I'm Another Proust

From the Armand Diaries: February, 1947.

Thoughts:

1) We often praise the wonders of God's universe, alleging its complicated perfection in the machinery, e.g., of the human body, etc. But life has existed for a billion or so years. Even poor man, much less an omniscient God, could evolve a pretty good human system, given that length of time for trial and error. No?

2) How much of life and its activities seems to be pure chance. You don't know or see how or why one event should follow another and yet it does.

How unplanned, e.g., was my career at Duke, or arrival here at W.V.U., they just happened. Or my teaching English and math here, geology, etc. at Amherst. Even my going to U. of Cal., thence to Amherst....But is there some overall sense and direction to it? All within, say the limits of my goals of education, teaching, travel, hiking, etc., etc.?

Why, I wonder, did I decide to write this all down on a piece of scratch paper, several weeks ago? Is it because it was in my mind for a long time and suddenly came to a head??

3) Am I slipping? A few grey hairs, extra creak or two, lessening of resistance, etc.? In 6 years I've been racing down Grand St. and over to work and around town, never have met student or anyone else I couldn't overtake and pass; just few days ago, made the ca. 1 1/3 miles in 11 minutes. But am I slipping, still and all?

Apropos of this, was looking over my snapshots for last 20 years or less of hikes in West, Amherst and all over. Note gradual changes in my appearance.

Think back on my attitude as I took them. I can probably do and stand as much as ever, but what I once did with a spontaneous abandon I now do with a grimmer, more calculating determination: the result is the same, but the feeling behind it isn't - and that's saddening.

Got to thinking it over and wrote old E.P. Dickinson a long, long letter - he's back at Amherst, back from war. I'm another Proust, trying, less successfully, I guess, to recapture past time.

Note: At the time he wrote this, Armand Singer was 32 years old.

Image: The Proust Society of America