[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #002
as if in dreams #002: A newsletter from Joseph Zitt
25 September 2020
Well, we survived the making and sending of the first newsletter, so here's a second one. About a dozen folks have signed up so far. (Please, feel free to forward these to people who might enjoy the posts, etc, and might not otherwise see them. I look forward to getting subscribers who I don't actually know :-) )
I've discovered some useful things in creating these newsletters, so far.
I'm writing this in a markup language named Markdown. (I'm guessing that the naming gag was intentional.) I can write it in any text editor. The newsletter software converts it into HTML to be read online and printed effectively. (I have ideas for how to get it to print even more effectively, but I have to figure some things out first.)
In a markup language, standard characters show how things are displayed. To make these words bold, for example, I put two asterisks before and after them. To make italics, I only use one asterisk. (And in proofreading this, I just fixed about a dozen instances where I got those confused.) The various header lines start with the "#" symbol. A first-level header starts with one, a second-level header starts with two, and so on. I create links with a combination of square brackets and parentheses. And I put a backslash before special characters that I don't want interpreted (such as the "#" symbol earlier in this paragraph).
This might bore or even frighten a lot of people, but I get a kick out of it. In the brief time that I earned my living as a programmer, my main task was writing programs that translated things from one markup language to another. People needed that a lot in the Nineties. Now, not so much. I'm told that, at one, point, a call went out from someone at a large corporation in Texas: "I'm told we need Joe Zitt to convert this. What's a Joe Zitt?"
I've also created a template file for building these newsletters, which will make things easier.
As always, I'm interested in what you think of these. My contact information is at the end, in the Colophon section. I love the word "colophon".
(Or, come to think of it, through the magic of copy-and-paste: You can find me via email, Twitter, and Facebook.)
Onward (through the fog, either Austin or San Francisco style)!
Contents
This Week's Posts
Friday, September 18th, 2020
The bakery where I get my challah seems radically different, but when I look closely, I see that little has changed. They have finished moving the registers to the front and updated the technology. Customers can swipe their own cards and sign on a screen on a device facing out toward us. I had only seen those before in cafes in the States. The area in the back, behind where it had been, now holds more dark-wood shelves. The counter is the same shade. The flow of customers is smoother. There still isn’t a clear queue, but there’s less crowding. I come up to them with a prewrapped challah from the shelves. “Do you know that that has raisins?” I didn’t. I do now, since I now also know the word for raisins. It’s just right. The workers at the registers keep running out of the right change, The technology develops glitches. They shift back and forth between the machines, still able to keep the transactions straight in ways that baffle me. Outside, the street is swarming with shoppers. The lockdown starts in a few hours, and the New Year starts in the evening, so people are grabbing last minute items. The shinier new bakery around the corner has two large signs: “During lockdown, we will be open as usual.” I suppose that they will close off the seating area. I get lunch at my favorite shawarma joint. The owner and I wish each other a good year. The street corner violinist sits a few meters from where he usually stands. Rather than the usual pop and classical tunes, he is playing languid melodies against a recorded drone. The sliding and wavering pitches and continual double-stops sound more like carnatic music than his usual, very Western playing. At the phone store across the street, I pick up some video equipment that I’d been wanting. It’s inexpensive consumer tech, but it puts together pieces that I’ve been wanting more affordably than I’d seen them separately. Once home, I work on launching my newsletter, now that I’ve hit my self-imposed deadline. I doze off for some of the afternoon, then hunker down for several quiet days of holiday isolation.
Saturday, September 19th, 2020
I only get around to watching Rosh Hashanah services at about 3 PM. Before that, I watch and read tributes to RBG. I follow links to the services and flip listlessly among those that I find online. Some are dull and droning. Some are too jokey. Some are directed at people who know little about the holidays. Some are stealth recruitment efforts from yarmulke-clad preachers who pretend, for the moment, to be Jewish. One pair of livestreams kicks in at 5 PM, my time. I watch one for a while. It seems to consist of vaguely-related musical performances and stories. I flip to the other, which follows the form, at least, of the liturgy. After the first hour, my attention wavers. I keep the audio playing but look at other things online. Most of those, too, are about RBG. I stumble across information on how to get local shows on my TV. I set it up. When the service is done, I heat up pretty much the same dinner that I had last night: roast chicken, frozen brussells sprouts, and a sweet potato. My favorite of the neighborhood cats sits outside my window and meows as I eat. Maybe she wants some of the chicken. I don’t open the door for her. I don’t know if it’s good for the feral cats to come indoors, and I’m not allowed pets. I don’t go outside at all. With the holiday and the lockdown, there’s nowhere to go. I don’t see anyone all day, though I hear my landlord and landlady walking around upstairs. I sit back down at my TV after I eat. Maybe there will be something fun to watch.
Sunday, September 20th, 2020
I approach today thinking that it’s my 63rd birthday. Then I do the math. It’s 2020. I was born in 1958. I’m only turning 62. I’ve been wrong about this for months. It’s disorienting. But I do feel younger. I’ve never been good at remembering information without double checking. That’s one reason I’m more comfortable with people online than in person. Online, I can fact check myself. On Friday, at the phone store, I signed a receipt for some equipment. I had to put down my local phone number. I forgot it. Fortunately, I soon remembered a mnemonic, decoded it, and wrote it down. The salesman was not amused. He pointed out the window at the people on the square in wheelchairs and, as he put it, “their filipinim.” He suggested that I might need one soon. It was my turn not to be amused. Yesterday, I had to fill in my American phone number on a web form. Even with a similar mnemonic, that took several tries. Today, like yesterday, I am at home, alone. I wake up early after a bad night’s sleep with too much dreaming. I get breakfast, get online, get the first stream of birthday wishes. (Thank you all.) I fall asleep again and wake up at 2 PM. I get lunch, get online again, get further wishes. My music library finishes indexing itself after churning for five days. I wrestle with the server. It eventually works well enough. I haven’t seen anyone else in person in two days. I haven’t spoken to anyone today. Headlines tell me that the lockdown may become tighter in the morning. At least the government thinks my job is essential. Tomorrow I will go to work.
Monday, September 21st, 2020
The office hallway smells, pleasantly, like burnt toast. I don’t know why. We are standing out here, waiting for ten of us to come together so we can start the afternoon prayers. Between the lockdown and the holidays, we think that we might not make it, but most of the regular people appear. Today’s prayer leader starts as usual. Soon, people are calling out corrections. The boss puts his hand on the prayer leader’s shoulder and announces “Gentlemen, we are in the Days of Atonement. There will be some differences in the prayers.” We continue. I get lost a few times. For convenience, I use a very small, easily held prayer book. It shows the texts that we should substitute this week, but it doesn’t show clearly what we should omit when we say them. Today is also a minor fast day. I think we should be adding even more texts, but people appear to be skipping them. At least I think that’s what’s happening. Most of this is within the silent prayer, but people often mumble sections of them audibly, especially when they aren’t what we usually say. The boss steps forward to stand next to the prayer leader. He leads the “Avinu Malkeinu” himself. Most of it is spoken, but the last line is sung. I’m surprised to hear my own voice ringing out above the others. I know the text well, and it’s a familiar melody -- the one recorded by Phish and Mogwai, rather the one that Streisand has sung. The service runs slightly longer than usual, with another psalm and another recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish at the end. I go back to my desk, still humming the melody. I look forward to singing it again.
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020
The cashier at the supermarket insists on spraying alcohol gel on my hands after I check out. “You must always be clean. Your hands must always be clean. You should also clean that apple before you eat it. But not with alcohol gel.” The cafe on the other side of the building entrance should only be doing deliveries. It’s open for takeout. The tables on its patio are gone. The built-in benches remain. Customers relax on them, drinking coffee. Downtown is less deserted than I expect. The groceries and produce shops are open. The usual cluster of wheelchairs and caregivers is in its place near the street. Doors are open at a lawyer’s office and a butcher shop. I thought they had shut down. The lotto booth has a vague line of customers. It might be a protected business. The burger joint’s inside lights are on. Its patio is dark. The end of the square smells like fresh, warm hummus, but the shop is closed. Maybe they, too, were open for deliveries. Dogs and people walk by. Cats dart in and out of the bushes, keeping their distance. Much of the square looks as it might if I were walking through at midnight. No one is protesting the lockdown. The people that I see mostly look tired. Everyone is ready for all this to be done. But we’ll still be wandering, hidden behind masks, for several more months, maybe for years.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020
The boss calls us into his office, one or two at a time. I come in alone so he can speak to me in English. One of our programmers has tested positive for the virus. He had had a fever over the holiday and was tested immediately. He is in isolation. According to the Ministry of Health, any of us who had spent longer than fifteen minutes closer than two meters away from him in the past week or so also needs to go into isolation. None of us had. His cube is about four meters from mine. He’s quite friendly, but I only speak to him if we’re working together on a project or if we pass each other in the kitchen hallway. He’s a regular at the afternoon prayers. He often leads them. He’s the cantor of his congregation and has the best male voice in the office. But otherwise, he’s quiet and focuses on his work. Later, the boss comes around with a tape measure and a thermometer. He makes sure that we have a sense of how far two meters is. He points the thermometer at us and takes our temperatures. We’re all OK. Another programmer tries it on himself. He gets varied enough readings that he suggests that the thermometer might really be a random number generator. The boss leaves it on the receptionist’s desk, next to the pens and prayer books. We’re supposed to log our temperatures when we sign in. No one has used the more conventional thermometer that has been there. Maybe people will actually give this one a try.
Thursday, September 24th, 2020
The shopkeeper where I pick up my packages whistles and waves at me. It takes me a moment to notice, since I’m listening to a podcast on my headphones. I cross the street to him. “Why haven’t you picked up your package? It’s been waiting for two weeks.” I hadn’t been notified. “Yes, you have. You received the SMS. Package 1077.” We head to the back of the shop. He pulls it off the shelf and scans it. Nothing happens. He scans it again. He slumps into his chair and runs the scanner very slowly over the sticker. Nothing. That explains why I wasn’t notified. He types in the code. It takes him a few tries. Humans shouldn’t have to type arbitrary letters and numbers. Finally, he gets it right. “ID Code!” I recite the number then sign the screen with a finger. He shoves the package at me. I thank him. He grunts. Down the road, a man wearing tallit and tefillin sits, his legs straddling a low wall, as he says his morning prayers. When I get to work, the woman who fears elevators is standing in the lobby, waiting frantically for someone to help her. “Sir, are you taking the elevator up?” I am. “To what floor?” The fourth. “I am only going to the second.” That’s OK. We can stop there. “Thank you, sir!” The elevator arrives. Another woman is already on it. Normally, I would wait for the next one, since no more than two people should be on an elevator. The woman who is already there waves us aboard. She is going to the fifth floor. I press the buttons for the second and fourth. When we reach the second floor, I hold the door open for the fearful woman. She blesses us, singularly and together, in the masculine, feminine, and plural forms: “Be well. Be well. Be well.”
On writing as if in dreams
I didn't know I was starting a project when I wrote the first few posts. It quickly became one. When it did, I had to figure out what it was.
One thing that I noticed was that I was writing consistently in present tense. Around that time (I think), I heard a discussion on the Scriptnotes podcast of when we use present tense in writing. It's pretty rare. We use it in screenplays (the subject of the podcast), in recounting things that just happened to it ("so I say to him..."), and in recounting dreams.
I clued into thinking of these as dreams that happened in real life. Certainly many of those first experiences (a soldier with a gun playing the piano, a cluster of men in pink bunny suits getting on a bus) were odd enough to evoke dreams.
That led to some other choices. I decided to leave some aspects of what I was telling vague. I rarely use proper names. I refer to places as "the larger city" or "the older city", and to other people as "the boss" or "the woman who fears elevators." (I didn't expect her to recur, but I told about her again last night.) This leaves room for readers to form images in their own head, which might be more rarified and personal than a direct reference would give. I'm also very specific about details close in.
This corresponds to my experience of dreams. I often see very specific, often mundane details within larger situations that are unclear and mutable. In a dream a few nights ago, I shifted from flying a few inches about ground to being in a wheelchair, while holding a very specific book in my hand. Dreams often have that smooth discontinuity. And, while dreams in movies often have people remarking on how weird things are, I tend not to notice that anything odd has happened until I remember them later.
Hence the concept, and the title, of the project, as if in dreams. As well as being a reference to Psalm 126:1, it's a reference to how odd reality can be. As Agent Cooper has said, "We live inside a dream".
Things of Possible Interest
One thing I'm watching
I've watched this webcast of one of my favorite ensembles, Apartment House -- Live from Wigmore Hall several times this week. playing the music of one of my favorite composers, Julius Eastman. (That Wikipedia link is, as is often true, not great, but is a good set of references to better stuff).
The video shows performances of two of his works, Femenine (sic) and Joy Boy. I already have Apartment House's wonderful studio recording of Femenine, but this may be even better.
Eastman's scores often were odd sketches of notation and instructions. The score to Femenine, which runs 72 minutes, is only five pages long. The eight-minute Joy Boy takes up half a page. The ensembles have to figure out how to realize them.
I've heard and seen (online, not yet live, unfortunately) several performances of Femenine. In each, you can see the needed communication between the players. In the Apartment House version, the players are continually watching one another. Pianist Kerry Yong, playing the part that the composer played in the original ensemble (available on the Frozen Reeds label) has a phone with a digital stopwatch app so that he can track section changes, which he often signals by playing two prominent chords. Violinist Mira Benjamin moves between intense concentration and sheer enjoyment of what she's doing. Percussionist Simon Limbrick, who plays an unchanging repeating riff on vibraphone throughout the whole thing, wears an imperturbable half-smirk that evokes various members of Monty Python. Cellist and ensemble leader Anton Lukoszevieze sits stoically at the center (and I'm glad, through the announcer's repetitions to finally have a sense how to pronounce his name, something like "lu-ko-sheh-v'-cheh"). Throughout, unseen but heard when not drowned out by the others, is a set of mechanical sleighbells (or a sample of them) playing a steady pulse.
I only heard of Eastman a few years ago, when composer Mary Jane Leach took on the monumental task of unearthing and documenting his work. If I had heard of him earlier, when I was writing more for live ensembles, it would have had a strong influence on it. (In retrospect, I'm surprised that I wrote my "Ghost Dervish Beach" without knowing of him.) If I get back into live ensemble work, I'll definitely study his compositions more thoroughly.
The Apartment House video should be online for about a month. Catch it while you can.
One thing I'm hearing
I've started listening to a splendid podcast miniseries, "Alone Together", the start of this season of Israel Story. I think I'd heard one episode of Israel Story before, a hilarious piece on Tel Aviv's disaster of a bus station.
This is quite different. In six episodes, "Alone Together" walks us through the story of Israelis' experiences with the coronavirus epidemic. Individual people tell of what they've gone through. So far, I've heard from a rabbi posted in Cyprus who was desperate to have a bris for his newborn son; a couple whose carefully planned ornate wedding turned into an improvised surprise; a traveler stuck in Jaffa when she was supposed to be doing a pilgrimage in Spain; and a nurse telling of what she experienced, mostly through glass windows and videochats, within the COVID ward to which she had been transferred. And I'm only in Episode 2.
Definitely worth hearing -- though maybe not while driving. Your eyes may hazardously tear up.
One thing I'm reading
This article by Molly Conway is the best thing I've read on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her leagcy, and how Judaism views the afterlife. (Or doesn't. It's complicated.) Like many others, I've shared it on Facebook, where it was first posted, but it's worth saving the link to read again.
So when you hear us say “May her memory be for a blessing” don’t hear “It’s nice to remember her.” Hear “It’s up to us to carry on her legacy.” When you hear us say, “She was a tzaddeket” don’t hear, “She was a nice person.” Hear “She was a worker of justice.”
One more thing
The usual tech challenges continue. My trackball has started going awry on my home machine. It's a Bluetooth trackball communicating via a USB dongle. Sometimes it freezes or jumps around or its own. I can't quite tell if the problem is due to Bluetooth, USB, or something else. I thought of dropping into the downtown computer store when I was doing my Friday shopping this morning. Then I remembered that we're on lockdown. Non-essential stores are closed. And, as of 2 PM, the lockdown is getting even tighter. Unless, of course, the government changes its mind again in the next hour.
I'm also having trouble with my home internet connection, which seems to be based between my house and the street. No one claims the responsibility for fixing it. I'm developing methods to prepare for problems. Right now, I'm writing this in a text editor (which minimizes needing a mouse) in my Google Drive (so, if needed, I can continue on my phone or another device).
I really wish I didn't have to be technologically savvy to just get work done. In a perfect world, I would never have to configure anything, ever again.
Colophon
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