''Why Babies Cry''

The alarm went off and I pulled out. I pulled out my dream prematurely, into a small room with a window in the corner lit up by unadultered sunlight.  I was grateful for this day because I had convinced myself that from now on I had to be positive, only if it was a lie. I had been reading Walden and his idealization of poverty sat well on my cardboard sandwich fed belly and suited a cute little miserable student life and fit snugly like a four year old back pack. At least I had someone other than my Mother behind me.

So there I was, blessed with a new day, the sun had came out after a week of hiatus, and no class was scheduled today. I decided to be productive as I pulled my thin body from the thick duvet and said to myself ''allez!'' with more than a hint of irony. I don't actually talk to myself out loud, but I have noticed that it is common practice in this country, say, when you suddenly go back up the street from  where you were coming, you must justify such absolutely unexpected and ridiculous behavior to the public in your head. '' Mince!''

So there I was in my long johns. 'Allez'' I told myself, ''Today is the day you must get stuff done'' Productive stuff, productive as opposed to creative. Productive as in most of human effort, absolutely useless save the honor of title, and the little satisfaction gained in knowing that there is one less thing to be done. The sigh of a machine.

The errand is central to the day in France. I say day because often the simplest task can cost you hours. To this end I woke up early, took a shower and ate, for you never know when you might have the chance to eat again. That is what they say in war, that is what I say when I am off on an errand.

I left my house, which is a room, at 9 a.m. I paid the rent at the concierge. There was no friction there, but I had been meaning to do it for several days. One less thing.

I decided to walk to the Prefecture because negative 200 dollars wasn't enough for a bus ticket, and besides, it was a nice out. When I strolled into the center of town the church bells were ringing ten. They had been ringing in this fashion for over 800 years regardless of whom or what wanted to be done. It wasn't that they were against me, not a reminder of how much time before les bureaux closed for lunch, but if I was to succeed I had to look at it as such. There were other things to do than look up to the past because the past is the first thing to turn its back on you when you need it.

But oh it is beautiful in the morning in this country, I saw old ladies sparing their pension to accordion players who reply ''Merci Madame'' with some Slavic accent, as she walks away with her fresh vegetables bought from the local market, wheeling behind her in her tablecloth colored cart. Well dressed old couples out for the morning were strolling with their incorrigible small dogs fitted out in tiny dog jackets. Widowed men with their arms locked behind their backs waddle on the cobblestone, a demeanor of total approval or eternal condemnation scrawled across their little mottled faces. It is the France you see on foreign TV, Bernadette and Bridget up in arms about the lost dog, Henri with the baguette and the red nose, the morning paper under the arm of his khaki hunting jacket with the headline of what France once was. All except the knot of alcoholics, who, when kicked out of their mission, beg, and only for the morning seem to comprehend in their heads that other people can, and are, just as poor as them. Give them a few hours and few beers pissed in the bush behind the cathedral and they will start to talk about the loss of solidarity and humanity and all that shit...I was on an errand.

By the time I reached the prefecture it was 10:30 and this did not matter. ''Due to the wishes of the Prefect the prefecture will be exceptionally closed this morning. Thank you for your understanding.'' And I understood only because exceptionally happened often enough, and if I have learned anything in this country other than how to keep an expressionless face when in public, it is never to expect anything from bureaucracy. A whole mob of administrators and un-fucked secretaries armed with rubber stamps and a sweep of their thin wrists in scribbled signatures, these are the cogs on which the machine rolls the true power behind this great country. If they don't approve you don't exist, fit in or fuck off.  Identity, forged on the photocopier in triplicate kept in a 3 ring binder,'' just in case.''

Fonctionaire, civil servant, the dream of every Francais, a comfortable desk job with all the benefits and bank holidays and le pont in between those holidays and the weekend. The exception becomes the rule when you work less days than not. And albeit I am far from the incarnation of the protestant work ethic, nor do I consider that all this productivity is much more than the shifting of superfluous paper (I hear the forest of the Amazon screaming!), they are the government, and if the government does not work how is the country to function? Fonctionaire? They ask you to do something they are not even capable of assuring. I don't ask them to come to my place and then turn off the music when they knock and pretend to be away. I don't particularly care if I have an I.D. I know who I am.

So there I was, knowing who I am, the man in front of the gate, he who is outside the gate, with the remainder of the morning to kill. The second coffee in a cafe quelconque, and why not a cigarette to widdle time? I returned to square as the church bell tolled eleven. It was freezing on the terrace and it was silent in the street. The elderly were yet to return to their gas heated attics, and put on their traditional products on the stove; I could hear their formalities ricocheting through the small streets as the cars began to wake up.

An hour isn't so long when you have something to read, as long as that something is interesting. Today it wasn't the case: qualitative methods in sociolinguistic research. Indeed I am a student in social sciences, it says so on my papers; I just have a hard time believing it reality. I was studying how to invent words for a reality that passed below my nose. I needed to know this to get through a degree so that eventually I will have enough money to stuff the mouths of the bureaucrats so full they can longer talk. Besides one hour wasn't a longtime to wait. I was hungry but the coffee and knowing that I would be home in not long, I decided not to spend other's money on food I didn't need.

I figured I would get there early, get into line and get this thing done. I strolled back past the accordion player, still playing the same songs with the same smile. A gypsy, far more integrated than I, or at least happier to be in France than me. I suppose you can't be disappointed if you don't expect much.

I arrived at the government offices for the second time. It was lunch time and apparently even robots feed, they just forget to warn people. Would it really disrupt this culture of all cultures if, say, perhaps some of these  jeweled hags went to grab their generic cardboard sandwiches at  two o'clock when their colleagues came and replaced them ? Would it spell out the end of the quality of life, the quality of laziness, for the fifth Republic? Is it too American to ask the representatives of the people of this burgeoning police state to sacrifice themselves for the subjects that they themselves created on paper?

I turned back to the cafe. I turned back to the cigarette and the distraction of my book. I looked quite like a student, crammed into a heat lamp lit cafe terrace as lyceens tried to jump each other’s bones while they ate their generic sandwiches their moms paid for. I was hungry now but contempt warmed my belly, that and the fourth coffee now. I met a fiend and she bought me another, and we did what one does in France, we discussed subjects in a cafe. An old man was coughing up his cigarette from thirty years ago, that he no doubt smoked here in the same place, except now he was no longer young so he did not feel the need to discuss so large ideas about the future, tout en y faisant rien, with a mind so caffeinated you can watch yourself think your thoughts. And nothing moves except your mouth.

And time came once again to get a head start on the line, and I left as the church bell struck half past, still positive, if only it is a lie. I was sure this time, just a matter of time I told myself. Patience is a virtue they say. Patience is a virtue until you find yourself wasting a day for a paper. And you need the paper for another paper, to get money from the government, four months retroactive financial aid for an apartment the government pays half for because either it is too expensive or (hypothesis) it is too expensive because they know the government will pay half. Redistribution of wealth indeed, but does social need to be synonym with inefficiency? Create jobs create robots.

Everyone had gotten a head start. Half of Northern Africa seemed unsurprised coming from their respective third worlds with their third world bureaucrats while students screwed up their faces and several de souches made cute polite comments to feel together, united, one, AGAINST something. Vestige of the revolution pumping through their docile hearts. And my privileged opinion, my petty complaint, you may consider it the luck of the western world. But if you are asked to die for something, whether it is for the war or for the boredom of a pile of papers, it is still dying. Dying at the quick demand of a bullet or slowly rotting leads to the thing.

I had two bureaus to hit and I was out of there. I fought my way through people fighting their way through to the desk. The prefecture, lieu d'une misere subtile. Without further ado arguments had begun, mediated by a glass window, both sides know the outcome of the game before it starts. It is no one fault surely, c'est comme ca. But someone MUST pay. And that someone is always you. The glass is as transparent as the politesse, just enough to stop you from shaking the formica earrings from her Sunday-best head

You want to tell the baby in the stroller to shut the fuck up, stop crying (does the tiny miserable being live there, it has been five years and he hasn't aged a day). And if you want to start a campaign against immigrants just take photos of the prefecture on any given day, especially when they close, exceptionally, for the morning and you feel the push of what seems a refugee camp around a newly installed well.

You just want a stamp. These bitches act as if the ink is the last remains of the tears of Louis Quartorze. Perhaps the blood of the Marquise de Sade's bride as she sat tied up and struggled against his will. For me it is not more important than the future of Jakarta, or the latest thesis in comparative history on the Second World War relegated to the archives of some other administration exceptionally closed, taking into account your comprehension. I just need the money. But apparently I need to come back with a third proof of identity. Fuck it, I leave. Four hours for two stamps totaling 30 Euros for a carte de sejour I don't have for housing aid I pay out of my own wallet, still, positive, if only it is a lie.