My encounter with four women by The Rarig Center during The Fringe Festival caused me distress in the same way the quote from Isaac Newton does. In it he describes himself as a child fingering a pretty shell while the ocean truth lies before him. He knew that the little pebble he had found, which for the rest of us was the greatest contribution to physics in history, was virtually worthless compared to what remained to be known. In the same way, I noticed these women, felt anxious, saw the potential for an image, and took a picture. The anxiety I felt was not the discomfort men often feel in the presence of women. Rather the detail that was visible to me in the bright August afternoon reminded me of how little I knew about them compared to how much I knew was imaginable. So many stories presented themselves to me. (Let me call them A, B, C, and D.) How did C hurt her left foot? It is bandaged. And not only is it bold enough that a lightly clad woman would lie flat on her back in public, but she also lazily wraps her right arm around D in an easy embrace. How – leave alone why for now – did she climb onto that wall with an injured foot? B seems emphatic with gestures of her head, body, and hands toward D who responds affectionately with a smile and an indeterminate hand motion. What was being communicated either way? What need did B have of such a large purse on a hot day when everybody else was so lightly laden? What did she expect to transport? Something. Not her coat. She carries that over her left arm. How can B, C, and D seems so passionately engaged and yet A seems off in her own thoughts? Something about her orientation to the whole day was different from the beginning; only she wore stripes and wasn’t as careful with her hair as the others. And why has she removed her shoes, or at least one of them? These are only the stories hinted at by what I can see. All four of them have whole libraries of stories as we have all accumulated: fears and hopes of what might or might not happen before the end of the day, insults and wounds delivered by parents, friends, and lovers and dragged through their lives as the fighting and doomed bull in the ring drags darts, secret virtues or strengths each imagines are essential to her survival and carries like hidden charms, fantasies they have embellished over the years, and memories of mistakes each hopes no one ever learns about. A pebble before the ocean of truth is right. A small pebble. It all happens quickly and quietly before me on just another summer afternoon in the city. Shrouded in so much ignorance, imagining myself approaching these women feels like going to a party uninvited, naked, blindfolded, handcuffed and thrust into the room backwards. What’s not to feel anxious about?