[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #014
PDF (More printable) Edition
(That is, either this is the PDF edition or that is a link to it.)
18 December, 2020
This is issue number fourteen of the newsletter.
It’s just the posts this time. I’m reconsidering what to do about or with the reviews.
As always, please pass on the newsletter to anyone that might enjoy it. If someone passed this on to you and you like it, please subscribe! (And there’s a link to unsubcribe, if needed, at the end of the emails.)
I’d love to hear any comments you might have on the newsletter and how it might be better. You can find me via email, Twitter, and Facebook.
Onward ( since Yes is clearly prog?)!
Contents
This Week’s Posts
Friday, December 11th, 2020
Six men huddle around a backgammon board on a stone table in the city square. What hair each still has is white. Those who are watching wear masks. The two who are playing are smoking cigars. I can’t see the board clearly. It wouldn’t matter if I could. I can never remember how the game works. A block away, several men stand on the steps of the Great Synagogue. They are worshiping individually, holding prayer books from a table at the top of the stairs. The doors to the synagogue are closed, but they are still facing in the proper direction. To their right, someone is moving slowly. either putting up or taking down posters from a board on the wall. The pharmacy on the far side of the bus station has the prescriptions that they couldn’t fill when I was there last. No one else is in line when I go to the window. As I approach, a woman barges up and asks if they have a particular item. She is desperate. No shop seems to have it, and she needs it before the Sabbath. I step aside. This shop doesn’t have it either. The pharmacist rings me up quickly then starts to help the woman find it elsewhere. On my way out, I see that they have standard surgical masks in a stylish black. I’m out of the purple ones and tired of the blue. The cashier tells me that they just came in, and that they look good. I get a pack of them. I head back up the far side of the street. A shop that I hadn’t seen before sells tempting devices for making coffee. I go in and look around but don’t get anything. Further up, I get clementines, persimmons, baking pans, challah, a single donut, and a sabich and soda for lunch. I sit down with them on a bench back in the city square. The same men are playing the same game at the table. I watch them and the cats, and listen to the birds and traffic, as I eat.
Saturday, December 12th, 2020
The ice cream joint is just opening as I walk by. It’s dark already. The Sabbath is over. It’s too chilly to eat ice cream outdoors, so I ask for a sahlab again. “OK, but it will be a few minutes. You can come back, or sit over here.” I sit down. The worker continues setting out the sherbets and gelatos in their bins. The case on the left has two rows of nine bins. The case on the right has two rows of twelve, though the two bins on the far end of each row are divided in half. Those and the four bins nearest them hold frozen fruit. The rest of the bins on that side hold gelatos. Several customers come in while I’m waiting. From the conversations, I can tell that they’re regulars. Each is getting kilos of gelato to go. Most of the kilos contain multiple flavors. He puts them in side by side, like neapolitan ice cream. He finally gets around to me when they’re gone. It’s OK. I’m not in a hurry. He takes a liter of milk from the refrigerator and pours some into a metal cup. He steams that from the cappuccino maker, then pours the milk from the metal cup into a paper one. He spoons in a large amount of one white powder, possibly a starch, and a smaller amount of another. He steams the mix again in the paper cup and hands it to me. “Coconut, peanuts, and cinnamon are over there. You know what to do.” I take a plastic spoon from a dispenser, go over to the small table, and put the toppings on. I go to a bench outside to eat it. More people pass by. Cars honk at each other. Across the street, another eatery opens, with food to go. The workers wait for customers to come in.
Sunday, December 13th, 2020
The bosses tag me to light the candles at the office tonight. They ask me if I want to practice the blessings. No one is ever quite sure how much I know of Jewish practice and rituals. It’s more than many Americans but less, I think, than even many secular people here. I’m OK with these prayers. I start in a lower key than I did last year. I couldn’t hit the high notes then, and my voice cracked. This time it’s right in range. I have a bit of trouble lighting the first candle. Eventually I get it. At the end of each blessing, the rest of the staff do a choral “A-a-men.” They sound great. I blank on the melody of one of the obligatory songs, but others start in with it and I follow. The other one, I could sing in my sleep. We don’t do the hymn that I arranged for my mother’s orchestra a few years back, but that’s OK. The bosses hand out cookies afterward. We get back to work. When I get home, I set up the candles for lighting, but realize that I’ve already done it for today. I put one more candle in the menorah. It’s all set for tomorrow.
Monday, December 14th, 2020
I almost miss tonight’s candle lighting at the office. As I head to the restroom, the boss is just starting to set the menorah up. I figure that I have plenty of time. When I get back, the lighting is already in progress. One of the programmers, another immigrant, is slowly working his way through the first of the blessings. He still has trouble reading Hebrew text, although he speaks it pretty fluently. Another programmer, with whom he works closely, guides him when he gets stuck. A few minutes later, the boss spaces out on a word in another paragraph that he always recites. We remind him, in unison. The harmonies are better than ever on the hymn that everybody knows. Afterward, the bosses’ son distributes donuts. I see that there’s a trick to having the powdered sugar stay on them: it actually comes in separate packets, and is sprinkled on the donuts just before we eat them. I take mine back to my desk. I have spent the day figuring out a bug in a process that we use to put screen images in manuals. I write a couple of pages of code to test possibilities. As I work things out, the code gets shorter. The solution fits on a single line. I show it to my boss. He has to head out. We’ll implement it tomorrow. I leave a little later. The candles have completely burned down. The donut box is still on the receptionist’s desk. I look inside. It’s empty. Freed from temptation, I put my mask on, clock out, and leave.
Tuesday, December 15th, 2020
Two strange sculptures appear in the city square. At least I think they’re sculptures. Smooth white tubes rise a meter or so from the pavement, then split into four limbs each, ending in points. It’s as if a pair of artificial squid have crash-landed head first amidst the benches, or a pair of giant albino jesters have lost their hats. Coming back through the square after work, I intend to look more closely at them, but they’re gone. There is no sign that they had ever been there. I wonder briefly if they had actually been part of my vivid dreams last night, crawling into my sleeping mind along with triangular slugs and the trains that I rode, both inside and on their roofs. Nothing seems out of place in the square. The caregivers and elders aren’t around. They tend not to show up on evenings when there might be rain. A family stands and sits where they usually are, taking each other’s pictures with their phones. The box from a selfie stand rests next to them, with a pole that holds a ring light and arms for phones and tablets. I got one myself a few months ago. I haven’t yet used it. I thought it would come in handy for part of my film project. That image has fallen away. I think of getting some pizza or a falafel but decide against it. I have what to eat at home, and I don’t want to risk the rain. I’ll put some dinner together there, light the candles, get some writing done, and finally watch a movie that has been sitting on my drive. If it rains and the power doesn’t go out, I’ll listen to it and read.
Wednesday, December 16th, 2020
I head to work later than usual today. I eat breakfast while I’m on the phone doing tech support for my family. I can hear it raining, almost as hard as it did a few weeks ago when a full year’s worth fell in a single day. The news online tells me that somewhere in my city, people have had to be rescued from a flood. This all adds up to a perfect storm of excuses for procrastinating. When I finally get outside, it’s not as bad as I’d feared. There’s heavy rain, as i expected, but I have my good hooded rain jacket and a baseball cap. The top half of me, at least, remains dry. I have to dodge a minefield of snails on the pedestrian street. The sidewalks are littered with fallen citrus. I kick them out of my way. I have to take two detours, on streets that are flooded where I usually cross them. By the time I get to the office, my shoes and jeans are soaked. I take off my shoes and put them under my desk, next to the blue balloon that drifted into my cube several weeks ago. I don’t take off my jeans. There’s probably a company policy against that. The rain continues all day. It lets up somewhat during the afternoon prayers. One of the guests opens a window onto the atrium. It helps to keep the hallway from getting too stuffy. The prayers are a little longer than usual. Today is both Chanukah and the night of the new moon. Just after sunset, we light the candles again. The bosses, once again, hand out cookies. I finish my work and head home a while later. It’s still raining. I don’t mind, but I’m glad to get home and finally change out of my jeans.
Thursday, December 17th, 2020
As I head to bed, I see an odd shape in the middle of the kitchen floor. I look at it more closely. It’s a long slug, about five inches from antennae to tail, making a sharp left turn, heading back to the door. It’s moving relatively quickly. I don’t think I’d seen it there when I was in the kitchen a few minutes before. Before I turn out the light, I note where it is and where it’s going. I make sure that I avoid that area when I go from my bed to the bathroom during the night. I don’t want to step on it. In the morning, it’s gone. Good. When I head out to work it isn’t raining, but it starts when I’m halfway there. For lunch, the bosses order hummus plates. It’s another programmer’s birthday. On the bed of hummus, each has tahini, chickpeas, a sliced egg, paprika, and other substances that I don’t recognize. The pita is darker and denser than usual. It all is still warm when we get it. When I go into the kitchen later to get more coffee, add-ons for the hummus are still out on the counter: raw onion, garlic, olives, what looks like jalapenos, and what I think is chili paste. My boss points it out. He says it’s dessert. I think he’s kidding. After dark, we light the final night’s candles. The worker who does it isn’t sure of the melodies. We all sing them in unison, followed by the hymns with the now-familiar harmonies. The bosses hand out cookies again. People take pictures. After work, in the city square, I think of getting one last donut. The bakeries don’t have them anymore. I’m surprised. I get some pizza and a soda and eat it at a chess table. A man with a shaggy beard and a worn motorcycle jacket comes over. He wishes me a bon appetit, sits down with his back to me, and chats with his friends at the table next to ours. It starts to rain again as I finish eating. I’m under an canopy, so I have time to put everything together before I head out. I carefully step around more snails and slugs on the pedestrian street as I hurry home.
On writing as if in dreams
Chanukah provided a through-line for this week’s posts. I knew that, if nothing else, I would have something to write about in the company’s candle lighting. The same actions and songs were done every night, but repetiton brings out the small differences that always happen.
The rain helped. And the donuts. Even when less inspired, there was always something to notice.
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me there, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
You can find me via email, Twitter, and Facebook.
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
See you next week!