[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #023
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19 February, 2021
This is issue 23 of the newsletter.
A lot of stuff got done this week, mostly invisibly. I’m moving forward on the film project, working on the music and toward putting together a website and a crowdfunding campaign. More as it happens.
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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 (bolder than a Balrog?)!
This Week’s Posts
Friday, February 12th, 2021
I’m at the only empty table on the city square. I can smell why it’s empty. I’m downwind from the Friday backgammon players. One of them is smoking a cigar. I like it. It reminds me of the pipe tobacco that I smoked forty-odd years ago. In college, during blizzards, we would all hang out in a dorm room, smoking pipes and listening to Bruckner. We would drink lots of tea – Earl Grey, I believe, long before Captain Picard made it trendy. Once, when we ran out of mugs, I tried to make the tea in a glass beer mug. It exploded. The hot water fell in my lap. Those who were there said that that was the fastest anyone had seen me move. I’ve gotten lunch today from my favorite hummus joint. Their normal window is open, but all orders are still to go. I get the usual hummus with tahini and two large pitas. I’ve gotten reasonably adept at scooping up the hummus with a shred of the pita. When I’m done, I go into the sandwich shop to get a large coffee. The bottle of ouzo is on the counter, behind the plastic barrier. Three clear shot glasses form a perfect line from the bottle to the credit card scanner. When I return to the table, the players are gone. The backgammon set is still on their table, closed and unguarded. After several minutes, one of them returns and sits next to it, drinking another beer. The music from the cafe shifts to something quiet. I can hear the sounds of the square through it: birds, traffic, children shrieking and laughing, and, far in the distance, the street corner violin. I finish reading an article on my phone, then pick up my bag of groceries, put on a podcast, and wander home.
Saturday, February 13th, 2021
Fringed, colored banners on wires zigzag above the city square. The cadence repeats: white, blue, yellow, red, orange; white, blue, yellow, red, orange. At first glance, some stretches look like they run in reverse. After a moment, I realize that I’m seeing the sequence from the other side. They cross the road and run along the main street at least as far as the Great Synagogue. I can’t see any further from here. The Sabbath cafe is closed, even for takeout. Last week, when the lockdown was tighter, it was open. I have to go to a different shop to get coffee. When the worker hands it to me without a lid, I try to ask for one, but can’t remember the word. I try a gesture, covering the cup with my hand. He thinks, for some reason, that I want a receipt. He prints one out. I try again, using the English word “lid.” “Oh,” he mumbles, followed by a Hebrew word I can’t quite hear. “We don’t have –” he mumbles what I think is the same word. I take my coffee and carry it carefully to the city square. I step around dogs and obstacles, and trace the path of banners: orange, red, yellow, blue, white; orange, red, yellow, blue, white.
Sunday, February 14th, 2021
I face a challenge this morning, getting up the stairs. As I come outside, I see a watering hose stretching from the outdoor faucet across to a point out of sight. I climb almost to the top. I have enough clearance. I raise my right foot above the hose. My left foot slips off the wet step it’s on. That’s OK. I’ve figured that that might happen, and planned for how the foot would land on the step below without injury. I’m holding tight onto the banister. My left foot hits the step below. My knee flexes. I shift my weight onto my hands. My right leg is now pointing straight out, still above the hose. Once I’m balanced on my left foot again, I move my balance to my hands. I hop right and forward onto the step above, where I had slipped. I land securely. I tilt and bend my right knee until my foot touches the ground on the far side of the hose. I move my hands and my center of gravity toward that leg, then swing my left leg over the hose. My foot hits the ground as it should. I stand. My landlord comes running over, apologizing profusely. He hadn’t thought I was still at home. It’s OK. I’m OK. He shifts the hose so it doesn’t form such an obstacle. I hope he remembers to do so next time.
Monday, February 15th, 2021
The barber emerges from the back of his shop. His arms are full of towels. I ask him how things have been, now that the lockdown has eased. “Last week was crazy. I booked everybody. I was too busy. This week, I’m easier on myself. I even let myself wash the towels in the middle of the day.” He stuffs the towels into his washing machine and turns the knob. He gestures at the hair-washing chair. “Please.” I sit down in it and take off my glasses. “I haven’t been working much for the past year. Toward the end, I told the partner of my life that I love her and the kids, but I just want to get out of the house and go to work. I never said that before.” He massages the lather into my scalp. I’m quite aware that, apart from unintended collisions in hallways, these haircuts are the only touch that I’ve experienced from another person in close to a year. He wraps a towel around my head and guides me to the barber chair. “You want something not too long, not too short, that you won’t have to care for too much.” He knows. The speakers overhead play 70s funk, heavy on the horns. He hums along and dances as he cuts. “Are you still using that DJI device when you film? I have to get one sometime.” I haven’t been filming much. But I should be doing a lot more this year. When he’s done, I hand him my customer card and the money. He hands the money back. “Look at the card. Everything is punched. This one is free.” He tears the card up and trashes it. “Say hello to your family for me. I will see you again.”
Tuesday, February 16th, 2021
A truck is blocking the sidewalk on the way to work. I have to cross to the other side. Looking back, I see another truck behind it. Something like a ladder leads from one truck up to the balcony of an apartment, five or six stories above us. Plastic bins that look like trash cans slide down it. A giant claw, rising from the other truck, picks up larger items from the balcony and carries them down to the ground, like a cat carrying kittens by the scruff of the neck. They’re gutting the apartment, tearing out everything, including the kitchen sink. Across the street, someone has finally swept up the mirror that shattered there last week. A block further on, four women sit on benches in a schoolyard. The school should be opening again next week. They may be teachers preparing for the onslaught of kids, or may just be neighbors, gathering there while it’s quiet. We’ve been told to expect rain, but I haven’t seen it yet. It waits until I’m in the supermarket, getting my afternoon snack. The downpour starts and stops abruptly. What I hear as continuing rain as I prepare to run back around to work turns out ro be the sound of cars’ tires rolling through fresh puddles. I walk back inside. I have my hoodie upstairs. As long as it doesn’t rain too hard on the way home, I’m ready.
Wednesday, February 17th, 2021
I finally get the courage to ask the boss where I can buy a belt around here. What I’ve seen in stores so far don’t fit me. He’s round, too. He would know. “You should just do what I do. Pick them up when you’re in Thailand.” He isn’t entirely kidding. He tells me a long story about how he got the belt that he is now wearing, and how he found out later that it was made of elephant hide. “But more quickly, there’s a shop on the main street where I get these things. It’s one very old man.” He gives me the name and address of the store. I had known that there was a place like that on that street, but had forgotten exactly where it was or what its sign would say. “I will be near there later today. I have to stop at a place next door. I have to get lices.” I look confused. “For my shoes.” He raises his foot and points. Oh. Laces. “It is hard to find those here.” I know. “There is another place that you can get a belt made for you, next to the Grand Synagogue, down a corridor to the left. They make them there. But it will cost twice as much and take twice as long, and may not be better.” After work, I think of going to the shop he suggested. When I get off the bus and start to head toward it, the rain starts up again. I go home. My current belt should last at least until Friday.
Thursday, February 18th, 2021
Our youngest programmer, the only woman on the team, is leaving the company today. I understand that it was a mutual parting of the ways. I think she’s headed to another job, though I’m not sure. She has brought in an immense amount of munchies to celebrate. I’ve never seen a departing worker do that before. They are arrayed on the counter of the office kitchen: chocolate bars, hamantaschen, crembo, cookies and cakes, plates of cashews and dried cranberries, and other items that I can’t name. I eat too much of them. I intentionally don’t keep any of that stuff, other than the nuts and dried fruit, in my house. That’s why. The boss gathers us in the corridor between the cubes and gives a grand speech, praising her and wishing her well. I get more things than usual done today. In the morning, I rewrite a blurb to be sent to our partners about new ways of working together. The boss and my direct boss have written it, so it has some peculiar wording. English seems to use singulars and plurals differently than some other languages. I have to figure out what they meant and sort it out. In the afternoon, I incorporate fixes from a technical review into a manual I have almost finished. I enjoy working with the programmer who made them. All his comments are precise, understandable, and keyed to the exact line in the document that needs to be fixed. The fixes are punctuated by trips to the kitchen for more coffee and sweets. It’s a good thing that we tend to retain our workers, and don’t have these celebrations often.
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line!)
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