11 June 2006

Naked and Homeless

Disbalance seems to most appropriately characterise my state over the past few weeks. Increasing disbalance. With Mr Big&Important's looming departure for la grande ville, I feel like my protections, my comfort zone, my home, my base, in a way nearly everything that was making my Berlin life is about to be removed from around me. Picturing life in Berlin After His Departure, I feel like I will be stranded in an absolutely foreign country and culture. And very lonely.
Of course I know other people, but real friends are rare and few, and I've had to flash-realise that I do not feel at home with Germans, in spite of my superficially successful integration.
So I've had to start thinking about my relationship with France again. Not really home, yet where I grew up, is there more to it than beautiful cheese? The German Alternative Left has developed a great passion for französische Verhältnisse, the term applied to the lasting resistance organised against the first employment contract. At least one "do you speak French" sign is bound to pop up on any given demonstration nowadays. The creation of a national myth seems exagerated, but I have been interested in all sorts of developments in France too. I've followed with a certain dose of amazement news on grassroots resistance in favour of children of Sans Papiers, for instance.
I admire the German Alterniv-linke, their energetic commitment to self-organisation, to regaining control over their own world. I feel I want to join them in their efforts, but sense also a certain barrier, that is, I suspect, not solely cultural. Would it make any difference if I tried to join these forces in France? I fear it isn't a question of country or geographic place. I still haven't found the key to resistance movement.

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