It's been a long month since I haven't even thought of my blog. I somehow felt I used all the words in the world and have nothing more to say. I wanted to leave Germany peacefully and silently, like I lived there. And every day bringing me closer to the end of my staying there made me realize that I don't want to go back to my home country. I knew the German stage has ended and it's about the time to start looking for a new place, but no way I felt like going back to where I grew up.
There were times in my emigrant experience when I missed speaking my native tongue or meeting my old friends from back home. I felt many times alone and isolated and that's when the idea of going back home sounded a bit appealing to me. I kept thinking I could call people and talk for as long as I wanted, not being limited by the minutes spent on international phone conversations... or I could (even better) go out with them, just to hang out and have a drink or watch a movie or chat... in this line of thinking, the country I left because I felt as being too much limiting my choices became the country in which I was free to be a social creature. And I was missing this more than many other things in those times, so the decision to go back home came naturally, in a way.
I bought a car, rented a place back home and headed for my trip of independence. With my personal life going through some unclear times, I considered it wise to be back home and think things over in a more clear manner. Change is never a bad thing. Driving two thousand km's with three dogs in the car sounded like a bit of adventure, and I never refused things of this sort. When my car engine exploded on the Autobahn, the adventure started to look a bit unpleasant but ... it's all well when it ends up well. So we kept moving, after a short interval spent in a small Bavarian village, where I had the opportunity to contemplate living in the country and to turn off any fantasy of this kind for good.
At Szeged, civilization ended. The four lanes highway going around the cities, like on a normal trans-European road, became a two lanes country road, where you had to cross small towns and cities, driving behind a long line of trucks. It all became worse after crossing the Romanian border, so any sort of home sickness that must have brought me back here, started to vanish. To make a long story short... I am home. Sweet home, Alabama.
Oddly enough, I feel more dislocated than ever. Times which were promising to be fun and alive and entertaining are actually boring and lonely. I look around and I fail to understand people anymore. I spend long hours to solve simple problems and this makes my heart shiver, reminding me of my Italian times. I feel insulated on a grey deserted island, where I understand the language but nothing else from the surrounding world. I do not hate, I just feel paralyzed - I wake up and I do not know what to do and where to go. I have no desire to call or to meet people and I have no places I know of where I can take a peaceful walk. I stay for hours in front of the TV screen, watching the pixels hit my eye and not getting one layer deeper and I feel deadly bored.
I must be feeling like a prisoner after release, but I was released in a place where I do not want to stay. In the world where I had no limit, I felt trapped by the vasteness of my horizons - anywhere equals nowehere. Strangely, I feel the same nowhere here; the surrounding universe is neither hostile nor friendly, just looks and feels more deserted than the place where I knew nobody else. There, loneliness seemed natural - here, being alone is weird, since I am alone by choice, at least apparently. However, this is how I feel - I do not refuse the contacts, I just don't feel that I want them.
As you get older, it is probably harder and harder to get to know and to accept new people. I look at new faces and at old places and I feel ... silent. Even writing this post made me feel somehow clumsy. I do not know what to say, words have left me and I'm caught in a limbo of silence. No hostility in me, no revolt - just a paralysis of senses and of mind, in which days flow one after another and I live in an expanding, pointless, today.
There were times in my emigrant experience when I missed speaking my native tongue or meeting my old friends from back home. I felt many times alone and isolated and that's when the idea of going back home sounded a bit appealing to me. I kept thinking I could call people and talk for as long as I wanted, not being limited by the minutes spent on international phone conversations... or I could (even better) go out with them, just to hang out and have a drink or watch a movie or chat... in this line of thinking, the country I left because I felt as being too much limiting my choices became the country in which I was free to be a social creature. And I was missing this more than many other things in those times, so the decision to go back home came naturally, in a way.
I bought a car, rented a place back home and headed for my trip of independence. With my personal life going through some unclear times, I considered it wise to be back home and think things over in a more clear manner. Change is never a bad thing. Driving two thousand km's with three dogs in the car sounded like a bit of adventure, and I never refused things of this sort. When my car engine exploded on the Autobahn, the adventure started to look a bit unpleasant but ... it's all well when it ends up well. So we kept moving, after a short interval spent in a small Bavarian village, where I had the opportunity to contemplate living in the country and to turn off any fantasy of this kind for good.
At Szeged, civilization ended. The four lanes highway going around the cities, like on a normal trans-European road, became a two lanes country road, where you had to cross small towns and cities, driving behind a long line of trucks. It all became worse after crossing the Romanian border, so any sort of home sickness that must have brought me back here, started to vanish. To make a long story short... I am home. Sweet home, Alabama.
Oddly enough, I feel more dislocated than ever. Times which were promising to be fun and alive and entertaining are actually boring and lonely. I look around and I fail to understand people anymore. I spend long hours to solve simple problems and this makes my heart shiver, reminding me of my Italian times. I feel insulated on a grey deserted island, where I understand the language but nothing else from the surrounding world. I do not hate, I just feel paralyzed - I wake up and I do not know what to do and where to go. I have no desire to call or to meet people and I have no places I know of where I can take a peaceful walk. I stay for hours in front of the TV screen, watching the pixels hit my eye and not getting one layer deeper and I feel deadly bored.
I must be feeling like a prisoner after release, but I was released in a place where I do not want to stay. In the world where I had no limit, I felt trapped by the vasteness of my horizons - anywhere equals nowehere. Strangely, I feel the same nowhere here; the surrounding universe is neither hostile nor friendly, just looks and feels more deserted than the place where I knew nobody else. There, loneliness seemed natural - here, being alone is weird, since I am alone by choice, at least apparently. However, this is how I feel - I do not refuse the contacts, I just don't feel that I want them.
As you get older, it is probably harder and harder to get to know and to accept new people. I look at new faces and at old places and I feel ... silent. Even writing this post made me feel somehow clumsy. I do not know what to say, words have left me and I'm caught in a limbo of silence. No hostility in me, no revolt - just a paralysis of senses and of mind, in which days flow one after another and I live in an expanding, pointless, today.
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