Embassy- Object Writing July 10
admin July 9th, 2008
I wait my place in the queue. In hand a flimsy rough paper ticket, the sort you used to get on long rail journeys or on a tram, rough matted paper with big blocky printed numbers that want to jump off and start doing weight lifting exercises; fat strong type. I’m sitting in a room with maybe twenty other people, the hum of the fluro’s the only sound, these are the days before wall to wall media and the constant assault of sound into our mindscape.
Sitting on the chair thinking about how things will play out. A last minute change means I am now going to the UK via America, and you HAVE to have a visa, this is Easter Thursday just past midday - the whole country winding down and I leave on Sunday. Part of me is nervy - a twitchy fidgeting belly, bat cave thoughts scream in my mind, movie scenarios of what if they don’t give me one? a whole trip will be canceled. I start to bite into the disappointment to come, even though it’s not arrived yet, just to set myself up in case of failure. It won’t descend in a Niagra falls moment that way, more like a slow rising of the tide.
My number is called and I make my way to the counter on the aching balls of my feet from the run I did to get here before the early close for Easter. My torso is bathed in a light layer of drying sticky sweat. I ‘must’ get this visa. The clerk waddles off behind a screen and I sing to a tune that runs through my head. Funny how I do that - when we got caught stealing at Woolworths as kids I did it, I was even singing along to the background music. She reappears - thankfully with my passport franked and ready to go. Relief sweeps over me like a Melbourne summer afternoon change- sudden.
