A Squeeze of the Hand

Abstract

We recorded forty-five-minute dialogues for thirty straight days around New York City. Half these talks took place at a Union Square health-food store that we call “W.F.†Other locations included MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera House, Central Park, Prospect Park, and a Tribeca parking garage. What follows is our twentieth conversation. Here sickness, emptiness, a train delay, and an argument seem to prefigure disaster and the project’s sudden end. But this disaster—much like the two-character Japanese word for “crisisâ€: the first one meaning “danger,†the second, “opportunityâ€â€”offers clarities perhaps best expressed by a Japanese proverb:

Luck turns

Wait