Off to a Collage Gathering

with a Proustian flair

Good morning all. Since I am in experimental writing mode I decided to take some notes from my morning’s journal and put them in Chat GPT and asked for those notes to be expanded upon in the voice of Marcel Proust and here is what I got after making a lot of personalized edits to it. As a collage artist, everything I get from Chat GPT I consider as found material and have been having fun with it. When I think of Proust I wonder at how he can spend an entire day writing about occurrences that only lasted for a few minutes at most and explore them in such great detail. But that is the life of an artist I suppose.

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This morning, as I stood before the mirror, the soft gleam of water pooling in the porcelain basin, I resolved to partake in the simple ritual of showering my body with hot water after a good scrub with a washcloth, unusual in the fact that I typically shower at night once I have retired to the bedchamber. Then, after a two or three week hiatus, I pulled out, from a tin box, my black electric WAHL Professional Peanut – as it is called - clipper/trimmer and set about removing the overgrown and straggly growth away from my moustache and chin beard. I don’t actually shave but rather use this device to ‘mow the lawn’ of my neck and cheeks finding it provides a perfectly acceptable appearance at least so far as I am concerned.

Intending to be seen by other humans at close range I thought it best to engage in the preemptory ceremony of renewal that transforms the negligent hermit into the socially presentable.

Having thus attired myself in the modest dignity of cleanliness, I turned my thoughts toward the day’s endeavor: to journey on foot, backpack on shoulder laden with the accoutrements of the art and craft of collage, of which I am considered an old master - government certified I might add as evidenced by my monthly social security checks -to that gathering place where artists, those devoted artisans of ephemera, convene in the waning hours of the month to press paper to paper, to coax the detritus and discarded fragments of modern culture into newly contrived harmonies. A collage, after all, is but the reconstruction of lost time, the attempt to make whole again what was torn asunder, forgotten and left for dead to be ignominiously buried in the anonymous grave of a landfill—an enterprise not unlike memory itself snatched from oblivion, which, despite its imperfections, seeks always to arrange the shards of our past into something resembling coherence and presented as worthy of remembrance.

The walk, a modest distance of a mile and a half, promised that measured pleasure which walking bestows—the rhythmic pacing of thought, the gradual unspooling of ideas, the alignment of step with contemplation. How often, in my youth, had I found the most luminous revelations not in the cloistered study, but in the simple act of walking, of allowing the mind to uncoil as the body moved through the world! The route itself, with its shifting play of southwestern light upon the pavement, its occasional glimpses of foliage trembling in the breeze, became not merely a means to an end, but an experience in itself, an occasion to observe how the changing air upon my cheek or the hum of traffic on the busy thoroughfare could summon entire landscapes of memory.

And so, with the sun well-risen above the mountain peaks to the east, as I am about to open the door, a sudden snowstorm kicks up, the plump flakes tumbling down as though the heavens had overturned a great downy urn. Just as I am ready to depart on my journey, the world outside transforms, the street now wrapped in a swirling veil of white, the rooftops vanishing beneath the swift accumulation. I pause for a moment, inhaling the crisp, bracing air that sneaks through the crack of the door, then return inside to add an extra layer—an orange rain jacket against the cold, a waterproof brimmed hat to shield my face from the descending flurry. The familiar ritual of preparation is extended, but with it comes a certain exhilaration, a readiness to step into the altered landscape, as if bracing for an adventure into an unknown country.

Off I go into the storm, the flakes brushing against my skin, the crunch of fresh snow beneath my boots. While walking I recall an enigmatic colleague from my college days by the name of Don Powley who always walked where ever he went, a thing I greatly admired about him. He often walked miles at a time over hill and dale through rain or snow with his trusty pack quietly and unassumingly. I sometimes recall him and wonder where he is and what he is doing, but I am sure he is walking still to whatever destination calls to him.

The path unfurls ahead, both familiar and transformed by the season’s whim. I set forth, anticipating not merely the thirty-five minutes of measured stride, but the gentle accumulation of thoughts, of sights, of imperceptible sensations which, though ephemeral in themselves, might one day—long hence—return to me, vivid and entire, as the very essence of this morning’s walk.

Later, after a pleasant afternoon with my collage cohort, exchanging quiet laughter and scattered papers, I begin my journey home, the air now cleared of the storm’s obscuring shroud. The path is luminous in the waning light, the snow casting a softened hush over the landscape. As I near a bend in the road, I pause, arrested by an unexpected spectacle—a dozen magnificent Sandhill cranes, standing upon the gravel road before me, their tall, elegant forms poised with quiet grace. They pick at whatever the snowy moisture has coaxed to the surface, their long beaks moving with patient precision. The scene holds me captive, a moment so perfect in its simplicity that I hesitate to move, afraid to disturb the hush that has fallen over us all.

Then, lifting my gaze, I take in the Sandia Mountains, now revealed in their full majesty. Their peaks, hidden earlier beneath the storm’s thick veil, now rise against the sky with a fresh coat of gleaming snow, their contours sharpened by the crisp clarity of the winter air. A scene obscured by the storm’s handiwork hours before now presents itself as if newly born, and I marvel at the quiet artistry of nature, the way in which time, like the careful hand of an artist, can transform the world before us in a moment’s passing. And so, I walk on, my steps slow, lingering, reluctant to leave this tableau behind, knowing it will join the collage of memory, pressed deep into the recesses of passing time. 1,024 words.

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Well friends, that makes my quota for the day in my journal. I go onto the other things I hope to accomplish for the day.