7/24 When a man has everything stolen from him, he remains calm. He needs two days to get himself organized again. All it takes him is a few phone calls. – I’ve thought of this passage from Wäis Kiani a lot over the years, and I clearly have some more work to do to get there.

With the passport, it wasn’t even that difficult, and could have been reduced to the stepwise resolution of a few well-defined problems. First, is the passport somewhere here in the building, and can I get hold of it? Even if I cannot get the doorman to go through all the packages in the mailroom again and again – and I was angry and mean trying to make that happen – it simply means that this question has to be answered in the negative. Even though the passport might be somewhere in the building, there isn’t a plausible way for me to find it with complete certainty.

At 7.30 in the morning I went to the local post office, talked to the sole employee in the hall with a bizarre sculpture of medusa-like air-conditioning hoses near the entrance, and even after he disappeared into the innards of the building for a few minutes to “check the shelves”, there was no trace of my passport.

You’d think there would be a way to get an emergency travel document if you’re traveling the same day, but as it turns out, you either get an actual passport, manufactured for you on the same day, or you get nothing. To get a passport manufactured for me, I had to get an appointment at any of the passport factories in the country, but all the nearest ones – New York, Connecticut, Philadelphia – were completely booked for the day. I considered for a moment to fly to Buffalo, NY or St. Albans, VT during the day, before our flight, but that was just ridiculous.

Once you resign yourself to the fact that you simply won’t make the flights, and will need to postpone them, it’s not that hard. I got an appointment here in New York for Friday morning, and was able to rebook all of the travel with little to no financial loss. It’s not that hard. Just be calmer about it.