The Secret Lives of Strangers

There are six billion, five hundred and sixty eight million, five hundred and fifty seven thousand, eight hundred and eighty three people on planet Earth at this moment. Some of us are mothers, fathers, poets, preachers, killers, waiters, dreamers, lovers. All of us are strangers.

You're driving down the highway, you stop at a red light. Maybe you turn and look through the window of the car beside you--and there's somebody in there; a man or a woman, someone young or old, and in this moment, you are in the same place at the same time, so very very close. But then the light turns green again, and they drive away, and you drive away, and chances are they never even know you noticed them; they'll go home to their family--or maybe they live alone (you have no way of knowing)--and never think about you again (maybe they didn't even think about you in the first place). And you'll do the same thing. The two of you converged at that single point in space and time, and now it's over; it will never happen again. This is the way things work: we are each the center of our own universe. And if you think about this--that that person in the car next to you, and all the people on the road, and all the people in the world have their own universes at the center of which they stand, and you have no place in most of them--that feels so strange. This one, single planet pulses with the heartbeats of six billion, five hundred and sixty eight million, five hundred and fifty-seven thousand, eight hundred and eighty three separate universes, the majority of which will never even consider each other's existence.

My project is this: to hypothesize about these other worlds, the ones I will never see. I will observe, and I will imagine; I will watch people and contemplate their histories, their sadness, their joys, their secrets. I will not ask questions--I will only contemplate, speculate. I will wonder if people are watching me the same way. After all, there are six billion, five hundred and sixty eight million, five hundred and fifty seven thousand, eight hundred and eighty three people in the world at this moment, and always as many possibilities.