some back closet or other.

The other day I was walking through the “old city,” the quaint historical part of Wolfenbuettel where I live and work, and beheld a mother feeding her child with a bottle. I want to say the bottle was filled with a latte or café au lait, because it was darker than normal milk, and also the baby was quite energetic—wailing and such. Obviously it was being caffeinated. It all seemed out of synch with the right chronological developmental phases of a person’s life. I could be wrong, but generally I perceive the consuming-caffeine phase of one’s existence proceding the learning-to-write-term-papers-at-3AM-phase, much less the learning-to-walk phase. The Germans, however, evidently feel differently on the topic.

Granted, it is highly likely that this episode was the hallucination of a caffeine-deprived, mentally-exhausted lass who is trapped in the witch’s tower of an archaic library all day.

Nonetheless, when the topic of Germany infiltrates my conversations with fellow yankees, people often comment on how much beer I can enjoy when I’m there, because there is supposedly really good beer here. Well, I don’t imbibe a huge amount of alchohol and when I do, I’m more a dignified glass of wine kinda gal—and make it a cool Riesling, bitt’ schön. But what I want to say is that, as crazy as the Germans are about their beer, they are even crazier about coffee. I am convinced now more than ever that it would be easier to be a recovering alcoholic in this country than a recovering caffeine addict.

Here is a rundown of the average day in the life of one such poor individual:

A typical walk through the cobblestoned village, say from a hypothetical apartment to a hypothetical archive (a half mile—and that’s taking the long way), one will pass no less than seven cafes. All of them have chairs outside, open doors, and the smell of coffee emanating from them so that pretty much the whole walk is profanely censed by the smell of the drink.

If one happens to be working at aforestated archive, one will be conscripted every working day to attend a mandatory coffee hour at 1:30PM, where colleagues are to formally gather around cups of coffee and informally discuss their day, work, research, and all manner of scholarly life—to the odor de toilette of coffee, coffee, coffee. Should one try to opt out of coffee hour, perhaps to forego the temptation of wanting to drink coffee, Should one “forget” to go, on account of “losing track of time” due to “working,” (or just trying to forego the temptation of trying not to drink coffee), one will be gently nudged by the surrounding arsenal of archivalry to “go to coffee.” Hey, they archivists need their coffee break too.

And the coffee will follow you around every corner: the break room (not the same room as mandatory coffee room), the walk home, the grocery store, the sewer ( I don’t know this for sure, I’m just guessing most of the pipes down there carry coffee).

I am thus convinved the Germans are communally addicted to coffee, and in order to cover up their shame, they codependently coerce everyone else into their addiction.

“Drink decaf,” you are probably saying in your head. Ha. A brilliant bit of advice, where it not for a particular habit possessed by the vast majority of Germans who, feigning ignorance, pretend never to have heard the German word for decaffeinated (entkoffinierten) coffee.I had to painstakingly explain what the term meant to a German colleague the other day, which I find completely ludicrious seeing as though it is plainly obvious what the term means even to a non-native speaker: “ent” meaning de- or un-, and “koffiniert” meaning caffeine.

                “But why would you want to drink that kind of coffee,” she finally asked me, as though we were talking about the bubonic plague, which I had recently opted to become infected with. As the conversation progressed, she deliberately feigned to have any understanding of the effects of caffeine on the body. “You’re making that up. Caffeine doesn’t make people stay up at night.”

So, I’ve come up with a final solution. This weekend I’m buying some nicotene patches—I won’t give in to this coffee pressure.

Gnomonics: The art or science of dialing, or of constructing dials to show the hour of the day by the shadow of a gnomon, or the raised part of a sundial that casts the shadow.

It’s always easy for me to tell when I’ve become settled in a new place, because I make sure all my clocks or watches are turned to the new time zone. Most people do this on the plane, in the car, or sometimes even before leaving for the new destination. Not me. Time and I have an odd relationship to one another.

When I moved to Cincinnati nearly five years ago, I relocated in the time-space continuum exactly one time zone ahead of my native Wisconsin. Excepting my cellphone, whose digital chronometry automatically portalled itself instantaneously as I and my furniture-laden trailer crossed the Central-Eastern intergalactic time zone barrier, the rest of my time keeping devices stayed on Wisconsin time for, well, quite some time. This remained so for weeks even, perhaps several months, I don’t remember. For the duration of these weeks, I flagrantly associated the eastern time zone with everything I hated about living in Cincinnati: the chili, the humidity, the exhausting hills, the lack of sensible cheddar cheese. I clung to the central time zone as the last bit of tangible connection to everything I missed back in Wisconsin. After many nights of tears shed over bowls of gross, cinnamon-esque chili, I finally went around and switched all my clocks, watches, and electronic devices to Cincinnati time. Perhaps I’d finally come to terms with living in the Queen City, perhaps I’d finally faced reality: I was for some unfathomable reason showing up approximately sixty minutes late for everything. In any case, it was a grief stricken endeavor, this final act of saying goodbye to Wisconsin. I was, alas, a dweller of the eastern standard time zone (EST). (Footnote: a really fun thing to do when filling out forms would be to list one’s time zone as an official suffix to one’s name, in the same way that many of my colleagues list the abbreviation of their respective degrees: e.g. Cole Lyon, EST.)

It started getting a bit tricky once I’d lived in Cincinnati a few years and got used to my existential identity as a citizen of the EST space-time continuum. Each time upon driving into Wisconsin, I’d engage in an ethical struggle: do I reset the clock in my car or not? Usually, I couldn’t bear to turn the clock in my car back an hour for some reason. It just felt comforting to know when people in Cincinnati were getting up, going to work, sitting in church, eating chili with one another. Most of the time in Wisconsin, my car stays set on Cincy time, my cell phone on Wisconsin time, and my watches change depending on my whim. Thus, I spend my vacations deliciously trapped between two time zones, or perhaps more than trapped, I simply prefer to have one foot in each. I won’t ever be omnipresent, only God can do that. But can’t a girl at least try to be omnitemporal?

I am somewhere in the middle of this liminal, middle stage of switching time zones. Weird things happen to cell phones’ chronometry on planes, I think that’s why the stewardesses always make sure you’ve turned them off. They don’t want the time-related secrets of the universe to be unlocked to us mere mortals, should we spend the seven hour flight staring at the clock faces of our cell phones while crossing more time zones in one day than should be humanly possible.  So, for the longest time (i.e. about an hour after landing in Frankfurt), my cell phone was mysteriously trapped in time, stuck on 3AM. When I put my German SIM card in it, within a fraction of a second, time itself to 11:15 AM. It was, indeed, a noble moment to behold.

My computer decidedly remains set to Cincinnati time—endearingly so. As I work in the mornings I think of sleepy little United States. I think of my friends, snuggled in their beds. I think of certain cats I know, meowing at my bedroom door driven by gluttonous habit. Sometimes I think of calling people for a fun joke. And so, my computer remains my only temporal link with the past.

Three times the other day, working in the archive as I looked at my computer screen, I got really frustrated that it was only 4:34 AM, because I automatically have to count 6 hrs ahead in my mind to see how long I’ve been working, and I am really bad at mental math. Instinctively, I went into the control panel to change the time, and I couldn’t (emotionally). I know someday I will be driven to it. Inevitably, one day I shall arrive six hours late for work, and get some nasty stares from the librarians, and I will say to heck with Cincinnati time. I will march up to that control panel and show it who’s boss, I will wrestle this blasted time-space codependency issue to the ground. Afterwards, I will shed a few tears or two, I will relish in the pathos of this life, whose duration is characterized by so many distances and spaces and chasms in the fabric of the universe. I will mourn, with Rilke’s poem, “Oh, the sadness of things far removed… I do believe the star, shining upon my face, has been dead for thousands of years.” And then I will rise, having come to terms of my inability to be omnitemporal while trapped in this blasted earthly canopy. I will be reborn into gratitude that, if I must in fact be momentarily misplaced in time, I can at least do so in the land of abundant and precise clocks, waches and sundials…

But until then, I am and evershall remain,

(EST-EDT)-ly yours,

Cole Marie, UTC -05