To the people around me, I am indistinct. It is a paradox of sorts, because of course I stand out like a dandelion in an orchid garden. The only blonde tenant in my building, only one on my block with a nose this shape and size; these eyes, this skin, the way I dress, move, speak -- all utterly other to my neighbors -- and therefore a spectacle (if not an eyesore). Yet there is much of me that they do not see.
It's because I'm different that I'm hard to make out. The million little outward manifestations of personality, character cues and clues -- mannerisms, details of appearance, nuances in action and reaction -- that are so readily legible to people of similar background, are lost on my new peers. To read me at all, they must transliterate me into their own alphabet, and in the process, I am slurred.
My gestures must come off drunken -- broad and uninflected. Subtlety becomes an impossibility. Wit, wordplay, penchant and eccentricity, all the fond vices and devices of intellect and individuality, give way inevitably to slapstick and charades. God help me, I'm a mime. Whiteface and all. It'd be different if I learned the language of my hosts. Not that I'd ever be subtle, either, in their ancient and intricate milieu, but I would be less of a cipher for them, I imagine. Less of a confusing, capering clown.
I think of the joker in a deck of playing cards. The 'wild' card, filling a needful slot in a straight or a flush, subbing in for any rank, any suit, yet possessing, ultimately, neither. The joker is defined by its function. It is essentially formless, unresolved, signifying possibility, potential: a variable. The bell-tipped cap fits. In this country, I am what I do, and precious little else. A rare card decorated in caricature of a teacher, completing, perhaps, a full house: three of any kind over a pair -- education and entertainment.
Education is enormously valued in Korea. It is the most essential national resource. And they take their entertainment pretty seriously too. So I'm useful here. My abilities are in demand. I'm an industry. And as such, I'm treated very well. Pampered, actually. How else would it be possible for me to live comfortably as an illiterate? In fact, my ignorance is far deeper than illiteracy. I can't speak. I am unable to make sense. I express myself less competently than a toddler. I suffer from profound sociocultural retardation, comprehending a negligible fraction of what I hear and see.
I digress. My initial point, you'll remember, was that they can't read me.
At an elite boys' middle school where I perform two days out of each week, a well-meaning faculty member approached me once in the lounge and asked, "What are you?"
He meant how. How are you.
"I'm fine," I replied.
But I wanted to say, "I'm a blur."
[Winter, 2005]