I have a pile of passports on my desk. They come in various sizes and colors, with emblems and code numbers embossed on their covers. They share the pile with bookmarks, bumper stickers I refuse to put on my car and baseball schedules from years gone by. I usually ignore this particular pile and if I pay any attention to it at all, it’s only to note with satisfaction that I’m still ignoring it. I see the dust collecting on the passports and I feel a kinship with all the corrupt and incompetent border bureaucrats of the world. I feel as if there must be a roomful of travelers somewhere, trapped, unable to go forward or back until I release their travel documents. Meanwhile, I snooze at my desk, I wait for a bribe, I paw through their luggage for the umpteenth time.
But it’s not real. Most of the passports in the stack are advertisements, come-ons from merchants who want me to travel only as far as their cash register. Haagen-Dazs ice cream offers “a passport to indulgence.” Buy four, get one free, the passport says, enter a contest and win a vacation. A Haagen-Dazs passport doesn’t count for much in the land of Ben&Jerry’s, except that Ben&Jerry’s is now owned by England’s Unilever and Ben or Jerry will need a passport of their own if they want to meet the new boss.
Another passport is from a candy store. Every time you visit, you get your card stamped, taking a fictional tour of Switzerland, accumulating free chocolate along the way. Another passport is a book of coupons from a local mall I do not patronize, another is a note pad from a Las Vegas casino. There’s only one real passport in Las Vegas and that’s cash. If you don’t have it, they escort you to the border with no formality.
Among all the passports offering commercial come-ons is a hopeful passport. It was issued by the state of Waveland. Waveland is a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic upon which Greenpeace attempted to found a nation several years ago. The idea was to thwart oil drilling on the sea floor nearby. It didn’t work, because while Waveland had citizens and passports, it lacked a navy and nuclear weapons, so the oil companies paid no mind. The Waveland passport contains excerpts from the Declaration of the Global State of Waveland. It says, in part, “Without violence and by bearing witness, we will seek to defend Nature, to protect global commons, to reform industrialism and secure peace.” The passport is obviously phony. No real country would print such idealistic statements on an official document. They even capitalized the word “Nature”.
At the top of the stack is my real passport, property of the United States of America. It expires in July, which is good, as I no longer look like the young man in the photo. If a customs agent looked at my passport and then at me, I’d wind up in a security holding room, like the one where I keep my imaginary hostages. Unlike the other passports in the stack, this one has real power. On several occasions, in foreign lands, just pulling it from my pocket has turned snarling aggression to grudging cooperation. It’s like carrying a gun. Of course, when they see I’m an American, they may think I am carrying a gun.
Here in America, I carry several passports – my gender, my skin color, my education, my vocabulary. They guarantee safe passage in city and country, north and south, east and west. I even forget that I carry these passports until I travel with someone who lacks them.
I’ve been shuffling through my passports for the last few weeks. I wish I had one to send Elian Gonzalez, one that would take him home – away from the land of madness and politics, to a place where he can just be a young boy to whom none of this ever happened.
Travel Documents
I have a pile of passports on my desk. They come in various sizes and colors, with emblems and code numbers embossed on their covers. They share the pile with bookmarks, bumper stickers I refuse to put on my car and baseball schedules from years gone by. I usually ignore this particular pile and if I pay any attention to it at all, it’s only to note with satisfaction that I’m still ignoring it. I see the dust collecting on the passports and I feel a kinship with all the corrupt and incompetent border bureaucrats of the world. I feel as if there must be a roomful of travelers somewhere, trapped, unable to go forward or back until I release their travel documents. Meanwhile, I snooze at my desk, I wait for a bribe, I paw through their luggage for the umpteenth time.
But it’s not real. Most of the passports in the stack are advertisements, come-ons from merchants who want me to travel only as far as their cash register. Haagen-Dazs ice cream offers “a passport to indulgence.” Buy four, get one free, the passport says, enter a contest and win a vacation. A Haagen-Dazs passport doesn’t count for much in the land of Ben&Jerry’s, except that Ben&Jerry’s is now owned by England’s Unilever and Ben or Jerry will need a passport of their own if they want to meet the new boss.
Another passport is from a candy store. Every time you visit, you get your card stamped, taking a fictional tour of Switzerland, accumulating free chocolate along the way. Another passport is a book of coupons from a local mall I do not patronize, another is a note pad from a Las Vegas casino. There’s only one real passport in Las Vegas and that’s cash. If you don’t have it, they escort you to the border with no formality.
Among all the passports offering commercial come-ons is a hopeful passport. It was issued by the state of Waveland. Waveland is a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic upon which Greenpeace attempted to found a nation several years ago. The idea was to thwart oil drilling on the sea floor nearby. It didn’t work, because while Waveland had citizens and passports, it lacked a navy and nuclear weapons, so the oil companies paid no mind. The Waveland passport contains excerpts from the Declaration of the Global State of Waveland. It says, in part, “Without violence and by bearing witness, we will seek to defend Nature, to protect global commons, to reform industrialism and secure peace.” The passport is obviously phony. No real country would print such idealistic statements on an official document. They even capitalized the word “Nature”.
At the top of the stack is my real passport, property of the United States of America. It expires in July, which is good, as I no longer look like the young man in the photo. If a customs agent looked at my passport and then at me, I’d wind up in a security holding room, like the one where I keep my imaginary hostages. Unlike the other passports in the stack, this one has real power. On several occasions, in foreign lands, just pulling it from my pocket has turned snarling aggression to grudging cooperation. It’s like carrying a gun. Of course, when they see I’m an American, they may think I am carrying a gun.
Here in America, I carry several passports – my gender, my skin color, my education, my vocabulary. They guarantee safe passage in city and country, north and south, east and west. I even forget that I carry these passports until I travel with someone who lacks them.
I’ve been shuffling through my passports for the last few weeks. I wish I had one to send Elian Gonzalez, one that would take him home – away from the land of madness and politics, to a place where he can just be a young boy to whom none of this ever happened.