the title sounds so negative? Let's start off with something positive: I have A's in all my classes for the past term so far! (except for my soc 205 class. Why am I not surprised that she hasn't managed to enter the grades yet?) Which basically means it is possible to work, have a family and keep your 4.0. Not bad.
I'm here in Germany and I'm not even sure where to start. In some ways I feel like I never left, in some ways it feels like things have never changed, but subtle clues keep popping up that tell me that underneath the skin many things have shifted somewhat, even though they look pretty much the same.
The flight was as uneventful as flights get-no in-flight entertainment (which is usually not my bag anyway) if you don't count reading
Kathleen Bryson's "Girl on a Stick" in one sitting, who happens, for the record, to be a good friend of mine. Oh, and reading parts of
Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" so it's no wonder i was a bit spacy by the time I got here (which is no criticism at all). First thing that happened was that I got snarked at by some gay counter clerk in frankfurt because i needed to post-swipe my frequent flyer card. This somehow jolted me back into the reality that I actually am back in Germany: it's the complete lack of public manners that make this place easily identifiable. People smoked more, and in public, but were also better looking and thinner. Home all right. Driving home from the airport with my mother, and her partner, and the dog was nice (but also strange) just because I could see german flags flying in the wind (something never witnessed pre- Worldcup 06). The music on the radio was both new and outdated, the cars smaller (although I have seen a couple of SUV's!) The place clean, spotless, immaculate. Things are in the places as I remember them. The house is...perfect. The floors. I never noticed the floors were so hard. As I padded around in socks or without, i felt the hard felty carpet under my feet. So old. So new. So different.
The dog is huge and black and smells of dog. Happy to see me, he was jumping all over the place. Hello dog. I still feel like an automaton. I speak german and it makes certain parts of my brain itch: not the same parts that get activated when I speak English. A different set of circuits lights up. Being here is making things change. I can feel my allergies fading. I just leant back and it felt safe. I feel safe. I feel safe in the thick-walled brick house. I want to hug radiators. The carpet. I pad and walk with naked feet and it feels cold and warm at the same time. Everything is clean. There is no clutter anywhere. Things are bigger and also heavier than I seem to remember them. My father is happy and excited when I call him. It sounded like a fairground in the back. What is my father doing at a fairground? What is my father doing happy and excited? The sky is pale blue but icy cold, as if pulled over the sky like gauze or a sheer curtain. Things echo, my voice sounds like it's booming all the time. I picked up a coffee cup and it was tiny in my hands. Am I turning into American? Am I getting used to size? Am I getting used to talking loudly all the time? What does it all mean? What does it all mean? It's like a mantra I repeat in my head when I stop being able to decode the influences, times, languages, currencies, timezones, fluctuations, places, noises, sounds that flow me through me like a current, bending me this way and that. I feel it settling. I am the only thing that moves and will always be the only one that knows. Back and forth, german like german, english like english, american like an american (increasingly). The people on the one side do not know the other side, and never will. I feel like I am very...not fragmented, but mosiac'ed (if you can say that-i say you can) right now. There is so little crossover. Sometimes that feels heavy, at the moment it just feels like...it's holding me in the moment.
Where do I belong? which country? Culture? None. I only belong where things meet, an amalgamation of sorts. Maybe it's my dharma (don't laugh, cathleen, don't laugh) to simply be in the middle of these things, be where they touch, and bare their weight, bare their tension, bare the consequences that arise by calling them all "mine."
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okay
cheerful
scared
touched
sad
thoughtful
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