Idiots Caricature

[Luban, Poland on 1/15/16]

Arriving in the US in 1975, I heard Polish jokes. Only years later would I meet my first Pole. In 1984, I attended a Czeslaw Milosz poetry reading in Philly. Through his essays, I discovered Bruno Schulz, Zbigniew Herbert and Witold Gombrowicz. After Wisława Szymborska won the Nobel, I read her. I saw Witold Lutosławski conduct his own work at the Academy of Music. (Soloist Yo-Yo Ma joined the orchestra after his star turn. Ma couldn’t stop playing.) I bought Witkiewicz’ Insatiability but had to sell it, unread, to half sate myself. SPAM trumped genius. I enjoyed a student production of Polish avant-garde plays. It’s remarkable a culture so grandly intellectual could be reduced to, “How many Polacks does it take to change a lightbulb?” Idiots caricature.

This failure to see is, most often, just laziness or indifference. In Pattaya, I met a white expat who had lived there for years with his Thai wife. When I mentioned the talismans over just about every door, he had no idea what I was talking about. With mermaids, crocodiles, tigers, nagas and magical calligraphy, they’re often exquisite.

Caricaturing everything foreign, we’re all idiots. To continually acknowledge your abysmal stupidity is to renew yourself. I’m riffing on Gombrowicz. Perfumed and waxing bullshit at the banquet table, we can’t see that everyone is naked from the waist down or diapered. Our morose genitals stare into the dark. They’re too ashamed and shy to even play footsies. Picking up a fallen fork, you glimpse, for less than one second, what you’d rather not.