sorry for the recent morose nature of these posts. i'm feeling a little out of place, out of time here. what makes it worse is i don't have any sort of fixed ideal in my head. certainly towards the end of the russia trip i got antsy and wanted to back here (home?) now that i'm here i'm still shifty. the film festival is starting. maybe that will anchor me. i'm seeing my first of at least six (i bought the package deal) in thirty minutes or so with shannon, who i ran into this afternoon here. cairo station, an egyptian flick neither of us know anything about.
we ended up wandering back up to christiania and looking more closely at it while debating the wisdom of traveling by oneself in eastern europe. she's planning a solo trip to poland. considering she just navigated herself through finland and the arctic for a comparable length of time, i'm sure she could handle it. psychologically the camps are something different though, or at least having been there that's my opinion. something you just don't want to go through alone.

so you're hardcore jewish, she says. i squirm under the label, hearing echoes of abby's disdainful 'superjew' and other adjectives+ people having used in reference to me: cynical jew at barnard that summer: straight jew on eliz's page. is this worse/better? hardcore makes me think settlers and haredim; rigidity, dogma; at least observance. things voltaire would sneer at. religion isn't intellectual, faith isn't cool. do i really want those things associated with me? the people who can pull them off have admirable strength of character. i respect them much. so in a way i despise myself for squirming; still, my answer is to play the Cultural card, meekly. she nods, having neither gained nor lost respect for me. to her it was merely a question.