Nic Polski

Nothing Polish has happened of late. I have returned at odd hours to the exercises in my first-year text and move through them slowly but not unsurely. I surprise myself on occasion by remembering some obscure linguistic datum—the city, Kielce, is actually a plural noun and takes a plural verb, sa, “are,” as in “Kielce are to the northeast of Krakow.” The closest words in the dictionary are kieliszek, “various glassware devoted to the drinking of alcohol”—wineglass, shot glass, snifter—and kiel, but with a barred l, “canines, eyeteeth, fangs, tusks.” According to Wikipedia, Kielce derives from the latter, some myth about a Polish king who dreams about tusks, finds some in the vicinity, and rededicates the site to animal dentition. Somehow the reality of drinking appeals to me more. 

Otherwise, I prepare my house for auction during this sweltering July. A homebody, a householder catching up on twenty years of deferred maintenance has little time for the life of a Polish mind.

Uproot

Have been lately in the field, cultivating my inner peasant, clearing the land (backyard) of lilac and buckthorn, overgrown onion and phlox, and preparing the property for sale and myself for eventual removal. I spade, prune, rake, pitch, stoop, pick stone, sweat, stink, aggravate back and shoulder pain, acquaint myself with creeping vermin, and acquire gloves of black dirt in these steamy processes under the pines. A network of red, ropy roots has been lashing itself in during twenty years of garden neglect, and invasive species—like the Teutonic Knights and the Russians—have usurped the whole subsoil. Eradication has been a fitful tug of war, but fortunately, to date, bloodless and tearless. I realize, of course, that I have liberated only 50 square feet of backyard, of homeland, from these bonds, but I understand again, remember, how physically hard such work is and must have been. And while the weedless pristine has its aesthetic satisfactions and material rewards, hard work every day kills you, too, over time. One’s tools have sharp edges, and attentions cannot but lapse every now and then. Peasantry, I conclude, should be a phase in human development and not a permanent caste: a freely chosen part-time way of life, a vacation from the bourgeois—or should one say the middle-class proletariat—a re-education camp for two weeks in the summer.

I contemplate selling out in probably one of the worst real estate markets—for sellers out, anyway—in history, home prices having fallen over 30% since their bubble high a few years ago. My timing, like grandfather’s, who bought into Poland between the wars and sold out shortly thereafter at a substantial loss, has rarely been keen. His follow-up, Depression-era purchase of a Pennsylvania farm proved just as, though ultimately more successfully, touch and go. But that farm became home, as has this domicile, my longest residence anywhere, the place where I used to read my kids to sleep, now themselves migrated to distant cities. I will miss this place, ten dom, ("this house/home") no doubt, and won’t shake its dust from my shoes, but I anticipate leaving without distress. Perhaps I haven’t spent enough time digging in the yard. Peasants used to belong to the land, with the land, on the land; there was some question who owned whom; they were rooted, almost inextricably, to it.    

Independence Day

This weekend I finished Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Letters from America, a readable, informative account, occasionally and aberrantly opinionated, of his two years here, mostly in California. About what one would expect of literary journalism: lively description, attention to the American exotic, and edgy overgeneralization. Arriving in 1876, our hundredth anniversary, he passed unfavorably impressed through New York City (dirt, money-grubbing), ignored the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, as well as Washington. D.C.; entrained to the Midwest, he deeply appreciated Niagara Falls—though scorning the tacky souvenir vendors (nothing changes)—arrived in time to lavish praise on Detroit and Chicago for their order and vitality (alas, how things change), then boarded the transcontinental railroad in Omaha for San Francisco, just a few months before George Armstrong Custer made his own much less successful prairie sojourn due north. (This week I also happened to watch again the quite wonderful Little Big Man. The film Custer’s moustache, I note, turns up and out, like the imperial Swedes of Hoffman’s Potop, though its wings spread more widely. I’m beginning to theorize moustaches of power and moustaches of freedom. The former rise and extend, no doubt, well-intendedly in beneficent embrace; the latter drop downward and signal a wing-beat of flight. But I digress.)

Sienkiewicz, a well-bred Pole, found that “American women are unattractive,” the upper-class ones anyway, over-dressed and undercultured; of blacks, he wrote, “All of them look ugly and slovenly”; the Chinese “are a people lacking all elements of idealism,” and one shouldn’t turn one’s back on a frontier Mexican. (27, 11, 14, 177) He dismisses our 19th –century foodways in a huff, “American cuisine is the worst on earth.” (4) But we must remember that he wrote before the invention of the chili dog and iced tea. He was not without generosity, compliment, or insight, and while rapturous of the American Wild, he couldn’t quite recommend the society and civilization with his whole heart. He could, however, recommend to Europe and to Poles the American example of simplicity and directness, political and social equality, and industry and energy. Traits to emulate—though not necessarily grounds to emigrate. “[P]easant emigration,” he warned, “is perilous both to the mother country and the peasant himself,” (280) and later wrote a rather harrowing melodrama in After Bread to counter the steamship company hype about the Promised Land. Peasants, and even the poorer gentry, couldn’t make it to the cheap western lands; the process killed father and daughter in this case, but only after driving them insane first. Better, for most, to stay home.

Some Poles did survive and thrive, and Sienkiewicz duly credited their achievement and cherished their sentimental attachment to Poland. “But what of the second, third, and fourth generations?” he worried. “Sooner or later they will forget. They will change everything, even their names, which English teeth find too difficult to chew….just as Poland disappeared, so will this same, sad fate inevitably befall her children who, today, are scattered throughout the world.” (291) Or maybe not. Poland has reappeared, and I called a realtor this week.

The World Over

My blog statistician informs me that I have had “readers,” or perhaps more precisely, “page viewers,” from about 20 different countries, 5 continents out of 7. The notion that someone in/from Iran, Belarus, South Korea, India, Slovenia, Australia, Portugal, Brazil, Finland, Russia, France, and Singapore has a more than accidental interest in this project rather fascinates me. Why? Heavens! The idea, the English language, my prose—must all be very obscure. I have theories and suspicions about visitors from Germany, the UK, Canada, Poland, and Sweden—you may be loved ones. But for you, the rest of the world, what brings you to this page? Hijacked by some perverse .bot? I’m going to open up the comment function for any responses. Even just to learn your name. At any rate, welcome, and peace.