[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #027
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19 March, 2021
This is issue number 27 of the newsletter.
I’ve ended the daily posts. Some echoes of them will remain in the newsletter. I have to say, though, that sitting in the city square last week, drinking a sachlab and realizing that I didn’t have to write about what I was experiencing, felt like a vacation :-)
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Onward!
Friday morning in the city square: A DJ is spinning music once again from a setup on the traffic island. The sound booms forth. No one appears to be paying attention.
At the downtown end, small political rallies face each other on either side of the main street. The party currently in power and its main rival play music and shout into megaphones. Where the streetcorner violinist plays, someone else is playing a harmonica along with the record of “City of New Orleans.” He isn’t as good as the people who usually play there, but I like the song.
A parade of cars with green flags rolls silently between them. I look more closely at the flags. They’re from the party I’ll probably vote for on Tuesday. They’re small enough now that they may not win any seats in the Parliament. They have an arrangement, though, that if they don’t, their votes will get added in to those of my second choice. At least I think that’s how it works. And the second choice have said that they will support the leader of my third choice for Prime Minister. And if everything falls apart again, we can always have a fifth election. We’ve gotten good at running those, and we get the day off of work.
I don’t stay there long. I’m on the way to a bank a few doors down. I’ve decided to move my accounts. My current bank’s website is usually either cryptic or broken. My debit card fails frequently, coming back to life a few minutes later, apparently due to the bank’s glitchy network.
The new bank is welcoming. I’m guided to someone with strong English. I’m able to set up an account easily. They set the main language to English and have good English support on the website. And, if there are problems, I can walk in to this branch on my way to work. Currently, I would have to take a bus an hour out in the opposite direction to a branch two towns over, assuming that I could find a time that my present bank is actually open, and can find someone with whom I can communicate.
The banker asks me how long I’ve been here. I tell her it’s been three years. She says “Welcome to – Three years? I don’t have to welcome you to Israel anymore. You’ve been here long enough. You’re one of us now.”
I also find out that I have somewhat more in my current bank than I had thought. I can’t splurge, but I think I may go ahead and take yet another Hebrew course that I’ve been considering. I had taken a sample lesson a few weeks ago. The teacher spotted that, given time and help with words that I don’t know, I can construct Hebrew sentences rather well, with the verbs conjugated properly. The problem is the processing time. She said that she could see the gears within my brain carefully putting the sentences together. This school says that they focus on getting people to communicate at the speed that locals actually speak. If my brain doesn’t melt down from having to operate in real time, it may work out.
I’m also going to go ahead and replace my robot vacuum cleaner. Parts of it had disappeared. It’s designed so people can detach and clean out parts of the mechanism. From what I can figure, I may have gotten distracted while doing that and, rather than just cleaning those parts, had thrown them out.
After the bank, I go to the mall to get some groceries and supplies for the seder. I’m scheduled to get together with family and have been assigned to pick up disposable dishes to make preparations and cleanup easier. At the mall, I get the Israeli breakfast at the cafe, which I haven’t had for a long time. I show the cashier my Green Pass, so I’m allowed to sit down and eat. Everything is served in to-go containers, but that’s OK.
I take a bus home. When we pull up to the Heart of the City, I realize that I haven’t gotten a challah. I dive off the bus and get one at the bakery there. The dance music in the bakery is pounding so loudly that I can’t hear the cashier. We communicate through gestures and the passing back and forth of money.
I catch the next bus toward home. This line, long ago, had had a stop a block away from my house. There had been detours for construction since then, but I had seen it on my street last Friday. I gamble on taking it. I know that if it takes the turn that sends it off-course, I can bail out at the next stop and walk four blocks. I don’t have to. It goes straight onto my street. I get home as I had hoped, unpack my groceries, and get back to work on other things.
I have made incremental moves on the film project. At one point in the score, a voice sings the old song “Sakhki, Sakhki” (which I’ve spelled in a lot of different ways, but this seems the least ambiguous). The members of my ensemble, Gray Code, have been individually recording accompaniments to it, which I’ve been combining. I’ve gotten two of the four, and they’re excellent. Hearing my own against theirs, though, I realize, once again, that I have problems playing in rhythm, especially trying to sync with a voice that, for good musical reasons, keeps subtly changing speed.
Fortunately, I’m good with the editing software, so I’m going through and moving each note that I played back and forth by thirtieths of a second until they line up. I find that I don’t have the right kind of patience to deal with filming things on a set. On the other hand, a lot of people who groove on those situations hate the kinds of finicky tweaking that editing needs. I’m pleased to have had good collaborators with whom I can share this kind of work. It’s the Sprat Family Algorithm. Eventually the work gets done.
This tweaking will take all weekend. It’s good that I find it relaxing.
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line.)
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