[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt - 04 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...
I wake up still tired. My back doesn't hurt as I lie in my bed, but when I sit up then stand, it reminds me that I threw it out last night.
I wander to the computer and check for war news. There isn't much. That's good.
From the other side of the world, I'm told that protestors are blocking a ship that's reportedly heading here from Oakland. The Longshore and Warehouse Union tells newspapers that the ship hasn't actually been used in years.
An email tells me of San Francisco's celebration of Dia de los Muertos. Its displays include tables from families who have lost loved ones in our war. Along with the customary marigolds and candles, they have printed information and pictures of those that they have lost. The people apparently lived across our border. The printed matter is angry at us. But from here, I feel for the families. So much of what people express is coming from fear, rage, and pain.
I take another Acamol, pour a cup of cold brew, and sit down in my big chair. I figure that I'll watch something on TV for a bit before making breakfast. I fall asleep without turning it on. I wake up again a few hours later. My back feels a bit better.
I hear bits of the new Beatles song looping, stuck in my head. That isn't something I thought I would ever have a chance to say again. It's good to have an earworm that, much as I like her music, isn't Taylor Swift.
Like every other Saturday morning, I put on a film industry podcast and start to make shakshuka. Even though I have done this hundreds of times by now, I get confused and lost in the process. I always start oil heating in the pan before cutting the vegetables. I'm halfway through the onion before I realize that I haven't done that yet. I look in the wrong cabinets for the oil. And I put the chopping knife, cutting board, and spatula in the wrong places several times.
I finally succeed in making the shakshuka. I eat it while listening to the rest of that podcast and another, which talks about the history of musical minimalism.
After I eat, I pour more cold brew and sit down again in the big chair, again planning to watch some TV. Again, I wake up two hours later without having turned it on.
I sit down at the computer again to get some things done. I download the six albums that I had bought yesterday for Bandcamp Friday. I check more email. My back starts to hurt again. I have to put the new chair together.
I take pieces out of the box and lay them out around the kitchen. It's the best lit space in the apartment. The one page of instructions has lots of diagrams, but very little text. Most of that suggests that we put protective mats under the chair's wheels on sensitive floors like parquet. I know that I once knew what parquet was. I'll look it up again sometime.
Part of the diagram shows an array of its smaller pieces. It's labeled "Spare parts." The parts aren't spare. Every one of them is needed. But at least it tells me what's in the smaller box with the same name.
I'm terrible at visual instructions. I put some of the pieces together, then take them apart. Apparently the picture is of a different piece that looks almost exactly the same. The chair includes several sliders, levers, handles, and pumps, but there's no indication which of them does what.
The top of the page has a string of letters at the top, "CHAIRESSEL." I google it. All I come up with is the Instagram handle of someone in India. I go back to the online receipt that I got, and search on words from that. I find the local source of the chair. At least, I think it is. The chair is named "LEONARDO" where I bought it. Here's it's called "LEOPARD." And it's fifty dollars cheaper. There's no support information.
I head over to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers at the usual time. When I leave, the back of the chair looms over the seat at about a sixty-degree angle. I'll need to get back to it when I get home.
The dining hall is dark when I head past it. This strikes me as odd. Then it strikes me as odd that it strikes me as odd. It takes me a moment to sort out the problem. Usually, at this hour, the dining hall is lit up for supper. It hasn't been since the war started. But in previous weeks, light had come through its windows. We changed our clocks last week (a week before the Americans). It's dark now. OK. That makes sense.
The family tells me of goings-on at the house. They had Shabbat services this morning, but the person who usually reads the Torah didn't show up. Last week, he was in uniform and had his machine gun. He may be off at the front now.
The people who are there split up the roles. One of my family had chanted one part of the Torah portion recently. It was also part of the reading on Rosh Hashanah. Another person would chant the rest. Someone else would serve as prompter for the readers, guiding them with hints and hand signals, as well as calling out corrections. Other people led the service, opened the ark, and had other duties. It all sounded rather like choosing teams and roles for sandlot baseball.
One of my family encountered the House's nurse in the elevator. She was headed down to the synagogue. The nurse was headed up to her apartment to give her an insulin shot. They were alone in the elevator, except for her caregiver. She unceremoniously hiked up her skirt and the nurse gave her the shot. They were all done and back to normal by the time that the elevator reopened on the floor for the synagogue.
They tell me that a representative of the House was at the soldier's funeral a few days ago. There were also people from the high school. It turns out that he was from our part of town.
When I get home after the havdalah ceremony, I sit in the chair and try the knobs, levels, and other doodads. I find the one that tilts the seat properly, and the control that raises the back, though not quite as high as I'd like. The footrest is kind of flimsy. It would work better for someone with shorter legs.
The news tells of a plant nursery that survived in one of the kibbutzim that had been attacked by the terrorists. The workers knew that the plants would die if left without water for more than a couple of days. When they returned, several weeks later, the planets were thriving. A note left inside said, “Sorry we broke into the nursery, we had to water the plants. With love, the soldiers."
News from across the border isn't good. Apparently, the passage of injured civilians at the southern end has stopped. Reports say that some terrorists are using the transports to go back and forth.
In reports from its northern end, a sentence from the New York Times sticks out as particularly post-apocalyptic: "Saher Abu Adgham, 37, a Palestinian graphic designer, had been searching the streets of Gaza City for firewood to boil some rice."
I stop scrolling through news and go to the kitchen to make more cold brew for the morning. I get lost in the process again. Fortunately, at most stages, I can stop and look at what I had done already and where relevant objects are, so I know how to continue. I usually put five cups of water in. I lose count. I decide it's better to put too little in than too much. With four cups, the coffee is a little too strong. But with six cups, it overflows.
I see other things scattered around the kitchen from where I must have gotten interrupted or distracted during the day. I throw out and wash up what I notice. I think I get all of them.
Late in the evening, the liveblogs tell me that there have been booms and sirens somewhere in the center of the country. As usual, I haven't heard them.
The American president is shown in the news. He gestures to reporters. He's apparently trying to get a humanitarian pause to happen. I note the town that he's in: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It's one of my favorite places in the US.
I stumbled across it twenty-odd years ago. I was living in Washington, DC. I wanted to get away. I drove around for a while, then decided to take a highway all the way east to see where it ended. It ended there. I stayed for the weekend, then returned frequently, for quiet weekends on the off-season. I particularly liked a combination bookstore and coffee shop. I don't know if it exists anymore.
I tilt back in my chair (now that I know how), close my eyes, and start to remember and dream of Rehoboth Beach. Then I abruptly wake up. I have to finish writing and posting this. And my back is starting to hurt again.
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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.
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L'hitraot.