Duck with stunning blue feathers standing on a rock looking down into the water

2024 Grateful 24: Life while you wait

I can’t remember ever living a day when I didn’t stop at least once and wonder at my ignorance.

Sometimes, this ignorance is of the how-could-I-not-have-known-that variety.

Simple stuff.

Like the arrow next to the petrol pump icon on my dashboard that tells me that my petrol tank is on the right side of the car. For 30 years, I’ve been getting out of rental cars to check which side the tank was on and all the time, this arrow was there, telling me what I needed to know.

Other times, this ignorance is more the I-should-know-that kind.

I can never remember the name of Hungary’s cardinal, who some are tipping to be the next pope. Or the leader of Ireland’s Fine Gael party. Or the name of the world-renowned painter whose exhibition we saw in Budapest last year.

Mostly though, my ignorance is a revelation. Something to be cherished that comes to light through discovery. The I-never-knew-but-am-so-glad-I-know-now kind.

Reading the Marginalian this morning, I clicked through some links and came across this poem by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. It resonated. It resonated so deeply that I wondered why I’d not met this woman’s work before. I don’t remember ever ever hearing her name before this morning.

But now I know.

LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT*
by Wisława Szymborska

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

Powerful words.

I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it. And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.

Powerful words, indeed.

Szymborska disowned her first two volumes of poetry because they were written in the required style of the day, Socialist Realism.

Socialist Realism, officially sanctioned theory and method of literary composition prevalent in the Soviet Union from 1932 to the mid-1980s. For that period of history Socialist Realism was the sole criterion for measuring literary works.

The painter Tibor Simon-Mazula recently introduced me to the three Ts of culture in Hungary during communism – tiltott, tűrt, and támogatott. Art was forbidden, tolerated, or supported.

It bothers me to see style dictated.

Am grateful for my ignorance and the joy of discovery it’s married to.

 

 

2 responses

  1. I’ve searched my good old Volvo in vain for arrows leading to the fuel tank, so how I know where to put the stuff is a complete mystery! Your car must be infinitely superior and driver-friendly!

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