EDITOR’S NOTE: This article first appeared last January 2008. By appeared I mean written. By written I mean typed on the keyboard of a computer.

Some days are just throwaway days. Like today was. It was a bureaucracy day. I spent most of the day doing what feels like swimming through- actually ‘wrestling with’ may be more accurate- swimming through has way too much grace implied- red tape. The tape came in the form of a visa application to go see my fiance’ in Brazil.

The visa process is akin to brain surgery, in that you move as delicately as possible through the application procedure as is humanly possible. Each question on the app brings interminable contemplation of the possible ramifications of misinterpreting the query. Things like ‘what do you intend to do while in the country?’ are excruciatingly difficult for me. What level of response does the interested party want? Lots of detail? Should I attach a sheet spelling it out? Or, would that piss them off? What does a bureaucrat want? What kind of bureaucrat will read this? Is ‘visiting my fiance’ enough? Should I add ‘having sex as much as possible over the six days while there?’ Would that be rude and uncouth? Or, perhaps that would make them laugh. Maybe a horny bureaucrat will read this. That may be a good comment.

This document gives copious amounts of power to an unknown and unseen Brazilian presence in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago is where the Brazilian area consulate office is. For the time being, this person or persons is like a god to me. Sorry, I meant God. They have my fate in their hands. Or at least my traveling fate.

And how I behave during this process reflects this genuflection in their direction. I am nervous as I write the return address. I obsess about the enclosures I need to include. I am paralyzed by the decision about how to pay the $110 dollars in fees and application costs. Fees are $10, application costs are $100. Should the money order be for the whole amount? Or should I purchase two money orders? The directions never said anything. Am I supposed to know that? Should I be checking this out on the internet? Would that source be reliable?

Maybe I should marry an American girl. Somebody from Barnesville (25 miles away from my hometown of Moorhead, Minnesota) perhaps. You don’t need a visa to visit your fiance’ from Barnesville. Maybe just a hankering for potatoes. Barnesville, you see, has a festival each year called ‘Potato Days.’ It’s kind of their Mardi Gras with a vegetable.