“The Age of Voy” – Voyage

Nadim Karam

Published in Voyage, Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2000

 

What is the Age of Voy? The kick-start to the third millennium? It is probably whatever you make of it, although that sounds superficial and absurd. Ideally, it would be an age that belonged to no other age in time or space … a floating age. But it can’t be. It is an aging age that can only rejuvenate itself through self-renewal.

 

Once you consider yourself to be in the third millennium, you automatically discard at least 2000 years behind you. But where do they go, and how many more are there to come? Everything seems to have been concentrated in the last century. Compressed. Time has been sped up to an extent that incites us to throw our previous moment into the trash for fear of it becoming obsolete. Is memory a vacated dilemma? We’re in a state of memory zero; erasing memories almost as quickly as we experience them to keep up with the spirit of the age.

 

What would be the difference between yesterday and tomorrow were it not for the idea of progress? And even then, is there a difference? What would be the difference between man and woman were it not for their genders? What would be the difference between night and day were it not for the sun?

What would be the difference between you and me were it not for the ego? What would be the difference between black and white, or yellow and brown, were it not for their colours?

The age of Voy is an age which compels you to voyage; to travel far beyond the age so as not to compete with it, to travel parallel to it on another mental plane, while being, to a certain extent, comfortable within it. The age of Voy is a voyage in the void that fills the gaps between the trash, creating its own traverse.

 

The age of Voy is an age of fun, where fun is the means to heal yourself from the stress of metropolitan life. It is the age of de-communication, a selective age. It is sitting in a big chair before a big screen that continuously projects all types of movies and information, but shows you nothing. Suddenly, you realize you’re in outer space, and already nostalgic about life on earth. It is the age where the multitude of paradoxes coming through the information network will teach us to be tolerant. It is the age of processing. It is the age of altered appearances caused by genetic developments. It is the age of reassessment in all fields, especially religious.

The age of Voy is where cities are transformed into museums and visited as such, and where the virtual is a major source of excitement. Where destroyed cities have the most potential for growth. It is the age where you talk nonsense until it makes sense. It is the age of whoever is not yet born.

What would be the difference between sense and nonsense were it not for the non? What would be the difference between an elephant and its baby were it not for their sizes?

What would be the difference between one country and another were it not for their borders?

 

Plant more trees in pots, put more birds in cages, more pets between walls. Claim you’re protecting them and giving them life.

 

This is the age of satellite people, where movement is primordial and places are commodities. Where continents become countries, countries become cities, cities villages, and villages communities. Where the five continents are no longer five, and where geography finds itself confronted with the

information network within which no boundaries exist. Where network jamming incurs involuntary accidents that in turn create pockets of adventure.

An orange pig lies on a glass table, on its side with its big feet in the air, peeing unconcernedly.

The age where words replaced by images take us back in time to hieroglyphics. The age where in order to think, write or produce anything, you have to turn on and off devices connected to sockets. It is the age of Voy. An age where machines and humans stand face to face.

What would be the difference between a machine and a human if it were not for the heart?

It’s only when you enter the world of art that two plus two can equal anything but four, and the same goes for two times two. In the age of Voy, you do not need to have a chain of thoughts, but sporadic thoughts in a chain. There, everything already proven has the contrary also proven. When he wanted to go on an excursion to the third millennium, he was told, “But you’re already there!” He stopped and looked around him, but couldn’t see it. He looked again and saw nothing. However hard he looked, he couldn’t see the third millennium. He realized that it must have begun, and that he was already immersed in it. He stopped looking, and began working.

 

He once saw a donkey going backwards simply because he was stubborn. His cousin the zebra, who was flexible, moved forward. What would be the difference between a donkey and a zebra were it not for their characters?

Let’s assume that everything happening on earth around us, including ourselves, is not a dream. Then what could it be? So as not to call it Reality, let’s call it Voyage. A voyage that goes through an hourglass from life to death and back to life again, for as long as the hourglass continues to turn, and for as long as you’re alive.

A clown that cries cannot be real.

You hold on tightly to your binoculars to perceive the world through them and observe changes around you. When looking through your binoculars, you might discover your key in the sand. It won’t open any doors, but will unerringly lead you to the age of Voy. And when you reach the age of Voy, you will find that you don’t need the hourglass anymore. It is an archaic way of measuring time – you would be better off with a digital watch that you discard when it stops working. You will rarely need binoculars in the age of Voy, although you might be obliged to wear glasses. The screen is the media that will replace your binoculars. It will even show you things you don’t want to see. You’ll have to adapt. As for the key, try not to lose it because you won’t be able to enter your own domain. Without it, you’ll almost stop functioning. The more keys you find, the better, provided you can also find the doors they are supposed to open. If you happen upon an hourglass instead of a key, you might keep it as a souvenir of remote times; it has an aura of the past rarely found in the age of Voy. You will also be preserving sand at home.

One morning, while drinking coffee, his thoughts drifted to the binoculars he had received as a present before going to the opera. He put them to his eyes and directed them around the room. Then he stopped. The hourglass had suddenly grown in scale, triggering new trains of thought. He wondered about the precise size of each sand grain, its age and its origin. He had the irresistible urge to break the hourglass open. He left. When he returned, he had no keys so was obliged to climb in through the window. He found fragments of glass on the carpet, and traces of sand that had almost completely disappeared into the carpet’s fibres. He went out to bring the shopping bags in from the car and returned to find his lost keys hanging from the keyhole of the front door.

It seemed to him that many events were happening in conjunction with the hourglass, the binoculars and the key. So he cleared the tabletop, and placed on it a small mound of sand from the broken hourglass, his binoculars his largest key. He studied them, trying to find a link between the three objects. He spent days moving the binoculars and the key around the mound of sand in several different combinations; linear, triangular, and random, but it told him little about their combined meaning. After a few days, he realized that there was no point trying to relate them. They made sense only in relation to events in his life.

 

That day, he left home at midday, went to the opera house, sneaked onstage and began singing in a loud voice to the empty rows of chairs. It was far from opera, but it was even more important. His song was of the age of Voy. The echoes of his song filled the hall with the sounds of VA, OG and YE.

The success or failure of any given thing will depend on the media. It is the age of manipulation.

You reach the cliff edge and can’t go back. If you jump, your chances of survival are zero – normally speaking. But if you jump with your faith? You will surely reach somewhere, somehow, in a swift and astonishing way. If you fall inside the hourglass, the sand will absorb your shock. If you fall inside the

binoculars, you’ll experience a vision of things never before seen. If you fall on them, it will most probably hurt. If you lose your key during your fall, try to work out where it landed. Finding it will help the day move ahead. If you don’t find it, go back to the cliff edge and take a nap. You’ll dream of a long voyage in the form of isolated images separated by intervals. In the empty flashes between them lies the age of Voy…

He reached the cliff edge and couldn’t sleep. Instead, he took off his clothes and threw them aside. The key fell from his trouser pocket. He was free. Gripping onto the key, he threw his clothes off the cliff. After a while, he found that the key restricted the use of his hands, so he threw it off the cliff too. A sense of relief invaded him. Then he realized that he was imprisoned in the hourglass. He struggled to get out, his arms flailing above him, but was drawn downwards by the inexorable movement of the sand into the lower cone of the hourglass. Sand engulfed him, almost suffocating him. He reached for his binoculars, and, putting them to his eyes, saw a clear blue sky that made him forget his predicament. With the blue sky filling his head, he managed to survive the avalanche of sand.

Suddenly, he woke up and began running. He ran faster and faster, sweating profusely. He ran until he could run no longer. He reached a space in which there was a chair. He sat down, breathless. Little by little, he began noticing things around him. In the distance, he saw a person on a chair looking at him. He disagreed with what the person was saying. Then he noticed many people around him sitting on chairs. He disagreed with most of them, realising all the while that their opinions complemented his own. He found it so paradoxical that he decided to dive into the water.

The abrupt change in his surroundings made him breathless. It was like being out in the desert, an infinite blue over an infinite stretch of sand. Girls were playing, their feet kicking up sand that was lifted on the breeze then dropped in the water, creating clouds in the blue. A mermaid watched from afar. She sang a strange hypnotic refrain, swinging her tail rhythmically to and fro. She reminded him of the hourglass he had had at home. His thoughts drifted to the binoculars and the key, two unrelated elements united through him. Moving through the water, he was astonished by the richness of colours and variety of shapes of the rocks and fish around him.

Then he stopped short. Bubbles came out of his mouth. Sharks were circling in the vicinity, waiting for a sign of movement to attack. Immobilised, he was carried upwards and began floating until he reached the first layer of clouds. On one of the clouds was a black wild cat who raised his head to observe him. He was feeding on the cloud, which was gradually getting smaller. In the distance, a line of small shadows were approaching. They spread out and landed on a cloudy zone. It was the archaic procession. Within a few seconds they had eaten all the clouds and moved on, slightly more rounded in shape.

Is the age of Voy a reality or a fiction? It’s probably what you make of it. It’s fiction if you want it to be. And it’s not an age if you don’t think of it as one. His tooth was painful, and the dentist advised him to replace it with a ceramic one,

assuring him that it would look better than the original. On leaving the dentist, he held the tooth in his hand. It looked awful, but it was his. Should he keep it, or should he throw it away? How could he separate from a part of himself? But he had heard that science was advancing at great speed. If he buried it in the sand, a jaw full of healthy teeth would surely grow from it. He wouldn’t even need to water it, perhaps just make sure that the sand was not in full sunlight. And when the sand changed colour, he would have to turn the hourglass.

The hourglass is practical and enigmatic. As long as somebody’s there to turn it, it forever re-counts grains of sand. It is easy to use, does not need any special mechanism and could function indefinitely with a user’s constant attention, but only lasts a few minutes otherwise. The hourglass did not made sense without a user, he realised. Nor did the binoculars. He picked them up and began watching people interacting and cars circulating. Then he found himself watching opera. He was on the stage, singing the song of Voy. The opera house was crowded with people who acclaimed it with applause that lasted into the first century of the third millennium.