Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-15
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...
A metallic roar ascends to a whine as I open my door to go out. The pitches are roughly the same as the rocket sirens, but the sound is thinner, and it's only coming from one direction, not all over town.
I can see that it's been raining. It isn't now. Drops are only dripping from the leaves of the trees, splattering onto the bricks in the yard. The cats are still huddled in their hotel. They don't want to return to their prowling until they're sure that the rain is done.
The sound is coming from just outside the yard. A cement truck is sitting at my gate, spinning its hopper. I've never seen one here before. Maybe it knows that I saw the minyan of trucks on the street the other day, and wants to know if there's another one that it can join.
There's just enough space between our fence and the truck for me to squeeze through. I have to step over a broad hose and duck under a branch that has come down from one of the trees. My body brushes against a maze of wet surfaces. I can feel their textures through my raincoat.
The hose is going from the truck to the hole in the yard next door. They appear to be building a new bomb shelter. They probably have one in their basement, like we do, but the man who lives there gets around on a seated scooter. If there were a rocket alarm, he wouldn't be able to get down there. This one will be at ground level, and appropriately accessible.
I walk on toward work, humming a snippet of a song that somehow got stuck in my head as I was sleeping. I can remember the melody, and the high male voice that sang it. I have just two lines of lyrics: "It was on a street so lonely / So dark that even time ignored it." I search for them when I get to work. I don't find anything.
There's more hard rain in the afternoon. It's done by the time that I head home. With the slippery surfaces in the dark, I chicken out on taking the shortcut. I fell there last week. I don't want to fall again. Avoiding it only takes me about half a block longer. That's worth it.
As I pass the cat hotel again, I see that several of them are dry and happy in their cardboard boxes. The hedgehog is sitting near them. For once, he isn't running, just munching on a leaf that's hovering low to the ground.
I'm still trying to figure out what the song that's stuck in my head is. Sitting at my computer, I get an inspiration. I post what I remember to a Facebook group for fellow former employees of the bookstore chain.
Within minutes, someone figures it out. The song is "Torture" by the Jacksons.1
The actual lyric is "It was on the street so evil / So bad that even hell disowned it." You gotta hand it to book/musicsellers. I got almost every word wrong, and someone still identified it.
I don't feel inspired to make much for dinner. I heat up some leftover rice and dump a can of sardines on top. That, with an orange, is sufficient.
I flip through my news sources looking for anything urgent to write about. Nothing jumps out at me. There are reports of the usual amounts of action and inaction, with people yelling or pontificating about what's going to happen next.
So be it. I write down what I have and move on to other tasks.
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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 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.