Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-02-24
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...
At the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, my family hands me a bag of books. Another relative is culling from her library, and brought over some that she thinks they would like. They pulled out this selection for me.
There's a children's book in Hebrew that they think that I might understand and would enjoy. The other three are old science fiction paperbacks: Theodore Sturgeon, Keith Laumer, and Robert Silverberg.
I think I once had copies of all three. I recognize a particular bit of bangedupedness on the cover of the Sturgeon. It used to be mine. I'm pretty sure that it, and possibly the others, are from a group that I gave to another relative when they were visiting me in New Jersey, decades ago. The books have made a full circuit through three households in the family and come back to me, thousands of miles from where they started.
I have supper with my family after the Havdalah ceremony. While putting a slice of cheese on a roll, I get a strong visual flashback of a spot in the massive bus station in the next town over, which I haven't visited in a long time.
It takes me a while to figure out the connection. When I had put the cheese on the roll at first, it was lopsided. I picked it up and put it down again to even it out. This triggered the musical memory of the song "Even It Up" by Heart.1
At some point when I was at that station, I had gotten a coffee from a branch of the cheap coffee chain. Walking across the black floor, a step downward was hidden in shadow. I missed it. My coffee spilled. My vivid memory of that includes "Even It Up," which was playing on the overhead sound system.
That's how my mind works, I guess: making strong links to the most embarrassing available memory.
The Jerusalem Post has a series of articles on trauma here in the wake of the October attacks. This one focuses on an evacuee family, staying in a hotel in our town, and what they and others have faced.2
Reuters reports that, depending on who you ask, there may or may not be new developments in the Paris peace talks.3
Reports from the usual Saturday night protests on Kaplan Street are also confusing.4 It looks like people tried to break through a police barricade. The police used water cannons on some other people who were on an authorized part of the sidewalk. The story may straighten out by morning. Or it may not.
I find myself dozing off at my desk as I write this. I spend a lot of today sleeping. I only wake up to make breakfast (my usual shakshuka) and lunch (reheating cholent).
Eating lunch, I have the inspiration, glancing at some uneaten chocolate bars, that mole might go well with it, if I can find it anywhere. I quickly find what looks like a simple recipe.5 Hmm.
I have ingredients for several things that I've been planning to cook sitting in my kitchen. I have a hankering for a peanut sauce that I've made several times, but I haven't gotten around to making it again in a couple of years. Maybe after I retire.
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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.
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.