In the last stages of my doctorate or just afterwards, I got absorbed in Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness."
Then, last month or so, when I was assembling my final documents for my upcoming dual citizenship application, I had to mail one of them off for a special U.S. State Department cover letter, and the stamps that they gave me at the post office not only had Ursula K. Le Guin on them, but the scene behind her was this huge, unexpected, and unexpectedly good section from that novel, where two characters have to cross a glacier, and that weird feat just ends up lasting pages and pages and pages, and it's just really good, though you never expected a section of the novel like that, or would expect a section of a novel like that to be any good at all.
That part struck me as weird and unexpected and good at the time, at a very weird time in my life, and then it resurfaced, all these years later, also at a strange moment.
Life can be funny like that.
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