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I'm really tired, so this will be a short entry. Returning from Schwieberdingen left me happy and sad. It is strange how you look at all those things you took for granted for such a long time, knowing it will be only months, before you'll leave them, most probably for ever.
Don't get me wrong. I really love the place were I'm going to live, quiet and solemn as it is. I like the people even now, feeling strangly at home when the waitress of a diner asked us, if we were new to the little town, for she had seen us twice passing by the window. I know how small communities work for both my parents are from even smaller villages. Still, I#m kind of used to the anonymous behavior of people living in big cities.
It took me weeks to be recognized in the bar I usually start writing for a day. It will be over all too soon and I'm not sure whether there will be anythin near as feeling as home as the Swan is in Duesseldorf, at least to me. MOre then half of my recent novel has been written there and if it will sell, the Swan has to be mentioned as will be Highlander Radio, if you grant me the honour, that is, and a lot of really nice people who are my writing collegues and friends - err, friends to be put first, of course. Writers' brains sometimes work in a weird way, aren't they?
Coming back to feeling home. There had only been one place, I really felt at home at once and the people living there wouldn't know at all. It's one of the small channel islands, Sark. I still dream of living there, but that going to be a livelong dream with little chance to come true. Now, I'm dreaming of the nice flat with a balcony or a small garden to tend. Lots of visits to museeums and the Wilhelma, which is the zoo of Stuttgart, one of the most beautiful in Germany.
And if I look around in my flat right now, I'm already planning what to take and what to deposit of. That really is a weird feeling, although I've started today by taking a rucksack full of old paper to the dumpster. All our books. My that's going to be a lot of parcels, not to talk of the other stuff. But first of all, we'll need a flat down there. And quickly.
Still, I'm at home feeling homeless, not so much because all is going to be packed and shipped but because Volker isn't around and he, of all people and places, is what I call home.
Good night for now
JJ
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