"My stories, more than my novels, tend to start with a single thing from my life, some kind of puzzle or confusion, whether it be directly autobiographical or a distortion of an experience I've had. The way this story starts is almost entirely true; while travelling with my husband, I lost the same exact things as Daria. I spent a day frustrated by the many annoying chores such a loss brings."
"I was attached to the idea that losing these objects was a categorically bad thing, but I didn't actually have enough information to reach that conclusion. I didn't know if those seven thousand pesos were doing some real good in the world, or if my time spent in Mexican and American bureaucracies was having some unseen positive effect in my life."
A woman living in Mexico City loses a wallet containing her passport, residencia permit, credit and debit cards, metrobús card, house keys, a polaroid, two pens, and seven thousand pesos in cash. A parallel real-life loss produced frustration with chores, anger at carelessness, and fear about identity misuse. The woman questions labeling the loss as categorically bad without evidence and considers that the lost money could be doing good or that bureaucratic processes might have unseen positive effects. She rejects fate-based explanations but recognizes her sour mood as illogical and transfers the predicament to a fictional counterpart to examine it from a distance.
Read at The New Yorker
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