I'm not here/ This isn't happening/ I'm not here/ I'm not here

I cry very rarely. But now, somehow my tear ducts are in overproduction. I was surprised to find myself crying when I said goodbye to friends at a Jeremy Loops concert. I cried on the way home from the concert. I cried at the airport. I cried whilst standing in line, waiting to get my passport checked. I cried whilst waiting to board the plane. I cried in Doha whilst waiting for the next plane. I thought I had cried enough. 

Then the past two weeks have been so busy that there has been no time for crying, no time to think about missing home. Then I went to Flensburg for two days to find a commune, extremely hopeful and optimistic and going into charm-everyone mode. How hard could it be, right?

Hah. I'm crying right now. Maybe it's being overwhelmed, just for a moment, by everything. Maybe it's not really sleeping for two days because a very cute kitten kept bouncing around on me at night. Maybe it's discovering that the university consists of two buildings. Small buildings. I think I handled everything pretty well, until I got back to Berlin with two rejections. 

The rejections were still ok, as well. But then not getting any support from my father, having to live out of my suitcase, not having a moment to myself, not having any space to call mine, well, that made the flippen tear ducts start up again. Fuck. 

I know all of this is not as hard as I make it out to be, I know somehow it'll work out, I know I still have time to find a room, somehow, somewhere. Just in this very moment it would be nice not to feel so very much alone. 

Fireproof

Today I quit the gym. One more month of Zen Pilates on Wednesdays and Zen Yoga on Fridays, and then my card won't work any more. I've been going there for 5 years, not religiously, not fanatically, always slightly dishevelled looking, but regularly, at least. I've hated on all jock-y personal trainers, been embarrassed by a room full of nakedness, gotten athlete's foot, fell flat on my face and avoided the V-box class like the plague. It's not like I'm quitting exercise in order to join The People of Walmart or anything, I am just moving to Germany for, well, at least 2 years.

This means a lot of admin. I hate admin. I wish there was no bureaucracy, no paperwork, only (if need be) easy online forms that are designed so that a 6-year-old could fill them out. I would like not to feel like a criminal every time I need to complete paperwork, or to have my mom vouch for me as soon as I need to apply for the silliest things.

At the moment I am sorting (read throwing away) through my CDs, putting books in boxes and seeing which stuff could go to the less fortunate. Strange how we are all hoarders somehow. Not as excessive as the TV show, but we hang on to things because we're afraid without objects of memory we won't be able to remember everything. Maybe that is a good thing though. Maybe not every incident of life need to be enshrined somewhere in our brains.

It is rather emotional, this throwing away of things. I look at the Celine Dion CDs I took along on our trip of Mayan pyramids in Mexico as a child. After two weeks of almost exclusively Celine (I also packed Disney's Greatest Hits Vol. I and II), no one liked her any more. I find clumsy artworks, old photographs, a stack of SL magazines. It is hard to decide what to keep and what to let go, because somewhere in me there is a nagging voice constantly saying: "But you might need that again, someday."

Hah. Someday.

This moving away is harder than I thought. I am like a manic depressive, changing from being elated to nostalgic, teary-eyed and battling against a wave of sadness. Here is where my people are, it is home.

And although I've been all like 'needtoleaveneedtoleaveneedtoleave', actually leaving my very comfortable nest makes me almost shit my pants. What if this is a bad idea. What if everyone is stupid. What if I am the stupid one. What if there the sun won't ever shine. What if someone dies, here. What if, what if.

Luckily, my friend Michael left me with great advice : No experience is wasted.

Better make the best of what I have here, still, and what awaits.

Paper Aeroplane

Soft sunlight falls over the city, as though it were a late Free State afternoon and not an early winter's morning in Mzansi. The buildings are carefully folded origami, God playing Tetris badly with their arrangement. Row upon row of trains like tiny pieces of Lego. I try to spot the Nelson Mandela bridge, but we are already passing over Ellis Park Stadium. When the FNB Stadium appears, tiny from this height, I poke my neighbour and say: "Look, it's Soccer City!".

The silly man only replies that the one in Cape Town is prettier, and that we'll pay for these stadia for years. How can you not appreciate the view, Mr Suit? Johannesburg is saying Welcome Back, and you fail to acknowledge her beauty.

You see, I came home, yesterday. It was only one week, but it felt like time had stopped; it felt as though I had been given a time-out from my life just for a week. Here, the news regarding Zuma's painting was still the same, I had missed nothing at the university, and all the people were still exactly as I had left them.

But Paris also felt like going home.  I still know my way around. I still know how to surf the metro without holding on or falling. I still know where to get what I need. Seeing my friends again felt like I had seen them only yesterday, not two years ago. Getting on the plane back here felt like coming home and leaving it at the same time. Sure, Paris is not where my family is, where the house I call home is, where most of my friends live, or where I feel like I know every corner. But that city is not a stranger to me either. It is like being a perpetual tourist and being perpetually home-less at the same time; it is feeling a sense of belonging to more than one city.