ID hell

I spent today doing a mundane but necessary task that many of us do without much thought, but about which we realise the significance of devoting a few hours here and there to do.

Maintaining my filing.

I put away all my FY11-12 documents and papers that had been piling up on the blue chair (well, it worked as a system for a while...). I then re-organised all the papers I'd been pulling out of different odd locations in my cleaning blitz of December, and packed away all my social work books and assignments into their preordained corner. I was mildly interested to flick through a few assignments that I've kept from my uni days in the early 90s, and made the unexciting decision to keep on holding onto them for... god knows what. Posterity.

All in all, my documents take up 5 drawers in a filing cabinet. I'm 38, so that's nearly 8 years to fill one drawer. Not bad.

Of course, keeping old assignments is hardly important. I do know that just one folder holds the truly important documents. The folder I'd grab in an emergency, if I had time. The one with my birth certificate, Eleanor's birth certificate, our passports, and various other bits and pieces that prove I am who I say I am.

The reason this rather mundane event of today is worthy of this post is this: I have spent approximately 35 hours of my work time in the past two weeks helping six community members apply to be foster carers and to get a Working with Children Check.

While I can see that some genuine effort has been made by the designers of the various forms to reduce the overall imperviousness of government identity verification systems (for example, by allowing certain people to make a declaration that someone is who they say they are), overall the process is extraordinarily complicated.

Why?

1) Most people don't have birth certificates. To apply for one is a process in itself. To do this in the context of their birth, that of their parents and grandparents and so on never having been registered becomes almost impossible. And certainly a lengthy process.

2) Most people do not have photo ID, such as a driver's licence. After all, scrambling the birth certificate hurdle to get a driver's licence is hard enough.

3) Most people don't hold any cards, apart from a keycard (and sometimes not even that! demonstrating beautifully how the world turns on a different axis where money is concerned out here)

4) No one receives 'utilities bills' in community housing (electricity is supplied through pre-purchased cards, water runs free), often do not have a home phone, and if they do receive official correspondence do not see a strong reason why this needs to be kept and stored 

4) Don't even mention passports to me, okay!!

By contrast, my wallet is literally bulging with all forms of ID, including photo ID. Student cards, Medicare card, health insurance, driver's license, WWCC, credit cards, key cards, library cards. The list goes on. I am IDed to my eyeballs. I know where my birth certificate is. In fact, I've carried it around with me in that all important folder every since my  mother gave it to me back in 1990 and I've faithfully held onto it for 22 years since. And, not at all oddly, my father went down and registered my birth within a few days of it happening.... Facilitating the whole beautiful process of identification in a smooth transition from there on in.

None of which applies out here. Which means I spent time searching for any bits of paper with someone's address, asking (and re-checking) if the applicants happen to have just one card (any card.... try me), ringing around various places that might be a source of ID, helping ring the bank and negotiating the trials of telephone banking to get a statement faxed, finding authorised referees, taking photos that meet the regulations, certifying at least 80 different forms of identification that were scraped together, completing the requests for alternate lodgment because there is no handy post office nearby, and then carefully working out that each individual has satisfied the requirements.

And now to working out who will pay the costs for the ID, and how it will be paid.  That's a whole 'nother trial...

Water water

An essential of life. A self-evident truth of which we think about little.

Until we run out of water. Or it buckets down. Or refuses to act as it should.

I seem to be preoccupied with stories of water of late. A little girl dies of dehydration in the desert, a summer storm just three days hence drenching the countryside around her.

The water turns off in Blackstone, a small reminder (less severe) of the centrality of water to our existence. The every day inconveniences multiply as the day progresses, the taps still dry.

A bucket of precious water sitting in the laundry tub. Back up for essentials like clean teeth and a sponge bath before bed. A quick assessment of the water to hand. 10 litre containers at work, at the store, in the garage. Enough for now.

Yet it's drenched outside. The conventional view of summer deserts are baked dry earth, cracking and parched. In fact it's the opposite. Summer is the time of storms. Where winter clothes briefly re-appear as storm clouds unfold. Rapidly evaporating the next day.

Each summer I remember the summer previous. Roads blocked for weeks, too wet to pass. Store provisions rapidly declining, pantry stocks the centre of every meal.

I was reflecting the other day on the minor inconvenience of the cold water taps never running cold. In summer, no amount of running the taps to get the water, heated in the quiet pipes, to pass makes any difference. I drink warm water, reassured that it is meant to be better for rapid absorption in any case.

And now there is none. None until 6pm tonight ... maybe... while the tank is filled. I missed the (unpublicised) brief window this morning of running water. Missed my shower yesterday. It's going to be a high day.

Oh for the halcyon days of warm water never running cold.

Bellwether

The wind is filled with rage and sadness tonight. A little girl is dead. Found too late.

As I listen to the wind battling outside, battering the house, I recall my fleeting thoughts on funeral days. How the weather seems to carry grief and sadness too. How a still morning suddenly turns, and we feel the animate earth rise around us. Sudden rain, hot wind, a dust storm.

So too is today. A day of gathering clouds. Of events unfolding on fateful tracks. Her family's grief unleashed.

There is a deep connection here between spirit, earth and people. Somehow it seems possible to be true.

Her spirit picked up and her story told, in more ways than one.