The old and the new

I'm apparently not very good at keeping up with a blog. Sometimes there's truly not much to write about. It's been an interesting few months here, lots of travel and lots of changes. People leaving, people coming. People coming together, people parting. As such, it would seem appropriate at this point to write an entry about that old familiar dichotomy: the "old" and the "new".

So let's see, we have had:

old semester and new semester
winter and spring
old exchange students and new exchange students
old news and current news
break-ups and make-ups

Do not make the mistake that these are to be understood only on one time-scale. Sure, there is the obvious chronology of the winter and summer semesters, and the changing of seasons from winter to spring. What does it mean though, when we talk about "old" or "new" people? Even this often yields complex answers. Did you get here in September? October? March? Or just now, in the first week of April? When are you leaving? Who did you know? Do I know you? Are you Erasmus or "regular"? I've been in Marburg longer than you. Do you speak German or English? How long have you spoken German or English? How good is your German or English? Where are you from? A never-ending maze of connections that in fact goes beyond linear time altogether. This type of timescale is a buzzing circle of the foreign lost, who quickly become found together as they spin round and round, over and over. They bind themselves tight like a comfy, well-knit sock. One person's pain or joy quickly becomes everyone else's. You breathe a common air, in fact.

When the winter semester ended, linear time was a reminder that some of the group had to go. But how does one exit a circle that by its very definition defies linear time? People left, and perhaps no one really knew what would happen next. How can a group of people get any closer, especially after months of events full of drama, fun, pain, and pure joy. Newer people came in March and April. We're still getting to know some of them, and that will continue to change. Yet somehow, it still feels like the old never left - what an oddly wonderful defiance of time and space. A further reminder that one (however wonderfully or cruelly) can never completely erase history and memory. For me, the circle does not get smaller. History and memory keeps things alive as linear time forces us onward.

We have created a common history and memory here, and it will continue to be made. Regardless of where we all end up afterwards, there will always be the knowledge that for a short while in our lives, we breathed a common air here in Marburg.