Yesterday I had one of those coincidences so random as to seem planned happen to me. I had spent the afternoon with doing some reading for my dissertation. I�m currently working a section that looks at fictional representations of the stuff I�m working on (sorry to be so vague about things, but mentioning specifics would make me readily identifiable in certain circles and I prefer to retain the illusion of anonymity, at least for now). The book I was reading mentioned a play that sounded like a gold mine for visual representation of my subject. I was really wishing I could see it, but it was not only out of print but in German and, as far as I could tell, untranslated (my German is rudimentary at best). Later that evening, I found myself surfing the numerous film channels and settled on a movie I�d never heard of but that had several actors that I knew. As I watched, it became clear that it was a film of the very same play I had been reading about that afternoon. So after a day of fruitless and tedious reading, I ended up writing a big chunk of the section parked in front of an entertaining film.

Lucky me.

So much of this dissertation has been luck, that it�s not even funny. When I first started researching my topic � at the time I wasn�t thinking of a dissertation, but of another project I was working on � I hadn�t turned up any material of substance. Until one day, a librarian who had noticed what I�d been doing came up to me and said, �Hey, I have this box of stuff sitting under my desk that we haven�t had time to catalog. I�m not sure whether you�d be interested�� It was the single most important box of archival material to the project to date. It not only changed my dissertation topic, but my whole field of research. I will be forever grateful to that librarian.

A similar stroke of luck happened more recently when I requested something and the page brought the wrong box. The box she brought turned out to be even more useful, but due to an error in the catalog, there was no record of its existence. Another lucky mistake. Although it�s funny because they still haven�t fixed the catalog problem. So whenever I go to that collection, I have to look up the box I don�t want and say, �it�s not this one, but it�s nearby.� It usually takes two or three tries to track it down.

Today, however, has been less about luck than about back-breaking work. In a crazed fit of cleanliness, I decided to clean all the carpets in the house. I repeat: Back. Breaking. Work. To which, alas, I must return.

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