March 10, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-03-09

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...

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A long, semi-lucid dream loops as I sleep through the afternoon.

Throughout the dream, I'm aware that I'm asleep in my big chair. Several other characters are also aware that they are in a looping dream. At one point, as I autograph a book with someone else's name, I discuss with another person whether the autograph will still be there when the dream loops again.

When the dream begins, the other characters (including my mother, plus several others who remain consistent within loops) and I are in a department store. In later loops, we find a book department. Eventually, it becomes a Borders.

The store is huge, larger than the four-story one at which I worked in San Francisco. We learn that it's, somewhat arbitrarily, in Boston. Like the rest of the chain, it should be gone. When the chain shut down, they ignored the memo. Resources keep coming. (Maybe they're being sent by the DHARMA Initiative.¹)

I don't work there. I tell them that I had worked at other branches. So had some of the other characters.

The store has closed for the night. We are trying to leave. The workers want us out of there, but they're cordial about it. We keep getting lost. Escalators appear and disappear. Some go nowhere. We keep discovering new sections of the store. I recognize some from earlier dreams.

When we get outside, the dream loops back to put us inside again.

I awaken a couple of times, but keep my eyes closed. Each time, the dream resumes.

I have varied conversations with the others. In one, I talk about the difference between the music magazines on the rack and those available right now in the real world, in stores near where I live. I mention the two places that I know to find them in here. In another, I recognize that one character has copied his look from Axl Rose's stage garb from his early concerts.

When I wake up, I remember a lot more of the dream cycle than I usually would. Now, some six hours later, I can still see the images vividly. That's good. I look forward to revisiting the store in my memories of dreams.

The dreams happen between my usual Sabbath meals: for breakfast, shakshuka; for lunch, cholent with mango chutney. I catch up on podcasts as I eat. The pundits seem to have reached consensus on almost all of tomorrow night's Oscars. I'll be most interested in the performances.

I see that the store where I've been getting computer equipment is also advertising a big sale on Barbie paraphernalia.² It isn't directly related to the movie. It looks like it's in honor of her 65th birthday. And she doesn't look a day older than she did when they put her on display.

(And typing the word "display" triggers my in-brain radio to play "You Don't Own Me."³ It's an ongoing effect of having been a DJ. Everything is a song cue.)

I head over to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers late in the afternoon. My family thinks that I should be trying to get more readers for this newsletter and the corresponding Facebook posts. I'm not sure how. Self-promotion isn't my strong suit. The most effective thing that I know of is word-of-mouth from existing readers.

I head home after the Havdalah ceremony. The cats on my street zoom past me toward the official trash heap. In front of it, other humans are putting down mounds of kibble for them.

I see online that one of our top rabbis is threatening that if the Haredim (aka the ultra-orthodox) are drafted, they will leave the country.⁴ Lawmakers from both the right and left are condemning the statement.⁵ I suspect that a lot of other people might welcome the move. Can New York handle another wave of immigrants?

The usual weekly protest against our country is happening in London.⁶ An article in The Telegraph says that the city is becoming a "no-go zone for Jews."⁷ A columnist for The Guardian disagrees.⁸

The usual Saturday night protests are happening here, too. This time, there are simultaneous protests to support the hostages and against the government, down the road from each other.⁹ People from the hostage protest aren't happy about the timing.¹⁰

The anti-government one runs shorter. Protestors block the usual roads. There are the usual arrests, but the police don't use horses or water cannons this time.¹¹ WhatsApp blows up with the usual calls for everyone to head down to the police stations to protest the arrests of the protestors, along with word that people are getting arrested at the police station protests. Reality loops, too.

As I write this, I've been going through my CDs and culling most of them to sell off. I have listened to perhaps two or three since I've moved here, and I have well over a thousand on my shelves. I'm ripping most that I don't already have on my hard drives. I'm letting myself hold onto those with particularly interesting or informative packaging and those to which I feel an emotional connection.

Of those that I've gone through, I have pulled 55 to sell off, retaining seven others. I'll probably trash three, including a Frank Zappa CD case that turns out to hold a 311 album. Fortunately, I use good cataloging software, so I can easily track what I'm moving from "In Collection" to "To Sell."¹²

And we're off into the work week. I may get to sleep a little than earlier than usual tonight. That's good. Maybe I'll dream myself back into that wonderful store again.

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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.