Ive got a decent collection of books - nothing like the 5000 books I counted, when I was a kid, for fun one afternoon on my parents precariously propped hand-built budget brick and plank shelves. But enough that it seems daunting to think about when the books will get read and if one shouldn’t resist and desist adding to the collection. But lately I’ve realized with a few minutes it is possible to browse substantially enough to feel one knows again a particular book. In this case, leaving it to Apple to update the OS, I grabbed Masterworks and within a few minutes I was back in Madrid. Wandering the fall streets, marvelling then and even moreso now from the perspective of the somewhat suburban world of Singaporian art galleries, at the density of art and galleries in European cities.

I used to think it would take hours to look at these books. But now I realize ‘seven minutes remaining’ is enough time to take a short trip. And usually it is enough of a reminder that an extension into overtime is warranted and perhaps even a reset of the days priorities so that a tangential exploration is indulged of the encyclopedic The PhotoBook: A History volume I by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger or the _In the Face of History: European Photographers in the 20th Century. As long as the reboot takes a few minutes, it is enough to leave aside the distractions of the web and the need to do a dire cashflow projection and just let the milky coffee and the beautiful print work their magic.