We Have Altitude

Reunions are interesting. They are briefly about the past, a measurement of confirmation. In the moment of meeting again, I wonder if this is the person I remember, and I assert that I am the person remembered. We share comrades, events, and shared experiences. We smile knowingly, and sigh over our memories, though I am not certain what meaning is expressed in either smile or sigh.

Quickly, however, the reunion is about the present, and we wonder what it is about us that wants to be friends again. We wonder what our relationship might become now, and we search eagerly for points of interest, for connections, for some emotional linkings. For me there are tensions: searching longingly in the face, but for what I am not sure, looking for the person I knew forty years ago, being the person from forty years ago, while projecting the person I am now. A curious tension, not at all unpleasant.

Dear Renee, this is the one about you and I.

A day of walking about Venice. In the quiet of small streets, I can sense the ancient city, but everywhere there are shops and restaurants and snack bars; thousands of tourists, ourselves among them. I am curious always what we are looking for amongst the ruins.

What is sightseeing about? Cowboy Mitch says that sometimes it is important to move outside of your environment to put it into perspective. He says that the problems one experiences back home are minimized when one places distance between you and them. There is a truth to that; the daily life disappears. What replaces them? For me it is the comforts of my home that seduces me to ignore all that troubles me there; I love the homeliness of my home, and am not enamored of the strangeness that is implicit in travel.
I’ve got reservations to attend the Sephardic shul here on Shabbat. In addition to my kippah, I need to bring my passport. As in days of old, it is not easy to be Jewish. The old Ghetto and the new Ghetto, neither very large, is populated by Jews. I passed a kosher falafel restaurant, a Chabad, and a Talmud study session of Chasidim. Now, there I feel at home.