[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #016
PDF (More printable) Edition
(That is, either this is the PDF edition or that is a link to it.)
1 January, 2021
This is issue number sixteen of the newsletter.
It's just the posts, this time. I've been busy with personal projects and end-of-year job stuff, so haven't caught much in other media to write about. Back to normal next week, I hope.
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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 (zagging the zog?)!
Contents
This Week's Posts
Friday, December 25th, 2020
The queuing machine spits out a piece of paper. I’m number 163 in line for the pharmacy. They’re now helping customer 128. This will be a while. I think of coming back another time. It’s always busy on Fridays. I’m on a mission, though, picking up prescriptions for my family who live at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. I’d visited them earlier, sitting on a bench in the park outside it. They handed me a Ziploc bag with their prescription printed out and health plan membership card. They didn’t have to pay anything for them today. As I understand it. many medicines are “in the basket,” covered by the plans. For some others, once you hit the payment limit for them, refills for the rest of the year are free. The numbers in the pharmacy line go by relatively quickly. Many people still give up and leave. The numbers count through from 132 to 140 without anyone coming to the counter. Some of the people who leave without being served place their numbers in a neat pile on top of a display of masks near the queuing machine. People riffle through the pile. If they find a number that’s sufficiently far ahead, they take it and leave their own. I’m ready when called. I tell the pharmacist that I have two separate orders. He fills my family’s first, then my own. I bag them up separately and head out. I still have to run the rest of my Friday errands before the stores close for the Sabbath.
Saturday, December 26th, 2020
An alert tells me that the dance center is livestreaming. I open a window to watch. So do a couple of dozen other people. The screen shows an unmoving image of one of the walkways. The image is vertical. It’s probably coming from someone’s phone. Eventually the image moves. The person with the camera wanders through the walkway, turns around, and sets it down. We watch the walkway from the other side. Someone else goes through and past the camera. People in the chat stream ask what is going on. The website says that nothing is scheduled. The camera goes back through the walkway and across the plaza. Several large equipment cases sit evenly spaced across the plaza in a straight line. Phones set up on two of them also show live images. People sit on the low stone walls. Some talk. Some drink coffee. A dog runs through. People offscreen discuss something in French. I don’t speak enough French to understand. After almost an hour, someone picks up the camera and shuts the stream down. A new lockdown starts tomorrow. That is as close as I’ll get to spending quiet time outside the dance center. It’s been a pleasant hour. Later, someone official tells the chatstream that it was part of a worldwide demonstration by shut-down cultural centers. Oh. I go back to the page and pop it open to full screen. While I do other things, I let it play again.
Sunday, December 27th, 2020
We’re celebrating one of the bosses’ birthdays. They’ve both come to work early but they head out again to get their vaccinations. We have to wait a longer time for appointments. I’ll be getting mine a week from Wednesday. The bosses have a way of getting things to happen on demand. I don’t yet know the magic phrases that the locals yell at each other. They seem to work. Lunch arrives soon after the bosses get back. To celebrate the birthday, they’ve ordered in sushi and a kind of Chinese noodles with vegetables. Both are delicious. That we’re having Chinese food on the first working day after Christmas is completely coincidental. As with other celebrations this year, we don’t crowd into the conference room to eat. A worker puts the meals together and hands them to us as we stand in the hall. After lunch and the afternoon prayers, they unveil a cake. We stand outside the conference room, almost appropriately distanced. Blowing out candles on cakes is no longer allowed. Someone hands the boss two leftover Chanukah candles and lights them. She turns away from us, blows them out, turns back, and bows. We all sing “Today is your birthday! Today is your birthday!” She hollers “No! No! It was yesterday!” We switch to “Yesterday was your birthday!” without skipping a beat. The cake is wonderful, with a layer of caramel and what tastes like cannoli filling. People chatter in the hallway in Hebrew. Someone asks me how much I understand. Ten percent? Fifteen? In this conversation, I understand about forty percent. Another worker says that when he was my age, he understood Hebrew perfectly. Right. He’s two years younger than I am. And he’s been here for over thirty years. People sing that the boss should live to one hundred and twenty. If I live that long, I may catch on.
Monday, December 28th, 2020
I stand, puzzled, in the space in the supermarket downstairs where people queue for the cashiers. Most of the lanes appear busy. Customers have left several carts there. Two have children in them. I head over toward the line for people with ten items or fewer. My arms are full of groceries, but I think I still qualify. When I pass the lane before it, the cashier slaps her hand on the counter and points to me. She doesn’t have a customer at the moment. I step around a cart and a child and drop my items on the conveyor belt. She rings me up quickly. I hand her my debit card. “Joseph,” she says. What? “Oh,” she says in English. “I thought that I remembered your name. I saw your card when you were here before. I see your card now. I was right.” They’ve changed the card reading mechanism to an electronic sensor. The customer usually holds the card up to it. She already has my card. She does it. She types something on a screen that I can’t see. An error appears on the sensor. “I shall try again.” It fails again. I reach for my other card. “No, we do not need that. This card will work.” She tries it a third time. Right when it beeps for the scan, she types a code. “We have success! Sometimes we have to type very fast.” I put my groceries in my bag. When the receipt prints out, she hands it and the card to me. “There you are. Have a nice --” She looks out the window. “Evening. Have a nice evening, Joseph.” I think I will.
Tuesday, December 29th, 2020
Early in the morning, toward the front of the city square, older people sit and read their newspapers. Many of the papers are in Hebrew. Many appear to be in Russian. A man hawking free newspapers tries to hand me one. I decline. Despite the lockdown, most shops are open. The clothing stores are closed. My favorite hummus joint is taking the opportunity to do renovations. Their menu had covered its front wall below the counter. It’s gone. The wall now has attractive wood-like paneling. The shop with the odd sandwiches and good sahlab is open. I get a coffee and a cheese burekas. I had a routine blood test at my health plan’s clinic this morning. I fasted overnight. I’m famished. I take my breakfast to a chess table and eat it there. When I’m done, I head to work. On the street my office is on, I pass a kindergarten. Over a fence just shorter than my eye level, I see a woman standing alone. She wears a grey cable-knit sweater and a black skirt. She shivers as if cold. Her cigarette has burned down close to the filter. She is staring into her phone. She may be crying. The loudspeaker over her head plays a neverending version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
Wednesday, December 30th, 2020
The sandwich shop is already closed by the time I get to the city square. On the plaza next to the Great Synagogue, one door of the ice cream shop is open. People are standing outside. As I approach, I see that two of them are handing money to the third. He ducks inside and brings out cones for them. He sees me standing there. “Can I help you?” Can I have a sahlab? “Large or small?” Large. We had been speaking Hebrew. He switches to English. “Yes. One moment. You must stand outside the door or police come.” He goes inside and mixes it up while I dig out coins to pay him. He comes out and hands me the sahlab, with all the toppings on it. I hand him exact change and head over to a bench to eat. My family is doing an international text chat. I have to keep putting the cup down to tap my screen. Behind me, an ambulance is set up as a bloodmobile. Its lights spin silently. Reflections of the red beacons swoop across my phone. When I’m done, I throw out my cup and head home. I have walked this path hundreds of times. I miss a turn somewhere. I get lost. I know roughly where I am, but not where the streets go. I follow the one I’m on. I figure that I’m headed northeast. I’m headed south. The road ends on the street with the ice cream shop, about a block away. I know where I am now. I head home again. This time, I get it right.
Thursday, December 31st, 2020
My direct boss asks me what I’m looking for in the kitchen cabinets. I’m looking for a coffee mug. I need coffee. “I thought perhaps you were looking for happiness.” That too, but happiness is best appreciated when awake. When I get to my desk, I see that part of our computer system has stopped working. I need to use it to do screenshots for the manual I’m finishing today. The boss isn’t in the office. Many of us are standing around. I overhear some coworkers, speaking in Spanish, mentioning the chant “The people united will never be defeated.” I don’t know what they’re saying about it. I know the song. It gets stuck in my head for hours. When I go downstairs to the supermarket, I see a woman slip some envelopes into a tall red box. I couldn’t identify it before. So that’s what mailboxes look like here. Knowing that, the sign about pickup times on it makes sense. I had thought the box held some kind of meter. The only times that I've mail letters here, other people have handled it for me. When I get back upstairs, the computer is working again. No one is sure what had happened. I finish my manual on time. Many workers leave for the weekend a bit early. As I head out, I think of wishing our Spanish and Russian speakers a “Feliz Novy God,” but no one left in the office would get it.
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line.)
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