Venice and such

On Friday we walked all over Venice. We saw lots of San Marco and the Rialto area. We were going to go to the Jewish Ghetto in Carneggio but we got lost and ended up on the wrong side of the island. This is suprisingly easy to do in Venice. We sat down in a plaza near the hospital to take a break and look at our map so we could get our bearings. We were sitting on some steps that lead directly into a canal and the were boat ambulances parked near us. we were talking and laughing about something, I honestly don't remember what. All I really remember is that I suddenly felt so happy. And by so happy I don't just mean a vague feeling of contentment, I mean an overwhelming feeling of WOW my life is awesome and I am so freaking happy I just might cry! As you may have guessed from previous blog entries, I don't have feelings like that a lot lately. So, I took a picture of what I could see right at that moment and then I took out my notebook and wrote down: We were very happy here. And I took a picture of that too.

I don't have the pictures online yet but when I get them on they will be punctuated by notes to myself (eg The number 5 waterbus is a life saver, Murano is very hot, San Marco is full of People and pigeons and so forth) this way I will never forget my trip. I think I'm going to start doing this more and more on trips so I can keep matching the emotions with the images.

I'm trying to break out of my old habit of never taking pictures and of never really being in pictures either. I'm not sure how it happened but there is a span of my life when I only appeared in about 5 photographs. Not because I hated my face or anything, it just wasn't something I ever valued and now I really feel their absence as my memories of those years have to share my limited brain space with more and more memories.

I hate forgetting things.


ETA 16:47
Also, when we finally got to the Jewish Ghetto on Sunday afternoon Jeremy got harrassed by a Lubavitch who tried to guilt him into putting on a tallit. The Lubavitch wouldn't even look at me more than sideways. Partially, I think, because I am a woman and the more strictly observant the less keen some men are on touching or interacting with unrelated women, but mostly because it's pretty obvious that I am a great big shiksa. The whole thing was very odd. he was super aggressive about trying to get Jeremy into a tallit and the whole thing left us both feeling awkward and even more foreign than normal (and we feel foreign a lot, it's kind of our thing). Most of the time we don't think about ourselves in terms of Jew and Christian, we're just ourselves in our relationship, but sometimes the difference becomes very, very clear.

More than that even, this guy's earnestness and aggressiveness were pretty disturbing. Jeremy's initial response to the guy was "No, no I'm not a good Jew, I don't do that sort of thing." To which the guy responded, "Nobody's perfect, let's go put them on now." He was so certain that the addition of this garment would make all the difference. What if Jeremy had put it on just to get the guy off his back, just aquiesced out of annoyance rather than belief? How is that better than not being observant in the first place? Is it worse to be bullied into an act of faith and belief than to lack them in the first place?