Calendars are flexible and so is time. The Gregorian calendar, the solar dating system commonly used today, was created by Pope Gregory XIII in the late 16th century. It is itself a revision of the Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar.
“I like to think of a new year being possible at any moment, as every moment is a kind of doorway,” said Joy Harjo, the United States poet laureate. “You can go any direction.”
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, arrived this past year in September with the sounding of the shofar.
Sometimes I think of time as fluid, almost reversible, the way that music can be. Playing the scales, I can play them forward or backward, and lose myself in them, for a moment, not having a sense of direction, or, for that matter, a sense of time.