Particulars

So today (whilst floating around in my preoccupied way) I had to go to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion to sort out my visa. Outside in the sunshine and the cool air, with lots of other people milling about and waiting for people and appointments, is an excellent place to people watch*. Lots of Mexicans of course – all kinds of people – studenty types, business types in suits, homely-looking middle-aged ladies, women dressed up to the nines with pointy boots and pouty lipstick lips. And a few white faces, which I found myself scrutinising – I suppose because they’ve become the exception, an anomaly in Mexico City.

You wonder about people’s stories, where they’ve come from or where they want to go to. The pale, white guy, stubbly hair and a pursed sort of mouth, with a Mexican girl – the young black guy with dreads (you don’t see many black faces here either) – the Mexican man carrying his pale, blonde baby – the monk in grey robes looking like he’d stepped straight out of an illuminated manuscript – the three generations, a young mother, her mother, her sweet toddling girl – the goateed priest sauntering along with his hands in his pockets…

It paled as an amusement for the last twenty minutes of waiting, when I was already supposed to be inside and the woman who was going with me still hadn’t turned up, but I couldn’t help being pleased to add another priest to my collection of berobed men, nor staring at the incredibly loud American woman with her mother and two Mexican-looking sons, one of which she thought she’d lost when actually she’d left him behind. Nor gazing, inside, at the heavily pregnant girl with the wide, beautiful face like a pixie and masses of dark hair in waves and ringlets, and her boyfriend who looked Mexican but turned out to be German (I sneaked a peek at his passport).

Without people to rudely stare at I clearly would have gone insane – it turns out two hours of travelling and an hour and a half of hanging about was all just so that I could sign my name three times and provide some thumbprints. Oh, and receive, not just any visa, but an entire extra little green book that is actually bigger than my passport. I have filled in, and others have filled in on my behalf, masses of paperwork – twice, due to some cock-up somewhere – I have provided photos from the front and the side, I have practised signing my name so it actually looks like the signature in my passport… and for what? Seeing the great stacks of paper in that vast hall of marble and columns and booths and office cubicles, I can’t think that anyone ever actually looks at them. But we’re all stamped and signed and filed away, so that’s alright.

For your amusement, here is my favourite form (in the original format it comes weirdly laid out, with tick boxes, which I have ticked with the abandon that comes of having absolutely no idea what a migration official might imagine the shape of my nose to be). Both times I have filled it in it has felt like some kind of unexpected and bizarre joke.

PARTICULARS:

Height:
Age:
Physical Characteristics: thin – medium – stout
Complexion: white – light brown – brown – black
Hair: dark brown – black – red – grey – albino – white – dyed – blonde
Forehead: narrow – regular – wide
Eyebrows: scarce – bushy – plucked
Eyes: brown – blue – black – green – grey
Nose: concave – straight – convex – wide
Mouth: small – big – regular
Chin: oval – round – square
Moustache: scarce – trimmed – thick – none
Beard: scarce – trimmed – thick – none
Distinguishing marks:

A work of peculiar genius, no?

*Across the street there is also an intimidatingly modern building (very blonde, lots of squares) with the most sophisticated and hypnotic fountain I have ever seen – a very long row of jets doing all kinds of crazy things – Mexican waves, jets made up of spurts of ever-increasing height, alternating patterns, you name it. Funny place, Mexico City.