006~ Associations and Automatic Reaction in the service of commemoration!

I guess that arriving stardust-stricken from the International cinema scene in Cannes, has softened my denial-protection-mechanisms...and so, arriving with no intention to find within me any room to absorb the Jewish people history in Berlin, together with the feeling I can choose not to do any historic tours...that it's not mandatory - is exactly what made me vulnerable to a new kind of learning! Ha! Now The load on my head has just become colossal... good work, Allon - I will have to address these feelings altogether! Where do I start???

Did "the good people win" did the 'Bad people lose"? Are the people around me bad? are they now good? am I good? am I bad? is there justice? is wiping houses down to the ground with kids and mothers a good thing? OMG...

It's a rabbit hole, and I could barely see the beginning of it.

In the words of Tom Robins in the novel Still Life with Woodpecker “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better”, I was getting a feeling that things were going to get complicated and that I was not one of those "smart" people.

It seemed, as I started to dust off the years of neglect from those old storage boxes, that every insight and understanding I had concluded in my stored memory was simplified, dumbed down and wrapped for storage by a 14 year old. Things were left un-developed, and un questioned for years, leaving me with an infantile toolkit and words like Good, Bad, Victims, Perpetrator, dangerous, safe... no gray areas, everything seemed solid...but dumbed down.

As I started to look for words, and to ask around, I was getting such 'grown-up' answers... I felt embarrassed by my disability to articulate anything about this issue, it felt like those 15 minutes of Poker when I realized that the only reason I couldn't identify the Bozo besides the table was because the bozo was me.

I knew so little, and I realised that every association I might have was predictable, expected and banal, I felt I was programmed as if I were standing right back in line be it boarding the flight to Berlin, or- Oh My God could it be that, even if I felt free...was I a sheep..Again??

Neta walking around the Jewish memorial- lomography

It was time for some deep reflection. Time to peal some old stickers and re-evaluate the past, now through my grown-up eyes.