Resurrection at the End of the Paper Trail

(First published in the Bali Advertiser, August 25, 2010)

“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.” – Frank Zappa

Paperwork, what joy! Anyone who lives overseas gets their double-fill of forms and filing requirements, which often seem to necessitate pulling up and retrieving documentation on every significant career and educational milestone since kindergarten.

I always feel like the powers that be want not only information but also to see how people respond when made to jump through regulatory hoops, with additional procedures for the torture and pain of those who hesitate – or, worse, who lose their cool and starting ranting about death, taxes and the immigration man.

Filling out forms and how one reacts to them – in the minds of officials at least – is as much a psychological fishing expedition as it is a search for the youthful infraction that might signify unworthiness for the honor or privilege sought. This is the time to exercise restraint and put into use the sweet smiles practiced in bathroom mirrors.

Confronted by paperwork myself, though, I usually descend into the lowest levels of the blue funk, where it is possible only to look in suicidal despair at a form that is 15 pages long and wants your and your wife’s medical history, the blood types of your children, and the full list of every illness, fever and fainting fit of your ancestors from your great-grandparents onwards.

So, recently, after staring at such a form for a matter of days – one that stood between me and an imagined everlasting happiness (or at least the peace and contentment that comes from having the duty done) – I did what any normal person would do. I complained.

No, not to the bureaucracy that gave me the form. Do you think I am an idiot? I picked up the headset and gave my more patient and practical younger brother a Skype buzz and ranted about officialdom.

And as often happens when I talk to people with whom I am accustomed to being my unadorned and unmasked self, just hearing my complaints spoken out loud made me realize how petty and silly I was being. My venting lost steam.

Then wise younger brother said: “Well, they don’t design it to be fun. Do it and forget it.”

He’s right, of course. Letting myself get worked up over a bit of paperwork is counterproductive and concedes too much power to paper-pushers and bean counters.

Are there really people who decide at university age -- when they should be thinking of adventure and unlimited possibilities -- that they want to specialize in bureaucracy and administration? Or do they just somehow end up there to atone for past sins? And if they are unrepentant do they keep being reborn as midlevel government and corporate officials, spending an eternity of lives counting out pebbles into a pouch to keep track of how many bushels of barley the village harvested in a given year, making marks with sticks in clay tablets to number the populations of conquered cities and then finally tracking the digital traces left by the citizens of the 21st century?

Or maybe the minor officials of every age are simply incompetent and incapable of doing anything other than keeping track of the comings and going of others, and they resent it so that they sourly determine to make the productive activity of others as painful as possible.

An uncharitable view, I suppose, but it also points to why Mr. Zappa would say that nostalgia is another way in which the world might end, because nostalgia is the longing for an idealized time gone by in which things were simpler and more morally clear, and when -- it almost goes without saying -- there was less paperwork. But confronted by immigration forms, insurance forms, tax forms and forms of all types and sizes at every turn, sooner or later we realize that there is no better, simpler time; that like the poor, bureaucrats and chartered accountants will always be with us, always have been with us, and the despair of the realization is too great and we lie down enervated by the thought of the reams of computer generated forms that stretch out into our, our children’s and our grandchildren’s futures. Then we exhale our last breath, barely rippling the forests of paper under which we are buried …

But then, oh bliss, oh rapture, a miracle! Two days after submitting the forms that have been the particular source of my own recent woe, I get the news that I have been weighed in the balance and judged worthy. I have been granted the keys of the kingdom and welcomed inside. Now, until the next time, I live again.

Copyright © 2010 Lee Roy LeRoi