Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-07
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...
I wake up in the morning with a few additional aches from the fall. I tend to sleep on the side on which I landed, which doesn't help.
Friends suggest, and I remember, that a good, hot shower would help. The heater on my shower only gets up to comfortably tepid, but I do what I can.
In my Hebrew lesson, I tell my teacher about what happened. I discover that I'm missing the words for several body parts.
I don't know the word for "knee." I don't know the word for "elbow," either, but to communicate "knee," I hold my elbow up to the webcam and say "the thing like this, but on my leg." My teacher tells me the right word.
I'm surprised to remember the word for "heel." It's mentioned in a Bible story as the source of a name, so I make the connection. My teacher says that that's still the right word. She's also young enough to be familiar with The Hunger Games, so she gets a joke, which I mention that I have put in the manual that I'm writing, about District 12.
As I walk to work, more aches emerge. When my feet hit the pavement, the usual minor jolts echo up my body, putting body parts in closer contact than they want to be. I'm not in pain by the time that I get to work, but I am quite tired.
I doze off repeatedly at my desk. My boss comes by my cube a couple of times and gently says "Good morning, Joe," even in the late afternoon. That's enough to wake me.
The big news is about the proposals gong back and forth for a ceasefire, or perhaps the return of the hostages, or perhaps an end to the war, or perhaps none of the above. My family sends me a lot of reports about it, with views from many sides, but I can't quite focus on them. I hope to look at them tomorrow.
As I'm about to leave the office, I get a WhatsApp message from my landlady. My electricity payment is due. They figure it out somehow from their bill, every two months. The amounts always seem reasonable. I don't argue. I pay them in cash. Early on, I asked them about doing it with one of the local equivalents to PayPal, but they couldn't get the concept. They aren't Luddites, but some people catch up with different bits of technology faster than others.
I hit my bank's ATM on the way home, then stop at the burger joint in the chaotic shopping district that was so good. Tonight's burger is also excellent. The owner, who is doing all the cooking and transactions at once, speaks English to several people, but we speak Hebrew. I had just learned the word for "to fry" this morning, so when she asks me if I want fried onions, I know what she's saying. Yum.
When I get home, I knock on the landlady's door. The landlord answers. I give him the exact amount for the electric bill, in cash. I ask him what they're building next door. He says that it's a miklat, because the neighbor gets around on a seated scooter.
I vaguely recall that the word might mean one type of bomb shelter, but I'm not sure. Google Translate tells me that it's a "receiver." That doesn't make sense. No doubt someone reading this will know what he meant.
Once inside, I sit at my desk, close my eyes, and listen to the rest of today's Daily Briefing podcast.1 One bit is particularly interesting. Drawing on her article in today's paper,2 a reporter tells of a study on how our dreaming patterns in the country have changed since the start of the war.
Among other things, the scientist leading the study says:
“There seems to be more of a blurring between the lines between dreaming and wakeful reality. Usually, there is a difference and people are aware of it. Dreams are usually more mixed up, mysterious, and full of symbols... We call this inability to distinguish between what is real and what is a dream — either when dreaming or when awake — paramnesia. This mixing of reality and fantasy is happening more now, and especially with those reporting nightmares.”
He recommends autosuggestion or lucid dreaming to cope with the problems.
I'm pretty familiar with these states. I can go back and forth from waking to dreaming almost instantaneously. I haven't been able to control or reshape my dreams, but I often can recognize when I'm having a bad dream and wake myself up.
Completely coincidentally, I run across an article on the benefits of sleeping with stuffed animals as grownups. 3 That's good to hear.
I still have most of my Borders bears, and enjoyed selling them to people on my register shifts. My most effective tactic was placing one on the counter, sitting up, and asking "Do you know anyone who'd love a bear?" Other workers got used to this. A couple of times, I would hear on the headset, "Joe's on the registers next hour. We'd better bring up another box of bears."
I get a message from the folks who run the newsletter site that we can now enable comments there. I do. Folks reading this there or, I think, in email can comment on posts. I would love to see it hook into something more connected or federated, since I'm already in conversations on too many unconnected silos, but it's a start. Let's see what happens.
I also try to set up "Professional Mode" for my Facebook posts, but I get an error there. I'm not surprised. Getting anything on Facebook to work is often a maddening game of Mother-May-I.
I see on the news site that the American Secretary of State, who is visiting here, is giving a press conference. I tune in. I'm too tired to parse what he's saying.
I turn it off and go back to writing this. With any luck, I may get to bed a little earlier than usual. I need it.
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
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 at that Las Vegas address, 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.
Yes, miklat is a shelter. It can be ground level, easily handicapped accessible