It all began by accident late in the fall of 2022. On leave for a year, I was living in an apartment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, writing a book about ethics in the Anthropocene. I started cutting and tearing up printed-out pages, scribbled notes, numbered lists, quotes, images, drawings, dress patterns. As if in a dream, I started fragmenting the fragments, printing out more pages and cutting them up, gluing them to index cards, stringing together feathers with dried leaves and scraps of scribbled paper. Unspooling skeins of twine, I started zigzagging lines across the room—eye level, above my head, at the hips—and affixing bits and pieces of myself to them. The lines grew, sprouting more fragments. Friends stopped by. “It’s an art installation, a living collage!” they said.