Rituals from a Rotary Archive, Part 1

📇 How a $4 relic became a thousand tiny gestures

Maybe you’ve seen them appearing in my Substack Notes—small compositions in a vintage desktop index, emerging one by one in quiet sequence. Maybe you didn’t know what they were.

What you’re seeing are my Rolodex Diptychs: tiny, analog collage artworks paired with poetic verse.

This isn’t new work, exactly. It’s old work returning—bit by bit—to the surface.
A slow reveal. A rhythm of rediscovery.

But since I’ve been getting questions, I figured I’d start at the beginning . . .

Filed under H—an early diptych, now paired with its own three-line reflection.

I spotted my first Zephyr® Rolodex in the darkest corner of a basement at an estate sale in 2021.
It was coated in decades of dust, grease, and grime—and completely irresistible.
I loved the way it felt in my hands: heavy, deliberate, impossible to ignore.

There was no price tag.
At checkout, the attendant scrunched up her nose as she evaluated my treasure, then chirped, “Four bucks?” in a hopeful tone.

I was practically trembling as I paid her.
Then I scurried home, feeling like I’d gotten away with something huge.

It all began with this rotary file salvaged from the basement of an estate sale.

It sat on a shelf for quite a while, just staring at me. Then one day, I sat down and created a two-panel collage for it. Then another. Then another. I wasn’t sure why I was making what I was making—only that I couldn’t stop.

This series immediately stood apart from my more casual explorations, not for ease or instinct, but for the slow-burning obsession layered through every piece.

In time, the motion of it—the tiny cuts and tears, the fitting, the filing, the rotation—became its own kind of thinking: slow, tactile, and quietly consuming.

My desk is never tidy, but it’s magnetic. This is how the ritual began.

That first Rolodex filled quickly.
So I started another.
Then another.

Over the next four years, I would gather nearly two dozen rotary files of varying types and sizes. Today, many are full. Others wait—restless, expectant, already humming with things unsaid.

Some include tabs—alphabetical, conceptual, or otherwise: an “I,” a “P,” a “Why.” Resisting such order, others float freely.

Together, they form a growing archive I call the Élan Vitaldex—a longform love letter to the analog, to the categorized and uncategorizable.

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💌 Care to fuel this analog ritual‽

Scroll down to subscribe, share, or leave a note for me in the comments. Even the smallest gestures help keep the work alive.

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In the next post, I’ll show more of what went into these cards—how the visual language developed, and how short-form poetry joined the conversation.

Until then, you can follow the reawakening of a ritual as it unfolds in my Notes section.
And if you’ve already seen a few collages flutter past your feed, thank you for letting them land.

With paper and persistence,
Celia Crane

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P.S. There’s so much more to say. My impulse always leans toward excess—this could’ve easily turned into a dissertation. Practicing brevity is maddening, but I’m trying to learn from the built-in constraints of the Vitaldex. I hope you’ll stick around for Parts 2 and 3.