Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2023-12-14
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...
My family sends a celebratory WhatsApp: at long last, after a day of intermittent, cleansing rain, the air is finally clear enough to open a window.
For all that our city does well, its air monitoring in notoriously flaky. Fortunately, in their apartment at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, they have a monitor that they can trust. The numbers on that are apparently good.
It helps that our temperature is in a sweet spot: too warm for fireplaces, but too cool for barbecues. It's sweatshirt weather. I like sweatshirt weather.
Rather than order schnitzel again, I get a healthy lunch at the supermarket downstairs. We have a larger menu now from the schnitzel joint, but they're all kind of the same: challah rolls with one or more of schnitzel, scrambled eggs, and hot dog slices, with vegetables and other flavorings.
There's also an option to just get the schnitzel itself, without the roll or anything, in thin slices. I think there's a Japanese name for thin slices of breaded chicken. I have figured out that the chopsticks that I keep in my drawer handle that better than a fork does.
We light the candles for the last night of Hanukkah in the office. The bosses put out cookies and chocolates. Then we get back to work.
I head downtown after leaving the office. My plan is to get a sabich for supper, then one last donut. When I walk past the donut place, the line is relatively short.
The sabich place is closed when I get to it. A sign on the done, handwritten quite legibly, says that they're away for the evening for a family event. So be it. Enjoy.
I spot a pizza shop that I've never tried, there within the Heart of the City. I go in and stare at the menu, but can't decide what to get from the vaguely scribbled options that I understand.
I see that someone else has gotten slices. I'll do that. I tell the worker that I want two -- and I forget the word for slices. I say it in English. He switches to English, too. It turns out that he lived in California for a while.
I sit down at a table outside the shop with the slices and a Coke Zero. I look over at the donut shop. The line is gone. They must have run out.
As I'm looking there, a worker emerges from the shop comes over to me bearing a paper plate with a donut on it. He puts it down on my table. "A gift for you, buddy. For dessert." He keeps going into the pizza shop. (He says it in Hebrew. "Y'didi" isn't exactly "buddy," but I don't know a better word for it.) I figure that he has recognized me as the guy who just wanted one donut a few days ago when they ran out, and who didn't yell at him.
When I finish eating, I wander up to the Cinematheque. It's only a few blocks away, but I get lost going there. In theory, I could get there walking up a side street and through a park, but I keep encountering walls, fences, and hedges. I retreat to the main street, and go up into the City Hall plaza, then down a ramp to the theater. I still have half an hour, so I sit on a bench and read news on my phone until it's time to go in.
I retrieve the email with my ticket and put the QR code onscreen. The woman who helped me last time is standing at the door, looking at her pwn phone. She sees me. Before I have a chance to say anything, she says, in English, "Yes, I can scan your ticket." She does.
I go in, and find my seat. Only a few people are in there. People down front are fiddling with a laptop, setting up images for a lecture before the movie.
The theater gradually fills up. It's a good crowd. At first, I'm surprised at how old much of the crowd is, but then I realized that they're my age. It is, after all, a revival of a film from some forty years ago.
The lecture is enjoyable, though afterward, I can't remember anything from what I could understand of what was said. They show one trailer before the movie, of a concert film of the Pet Shop Boys. I wouldn't have recognized them without the titles.
Stop Making Sense1 is pretty much as I remember it. Nothing jumps out at me as being much different. Maybe if I saw a side-by-side comparison with the original, it would be more apparent. I do doze off a few times. Actually, looking at the listing later, I see that I missed about half of it. Dammit. I see that I do have a copy of an earlier version, which I'll have to rewatch.
Afterwards, as I stand outside and catch up on my WhatsApp messages, a young man that I don't recognize comes up to me. He reaches out and shakes my hand.
He speaks in a non-stop stream. "I just wanted to say Hi. You were getting the year pass last week? I thought that was you, so I'm speaking English. Anyway, I was on the phone the whole time, so I couldn't help. But I could tell that you were really intent on getting that pass, and quite pleasant while we couldn't get it working, and then we did. I hope you enjoyed this movie. I was in the back, dancing with the content manager. I hope we will see you again. You have the year pass, so I'm sure that we will. So I wanted to say Hello." He shakes my hand again and wanders off.
I put my phone away and walk behind the building. Carefully watching where the sidewalks go, I recreate the path that I couldn't find before, in reverse. I'll be back next week. Maybe then I'll be able to take the path that I intended.
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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.