[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt - 02 November 2023
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. Here we go...
The funeral for our city's fallen soldier draws a large crowd to the cemetery next to my office. Thousands of people, waving flags, line the streets along the route of the processions.
Word spreads quickly via social media. I find out about it from a WhatsApp group that was organized for the protests. Those stopped abruptly at the start of the war. The channels still carry communications for communities aiding the war effort, for funerals, and for new demonstrations to release the hostages.
The crowds gather as I'm on my way to work, along a path parallel to mine. I'm tempted to walk a few blocks over from my usual route to see it all myself. I don't. I don't want to walk through that crowd of so many mourners. I don't want to deal with the emotional impact. And I have a Zoom meeting with my company's European partners scheduled for right when the funeral starts.
Later, I get images from the local news sites. My family sends me links. Images show crowds and flags arrayed along our main commercial street, stretching out toward the horizon. The mayor stands, dressed casually like most of the rest, outside "The House of Cheese." Video from someone's phone shows the cortège.
(The Hebrew word for "funeral," levayah, literally means "accompaniment," as mourners are accompanying the person to the grave. The headline in the local news site, thus says, "Thousands accompany the funeral procession," using forms of levayah twice.)
At lunchtime, I collect my usual harvest from the supermarket downstairs. My favorite cashier is helping customers with the supposed self-service stations. She waves to me when she sees me. I tower over the heads of the other customers in line.
She isn't happy. After three minutes, she is ready for her break. She tells the customer before me, "If you want to get so angry that you have your period early, keep using these machines."
She is delighted to see that I can use the stations without complaining to her. I recently figured out their most confusing behavior. To get produce, we have to select the type of produce from an illustrated menu and weigh the item. The obvious way to do this is to put the item on the scale, then select the type. That doesn't work. We have to select the type, then put it on the scale. If it's already on the scale, we have to pick it up then put it down again. Utterly counterintuitive, and the source of most customer complaints.
I get tripped up today, though just for an instant, by another design failure. After weighing a persimmon, I put it in my shopping bag. The machine doesn't like that. It demands that I put the fruit on the motionless conveyor belt with the other items that I'm buying before it will proceed to the next.
At the end of the afternoon prayers, the insurance agent recites the prayer for the soldiers again. This time, however, he doesn't drop his pitch and pause at the end of lines. No one says "Amen," except at the end of the whole prayer. I don't know why there was a difference. It doesn't seem to throw anybody else.
After work, I get a text message from McDonald's. A link leads to a set of cheerful graphics for stickers. Each image is in their signature yellow, white, and red. Each incorporates the golden arches. Each has a message: "We're in the shelter." "Hoping for better days." "Guard yourself." "In the end, there will be good news."
One sticker throws me. "I have joined --" and then a word that I don't know. It looks like t-r-n-d. I stare at it for a while, then notice that the arches are wearing a mustache. There's been a running gag among soldiers and others to grow mustaches. I listened to a podcast explaining it a few days ago, but I don't recall the reason. So the word that I don't know is brought in from English: trend .In wearing a mustache, "I have joined the trend."
Looking elsewhere on the page, I see that the stickers are for WhatsApp. I try to install them but find that, as Tom Lehrer said of the New Math (whatever that was), "it's so simple that only a child can do it."
The stickers might look incongruous, as well as like a capitalist intrusion, on the funeral plans. But on some other messages on the same channels, they might actually work. That could be good. We deserve a break today.
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
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.)
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L'hitraot.