[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #025
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05 March, 2021
This is issue number 25 of the newsletter.
I’ve been focused on the film project, again: working on the website, setting up the crowdfunding campaign, and making further connections. It’s a lot of work.
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Onward (going analog?)!
This Week’s Posts
Friday, February 26th, 2021
The angel looks down on the crowd in the city square. Three meters tall on stilts, she could look eye-to-eye at the pirate or either of the clowns, but they are focused on their balance and their juggling. A gold hula hoop escapes the grip of one of the acrobats and hits the angel on the leg. It doesn’t change her stance. The acrobat catches it again on the rebound. The musicians at the inner edge of the circle surround them. Two drummers, one with one drum, one with two, maintain a complex rhythm. An alto sax, sousaphone, and two trumpets play repeating riffs, occasionally breaking into contrasting bebop-like phrases. One acrobat leads the crowd in clapping on the beat. She moves among us, yelling at us to clap, then returns to the inner circle, hops up on a bench and tries to conduct an end to the performance. The drummers aren’t watching her. It takes them some time to notice. The crowd applauds. The performers shout their thanks. The music starts up again. Led by the angel, they cross the street, still playing and juggling. We follow. They make a right turn. I’m headed straight. I wait for them to pass. The last drummer curves around me and follows the rest down the street. I walk away. There’s still time to finish the rest of my Friday shopping.
Saturday, February 27th, 2021
Fresh flowers are blooming in the park on the way to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. The city redoes the display occasionally. The plot was barren last I looked, but it isn’t now. I don’t know what kind of flowers they are. They’re all the same, but in different colors. People and dogs sit or roam around the park. A religious family comes in when I do. The father is wearing black and white. The mother wears more colors, all muted. Neither wears a mask. Three small children run circles around them. The father pulls an even smaller boy in a contraption somewhere between a classic little red wagon and a portable crib. One girl abruptly runs backward into my path. I stop. We don’t collide. An older boy darts out of the bushes, chasing a soccer ball. He catches up with it, kicks it, and chases it back to where he emerged. I guess that only the bushes, or perhaps a broken fence, separate the park from the yard of the house just west of it. Up a few steps, a circle surrounded by benches is strewn with dirt and drying leaves. No one has swept there in a while. Up more steps, I see more pods in the giraffe trees. It isn’t time yet for them to fall. I check the trash area at the exit for anything worth salvaging. Nothing catches my eye. I continue on.
Sunday, February 28th, 2021
The storefront for the transit pass is crowded. Two people are sitting near the door. A worker is helping a third at the desk. I’m not sure if there’s room for a fourth person under the virus restrictions. There’s no sign. I go in. My monthly pass is about to expire. I’m supposed to be able to recharge it with my phone, but the sensor in the phone doesn’t work. I hope to recharge the pass at a kiosk inside. It looks like the customer at the desk, with her back to me, is getting a pass for the first time. The worker is being careful taking her picture. She holds the webcam at a precise angle and gets an image. The customer goes behind the worker’s desk and looks at the picture. She doesn’t like it. One of the women waiting gets up and joins her. She’s her mother. She doesn’t like it either. The worker has an idea. “Pick up your chair and sit here, against the wall. The light is better, and your hair will look good against the beige.” She does. I can now see her face. She is strikingly beautiful, with perfect hair and precisely artful makeup. I understand why she’s particular about the photo. The other woman sitting by the door calls out suggestions. I ask if I can just go ahead and use the machine. I can’t. Its network connection is down. The worker types in some data, puts a card into a machine, and turns to me. “That will take a minute. Do you have your pass and a credit card?” I have them ready. I tell her that I want the same monthly pass that I’ve been getting. She puts my pass on a sensor, and types a lot of information into the credit card machine. She slaps my card down next to it. “And now we pray.” After a moment, something makes a disappointing sound: bee-doop. “I’m sorry. The credit card network is broken. We can try cash, or you can come back tomorrow.” I have to be near there in the morning anyway. I’ll try again then.
Monday, March 1st, 2021
A line of white-haired men waits outside the transit pass storefront in the early morning. It’s the first of the month, and time for them to get new monthly passes. I’m on my way to work. I decide to come back yet again in the evening. The owner of the sandwich shop on the city square sits in a tent across from it, along with about eight other people. Nothing is going on. They’re just sitting. Outside the bakery, a man with an amplified tenor recorder plays “My Way” with a karaoke backing. The manager of the burger joint rolls a shopping cart filled with gallon jars of pickle slices toward his shop. After work, on the bus back to the Heart of the City, I find that my transit pass is completely empty. The driver waves me on anyway. I stop at the ATM when I get off the bus. If the network at the shop is still down, I’ll be ready. When I get back to the storefront, no one is waiting. I pay cash. I also put another fifty shekels on the card. If I don’t renew the monthly pass in time in the future, I can still pay for rides. For another five shekels, I buy a doohickey that can read the card and recharge it from my computer. The worker asks me something. I don’t understand. She tries again, more simply. “Do you know how to connect this? It’s USB.” I think I can handle that. I now have all the transit bases covered, just in case.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021
The new programmer starts talking to me in Russian. I don’t know what he’s saying. He can tell. He quickly switches to Hebrew. I still don’t understand him. He pauses. “English?” I nod. His English is quite good. We talk for a couple of minutes. He asks if I’m from England. Nope, the US. “Really? I have never met an American who speaks as clearly as you do.” I tell him that I used to be on the radio. Across the aisle from me, a long-time programmer digs into system code. He repeatedly shakes his head, tsks, and repeats the name of the programmer who died last year, who had worked at that same desk. He was a good person, but left a trail of bugs in his wake. Another programmer, who retired at about the same time, has come back to work for a few days. He and the boss are hollering at each other behind closed doors. They work well together and are quite close, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to them. The sales person whose father passed away last week has returned. He sometimes would participate in the afternoon prayers. I figure that he will join us to say the Mourner’s Kaddish. He doesn’t. He can join if he wants. There’s no pressure to do so. Toward the end of the day, we get a new rule about ordering lunches. Some of us have waited each morning for the group text nudging us to order, since sometimes the bosses would order something different for us. Now we’re told to order every day that we want to. If the bosses want to override that, they can. But if they don’t, orders must be in by a certain time, with or without the prompt. They send out a Google Invite for every workday starting now, so our calendars will automatically remind us. That will work, too.
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021
The boss stands in the aisle and makes a grand announcement. I don’t understand it. He repeats it for me in English. “In the kitchen we now have ten empty Nescafe jars on the counter. They should go away. They could be good for making – what do people make with cucumbers?” Pickles? “Yes, they could be good for making pickles.” Purim has passed. Passover is coming quickly. The bosses have sent out an email that they’ll be ordering supplies for the office and the kitchen. If we want anything, we should let them know. In the afternoon, I get an email from my family. We’re doing the Passover seder together with a relative out of town. We’ll be there for two days. I’m in charge of getting disposable dishes, to make that part of the setup easier. They send me a comprehensive text message with what to get: tablecloths, dinner plates, forks, knives, serving platters, all disposable. It’s daunting. I know that I can get most of it at the Heart of the City, where there’s a full aisle of that stuff. But I’ll have to see if I do better. It’s in about three weeks. Time to get working on it.
Thursday, March 4th, 2021
I get all the way to my office building before I realize that I’ve forgotten my mask. I usually remember to wear one. When I forget, I’m reminded by seeing someone else with one. There are usually other people walking on my street: with dogs, to their cars, or to the trash heap. I see them when I step through the gate. It’s raining today. I walk all the way to work before I see anybody else. I’m self-conscious as I go through the lobby and up to my office with a naked face. No one else seems to notice. Once at my desk, I dig into my shoulder bag. I keep a spare stash of masks in it just in case this happens. It hasn’t before. When I put one on later to go down the hall to the men’s room, I feel that it’s tighter than the ones that I have been wearing. My first thought is that it doesn’t fit as well. My second is that it fits better. Less air might escape. The tip of my nose is squished. but I can live with that. I don’t care for the generic pale blue. It reminds me of commercials for diapers and other absorbent things. I usually wear purple. But this mask will suffice for today.
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line!)
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