Handwriting is getting so rare anymore. I like to pick up pieces of paper with handwriting on them, scraps that I find blowing about, stuck somewhere and forgotten. I have been doing this for years.

So I am at the swank opening of the Edvard Munch exhibition at MOMA. And I see a scrap of paper on the floor of the first gallery. I reach down and pick it up, a name and phone number in bold blue felt tip. I carry it around with me as I let myself be carried through the exhibition with its dreams and swirls and echoes, entrancing and horrifying. I realize it is still in my hand when I am in the last gallery, and I think I should put it back down to meet its fate. To be picked up by someone else like me, to be stuck to someone’s shoe and carried out into midtown Manhattan, to be swept up at the end of the night by a weary custodian. So I bend over and leave it tenderly on the floor, and loop back into the gallery for another go-round.

When I circle back to that spot, there are three men in dark suits with tell-tale curly ear wires. Security. They are standing around the piece of paper, a good two feet away, cordoning it off with their bodies. “I don’t know, she just put it there.” “Put it there? Or did she drop it?” “No, she put it there on purpose.”

Do I enlighten them? or let them think it’s some plot to steal another Munch? or a conspiracy to plant a dirty bomb?