I lived abroad from February 15th, 2001 through July 23rd 2001. The following are some notes from this time in South Africa and Germany.

Leaving On A Jet Plane
04.02.01
The odd feeling of leaving is finally sinking in, with just 11 days till I'm admiring the Atlantic a shimmering million miles below.
And here's a depressing activity:
I got a new address book, copied various old addresses into it, and came to the realization so many of these names are history. Reunions unlikely. Uncomfortable. Unwanted.
And a girl in Burrow told me today, you change when you leave. When you come back, nothing's the same. She said it with a smile, but I still think of all of those names.

Over the Pond
15.02.01
An hour tick or two away on the clock - and I guess it's real now. Only to become more real by actual physical prescence.
Oddly those who I expected most to be there for me were hardly. What happened to loyalty?
At the oddest a.m.s, the ease of falling into dismay is overwhelmingly predictable.
Jordan reminds me "Live these days like they are your last"- that I must be in the moment for once, and so I will try.
Into the fog of the early morning shortly coming. Embracing whatever I find.

From the Ends of the Earth
19.02.01
In S.A. and so much is new and unknown. Toast with cottage cheese to driving on the wrong side of the road. Table Mountain is an unbelievable sight, and everyone has been so kind.
And there is a Southern Cross in the sky traded for the Dippers one usually sees at night.
And I can see how a place like this can become home.

Hout Bay:
The Indian Ocean, lovely but freezing, and home to several hundred reeking sea lions
(my apologies for the poor photo quality)

Knee-Deep in Deutschland
13.03.01
Wherever you go, there you are. . . And finally my luggage managed to come with me, too, after careful effort at the Stuttgart airport. I've been in Strasbourg since then, I've been to see the doctor since then (Nats, I'm afraid your country apparently contains a bacteria which, when consumed, does not agree with German food). And here, along the Neckar river in a town that can only be described in a word it's country's language doesn't have (quaint), I have to go to my French Quarter barracks to do my homework.

The Marktplatz:
Scene of many a half-hot, lazy summer day and a couple of half-drunken evenings

A Month Passes
23.4.01
Classes will finally begin the day after tomorrow. I'm sick. . . again. Ever ill here in Deutschland. And the Untreu has developed into me not deserving happiness, but tell me something. Who exactly does Deserve happiness, as though it were something more than a daily decision?

Sum Sine Regnor
05.06.01
Writer's block has finally left and now I have pages and pages I would give you. Pages and pages of random Danes, Englishmen, Pennsylvanians. I climbed the Österberg and drove a Stocherkahn. I whipped 180 kilometers down the Autobahn at 5 am, leaving Reutlingen and the Faberei, leaving silly dreams, dusty hopes, running, throwing, tossing, ducking. Leaving. Leaving vanity. What am I taking, is the question that plagues me.

The Bahnhof:
Train station from which half of my departures from Tübingen began and many a weary journey concluded

Konstanz- Am Bodensee
17.06.01
A month's time and a couple of days are all I have left. A countdown toward English, hotdogs, Taco Bell, baseball games, driving distances, only weekends off and youth in general has begun.
My eyes peel toward souvenirs and schokolade to bring back. I try to look at all of the red and brown roofs - see that right now I'm on a ship on the Bodensee bordering Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, but the rush has begun. It's all in earnest. I cannot pack soon enough and cannot clutch and hold closer.
We sat in the rain on the way down to Überlingen, spoke of aesthetics and intellectual matters. I'm getting bored with my brain, with the thoughts it repeats - refrains of malcontent and future banging through, past visions of hard rain beating a broad sea.
A child, possibly German, wants my Twix - but now his mother speaks in German and brother says "oui" in the Parisian fashion.
You question time here, question if it was wasted - how you spent it, of course, not that you came. I bruise my flesh unintentionally, colliding into a punishment for time spent with and wasted thinking on relationships, working the social circle. Part of me doesn't give a damn if I see them now, knowing I'll never see them again. Part of me demands every upcoming moment with the parties we've had up to now. Always a problem letting go and holding on somehow. . .
The last month will be working. This week will be announcing my absence to the Studentenwerk and preparing Referat - trying in earnest to get my phone, and finding, finding some way to bring it all back home.
I will camp in the Black Forest; I may go to Paris. I will question whether my nights should be spent in familiar or unfamiliar arms. I will throw up my hands with a good-natured smile and hurry home to tighten these same hands around my face, my waist, my mouth. It goes like this. The careless bruises will come again, my surroundings beating me clean of wasted time, wasted feeling.
There will be regret, yes, but there will be memories.

Enroute to Simmersfeld: An Excerpt
29.06.01
Yellow and blue signs claim in larger to smaller print Calw Herrenberg. Herrenberg's steep pitched roofs and flat stucco walls - the popular architecture of the deutsche Heim, This town's church unique in it's onion dome, however, and a man in a blue car out the window is spitting fresh cherry pits onto one of the many tiny, windy roads gracing this country.
Freundenstadt Nagold next. Back onto the farm land, gentle rolling hills that small towns with steeples peek out of. Higher into hills as elevation makes ears pop and suddenly only trees upon trees. Black Forest entered? Just on the edge yet. It's not black; various greens, some deep, but just greens and trunks' brown-grey.
Herrenbergerstrasse in a new dorf. Back into the forest. Scrubby, thin, tall pines pushing and shoving for platz frei. Nagold a kilometer away. On a bridge looking like Roman aquaducts, looking down on a valley town and up to a small tower, obviously some former fortress - Nagold is lovely.

Germany's Last Entry
13.07.01
After months of dismantled ideas, compiled and unsorted emotions, I leave. 10 days and I am winging back across the Atlantic to Atlanta. Dreamed a dream I was going home, but going home was Cape Town and not the United States at all - my mind unwilling to embrace return.

There should be some profound statement at the end of all of this, shouldn't there? Some "I've learned that. . ." or "I've grown through. . ." or something. . . But all I can tell you is that I am split, lost over the sea, torn between my birthland and my ancestry.

Wilhelmstrasse:
A, if not the, main street in the Innenstadt of Tübingen

"Burg Tübingen"

Still und öde steht der Väter Veste,
Schwarz und moosbewachsen Pfort' und Turm,
Durch der Felsenwände trübe Reste
Saußt um Mitternacht der Wintersturm,
Dieser schaurigen Gemache Trümmer
Heischen sich umsonst ein Siegesmaal
Und des Schlachtgeräthes Heiligtümer
Schlummern Todesschlaf im Waffensaal.

Hier ertönen keine Festgesänge
Lobzupreisen Manas Heldenland
Keine Fahne weht im Siegsgepränge
Hochgehoben in des Kriegers Hand,
Keine Rosse wiehern in den Thoren
Bis die Edeln zum Turniere nah'n
Keine Doggen, treu, und auserkoren
Schmiegen sich den blanken Panzern an.

Bei des Hiefhorns schallendem Getöne
Zieht kein Fräulein in der Hirsche Thal,
Siegesdürstend gürten keine Söhne
Um die Lenden ihrer Väter Stahl,
Keine Mütter jauchzen von der Zinne
Ob der Knaben stolzer Wiederkehr,
Und den ersten Kuß verschämter Minne
Weihn der Narbe keine Bräute mer.

Aber schaurige Begeisterungen
Wekt die Riesin in des Enkels Brust
Sänge, die der Väter Mund gesungen
Zeugt der Wehmuth zauberische Lust,
Ferne von dem thörigen Gewühle,
Von dem Stolze der Gefallenen,
Dämmern niegeahndete Gefüle
In der Seele des Begeisterten.

Hier im Schatten grauer Felsenwände,
Von des Städters Bliken unentweiht,
Knüpfe Freundschaft deutsche Biederhände
Schwöre Liebe für die Ewigkeit,
Hier wo Heldenschatten niederrauschen
Traufe Vaterseegen auf den Sohn
Wo den Lieblingen die Geister lauschen
Spreche Freiheit den Tyrannen Hohn!

Hier verweine die verschloßne Zähre
Wer umsonst nach Menschenfreude ringt
Wen die Krone nicht der Bardenehre
Nicht des Liebchens Schwanenarm umschlingt,
Wer von Zweifeln one Rast gequälet,
Von des Irrtums peinigendem Loos,
Schlummerlose Mitternächte zählet,
Komme zu genesen in der Ruhe Schoos.

Aber wer des Bruders Fehle rüget
Mit der Schlangenzunge losem Spott
Wem für Adeltaten Gold genüget
Sei er Sclave oder Erdengott
Er entweihe nicht die heilge Reste
Die der Väter stolzer Fuß betratt,
Oder walle zitternd zu der Veste
Abzuschwören da der Schande Pfad.

Denn der Heldenkinder Herz zu stählen
Atmet Freiheit hier und Männermuth
In der Halle weilen Väterseelen
Sich zu freuen ob Thuiskons Blut,
Aber ha! den Spöttern und Tyrannen
Weht Entsezen ihr Verdammerspruch
Rache dräuend jagt er sie von dannen
Des Gewissens fürchterlicher Fluch.

Wohl mir! daß ich süßen Ernstes scheide,
Daß die Harfe schrekenlos ertönt
Daß ein Herz mir schlägt für Menschenfreude
Daß die Lippe nicht der Einfalt höhnt.
Süßen Ernstes will ich wiederkehren
Einzutrinken freien Männermuth
Bis umschimmert von den Geisterheeren
In Walhallas Schoos die Seele ruht.
-Hölderlin