Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-04
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. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
Out on the Street
The graffiti grammar police are at it again. On my way to the clinic, I see temporary "Parking Forbidden" signs along one block. Someone who was there before me has written the letter "Hei" after the word "Forbidden" in black magic marker, almost matching the original font. Both words are now in the appropriate feminine form.
I arrive at the clinic a few minutes before my scheduled time for the COVID shot. I don't see any signs saying where to go. I hop an elevator to the first floor. A nurse there tells me to go to the fourth floor. I do.
Once there, I scan my health system card. It gives me a number in the queue and tells me which room to go to. I walk completely around the floor and don't see that room. Other people join me. The tribe of us circle the floor, streaming through the corridors. We don't see it.
Someone sitting in the hallway asks me where we're going. I tell her the room number. She looks confused. There's no such number. I realize that, as I so often do, I said "eighty" when I meant "twenty." I tell her the right number. She points to the corner of the hallway. The room is there, but, at most angles, its number is blocked from view.
There aren't enough chairs. I stand in the hallway until my number is called.
The nurse seems stressed out. She speaks Hebrew in rapid bursts. She doesn't seem to notice when I don't understand. She quickly plows on to the next question when I don't answer quickly enough. I hope all the default answers are correct.
The shot doesn't hurt. She tells me to wait in the hall for ten minutes to see if there are any immediate side effects. After ten minutes, I'm still standing. I'm apparently alive.
I leave. I wait for the elevator for far too long. I take the stairs.
The steps spiral around, with landings between the floors. The wall on each landing that people face when walking up or down has a different painting or print of something vaguely nature-like. The image is framed and centered. The wall behind it shows the same image, fainter and twice the size, as if the image is radiating outward. It's a nice touch.
The temperature outside is right where I like it. It's sweatshirt weather. Other people have different ideas. Some wear parkas. Some wear tank tops and running shorts.
One runner nearly collides with me. He's trying to scroll to something on his phone. He has a freshly laundered tallit, on a hanger, covered in plastic, tucked under the arm holding the phone.
I stop on the block where the bus station once was. There's an apartment tower with a parking lot there now. A sign I hadn't noticed before shows an image of a community center that will be built there, replacing the parking lot. Most of it will be underground. I hope there will be a Metro stop there, whenever they get around to building that.
I send a picture of the image to my family. They tell me that it's been in the works for a while. If all goes as planned, it will contain a new public library. That's good. The current one feels scruffy, tucked above some shops nearby, like the old Cinematheque.
A shop next door to the big pharmacy has shut down and been emptied out. I've been walking past it for years, but I have no memory of what it was.
Birds chirp a hocketed rhythm from both sides of the street where I work. I stop to figure out why it sounds familiar. I realize that the bird on my side is chirping at almost exactly three quarters of the speed of the bird on the other side. They form a repeating riff, B'deep ba deep beep da beep, coming together on that first unison chirp.
I ride the elevator up to my office with two restaurant delivery people. They don't take off their helmets or even flip the visors up. I feel like I'm headed to the stage with Daft Punk.
It's a long day at work. I actually finish a large task, at least well enough to submit it. Some of the screenshots are in the wrong language, but we can replace them easily next week.
I stop down to the supermarket later to harvest my lunch. I grab a soda from the refrigerator of cold drinks. It triggers an error at the self-service register. The worker ambles over. Apparently, it's not to be sold on its own, outside of a pack.
I go back to the refrigerator to get a different drink. He follows me and puts the soda back in there. That doesn't make sense. Someone else will just take it out of there and try to buy it. I guess he's gambling that they won't use the self-service register, so it won't be his problem. I think of asking him, but can't construct the question in Hebrew in time.
I stop at the usual café on the way home. Several workers call out "Shalom, Yosef!" as I approach. The cashier knows that I'll probably get either the sachlav or the Bowl Balkani, but doesn't know which. It's the sachlav.
She rings me up, but for the to-go version. I point out that I'm getting it to sit down with inside. That's one shekel more. She cancels the order and rings it up again. I tell them, "That one shekel -- it's very important!" We laugh.
At the end of the day, it's good to see people who are glad to see me before I wander home alone.
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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.