Right as I realized that the fire would soon overtake the room where I stood—in the northern mountains of Italy, a few years ago—my impulse was, first, to grab a pile of loose papers and stacked notebooks to my left, and then, second, with a pause to consider my options, to grab my passport. The moment appeared fleeting and perilous and consequential, yet I somehow felt calm and restrained and sensed that my actions were correct, because the laptop and its information were easily replaceable but those papers were my first and only drafts for sentences that couldn’t be replaced, because I already had my shoes on and it would have been ridiculous to start grabbing clothes, because the wallet in my pocket had credit cards and cash and all that I would really need to reach Milan, but the passport, at least, would make the next few days a little bit smoother.
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