A paper identity
Nov. 4th, 2006 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreaminghopeEveryone else agrees that I am who I thought I was. According to the government, I am myself.
Getting a passport is the process of proving that you are who you have always been.
Since I'd misplaced my birth certificate during the move, I had to start by proving that I was born in a hospital in Timmins, Ontario, in the month of March, 1979.
Then I had to gather my rarely used photo identification and the names and phone numbers of people who are willing to admit to knowing me. And I had a cop sign the papers and pictures – though he didn’t look at them – saying that he, as a very important and official person, agrees that I exist and have existed for at least two years.
Now I am the proud owner of a Canadian passport, which none of you will ever see because my picture makes me look like a frog. An unhappy frog, because you can't smile in passport pictures.
Getting a passport is like solving a mystery: you gather all the clues and put them together in the right order, and you get a solution: an identity. I like how systematic and uncompromising it is. If you check everything off the "to do" list – if you take all the right steps – you get what you want.
Now I have one more piece of paper that tells me who I am and where I belong; one more tie to the world of government, politics, citizens, and borders. I am the same person as I was a couple of days ago, when I not only didn't have a passport, but I didn't have a birth certificate or an identification card either.
Without my official documents of belonging, I was still me, but I had to prove it over and over: to pick up theater tickets, to use my credit card, to pick up a package from the mailbox, to get my new passport. I used my Costco card and my GST form.
I'm me, according to the cards in my wallet. Why is that comforting?
Getting a passport is the process of proving that you are who you have always been.
Since I'd misplaced my birth certificate during the move, I had to start by proving that I was born in a hospital in Timmins, Ontario, in the month of March, 1979.
Then I had to gather my rarely used photo identification and the names and phone numbers of people who are willing to admit to knowing me. And I had a cop sign the papers and pictures – though he didn’t look at them – saying that he, as a very important and official person, agrees that I exist and have existed for at least two years.
Now I am the proud owner of a Canadian passport, which none of you will ever see because my picture makes me look like a frog. An unhappy frog, because you can't smile in passport pictures.
Getting a passport is like solving a mystery: you gather all the clues and put them together in the right order, and you get a solution: an identity. I like how systematic and uncompromising it is. If you check everything off the "to do" list – if you take all the right steps – you get what you want.
Now I have one more piece of paper that tells me who I am and where I belong; one more tie to the world of government, politics, citizens, and borders. I am the same person as I was a couple of days ago, when I not only didn't have a passport, but I didn't have a birth certificate or an identification card either.
Without my official documents of belonging, I was still me, but I had to prove it over and over: to pick up theater tickets, to use my credit card, to pick up a package from the mailbox, to get my new passport. I used my Costco card and my GST form.
I'm me, according to the cards in my wallet. Why is that comforting?
