I had a long conversation last night with a good friend of mine. We’d had this conversation before, and we’ll have it again. I am pulled in too many directions, have too many projects going on simultaneously. He says I need to slow down, focus. This I’ve been told again and again by almost everyone who I discuss my artistic practices with. And the thing is I know they’re right, but I can’t help myself. I’m like an addict.

Anyway, it’s usually an ok state of things, a precarious balancing act, dependent entirely on timing and organization. But this week it’s been especially out of control. I started teaching a class at UMass Boston yesterday, The Art of Stealing (which has its own blog, and hashtag: #stealart ). I’m finishing work in the Brown letterpress studio Friday. I’ve just concluded two different layout projects. And we’re moving in two weeks. The timing couldn’t be worse.

But something really marvelous has been happening. A collapse of time. This week for The Art of Stealing we’re covering the early twentieth century avant-garde movements focusing specifically on collage. And my own perception of my life has fragmented, accelerated, one thing juxtaposing against another and creating an altogether new experience. My experience of time and content this week has a chaotic frenzy about it – everything I’m reading piling up so that I can’t quite discern the edges. This may not make me the most organized lecturer, but it’s been an incredibly powerful kinesthetic rendering of these texts I’m pouring into myself.

And something else: why has no one made a web edition of Benjamin’s Arcades Project? I can imagine it, but am without the tools to build it.