Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-03-14
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...
The outside doors are open at the tiny supermarket that closed a couple of weeks ago. It only had two aisles. Most of the time, only the owner worked there.
He's standing in the doorway now. I think he's smoking. An array of shelves for produce had stood between the outer and inner doors. They're gone. An empty refrigerator with a glass door stands there now. I don't know if it is plugged in.
I only used to go in there to pick up packages. Deliveries rarely come directly to houses, though more are doing so in the wake of the lockdowns. We have to include our phone numbers as part of our addresses. We get SMSes with pickup codes when items arrive at the drop-off points around town. Sometimes, we can specify which drop-off point we want our packages to go to. Sometimes, they arrive at the points we choose.
The shops get a small amount from whoever funds the system for each package they handle. Some find it worthwhile and keep doing it. Some don't. Some points only do that. Others are inside groceries like this one and other shops.
We come in and give the worker the pickup code and our government ID number. They dig them out of baskets. The owner here would get annoyed when a package for me would be there for more than a single day.
He got so used to my ordering books online that he would keep them near his chair to hand me. He would recognize me and knew my name. Until I knew enough Hebrew to pick out the useful information, I would just show him the whole SMS. If he had the book at hand, he would slap it onto the table and demand my ID number so he could type it into the terminal tracking the packages.
It's been a while since I've ordered many books. Amazon absorbed and shut down the site from which I used to order. Other places stopped shipping when the war started. One just started again. I ordered a few books several days ago. We'll see how long they take.
He would get confused on occasion. He apparently thought one of my relatives, another heavy-set man of European descent with a white beard and an American accent, and I were the same person.
Once, I came in dragging a rolling suitcase behind me. The owner glared at me. "Where have you been? Your book has been here for a week."
"I'm sorry. I've been in London. I came here straight from the airport." It was true. The shop was between the bus stop and my house.
He grunted. "London. London can be nice. Welcome back, Zitt, Joseph." He handed me my book. I think he smiled briefly. It's the only time I've seen him smile.
I only bought groceries there a few times. To ring up a sale, he would have to stomp from the area with packages in front to the register in back. Fortunately, we have extremely little theft and street crime here, so he could leave the front of the store unattended while he was dealing with packages.
I don't know what's happening with the space. Maybe he's renovating. Maybe another store is coming in. Maybe it will turn into something else entirely. Until it does, he'll keep standing there, glumly keeping watch on that corner of the world.
A local news site (not the usual one, but another that popped up recently to promote candidates for city government) has an article presenting the coalition who will be running the city.1
As my family points out to me, it's quite unusual. Members of conservative religious parties are sitting together with liberal, secular upstarts. In many parts of the country, the two factions (as well as many others) would be battling. Here, they work together to get things done.
A new album has been announced from a soldier who died in the rave massacre on October 7th.2 He had been caught in a shelter in which dozens of people were hiding from the attack. Terrorists were throwing grenades into the shelter. The soldier grabbed eight of them before they exploded. He threw them back. The ninth killed him.
Other artists have helped complete the album. A video shows archival footage of him working on it, with other people painting the lyrics on walls and lip-syncing the raps.3
On my way home today, I walk behind a young man kicking a soccer ball down the sidewalk. He doesn't have particularly good control of it. That's not surprising. The bricks on the ground are uneven enough that they send the ball in unexpected directions.
It goes into the street several times. Each time, cars stop and let it roll past. The roads can be hazardous for people not at crosswalks, but there appears to be a sacred duty not to hit errant soccer balls.
The man waits until the road is clear before running into the street to retrieve the ball. Fortunately, it's just barely large enough not to roll under cars. It gets wedged under their fronts, backs, or sides, where he can kick it free.
I pass him along the way. When I look back, as I turn onto another street, I don't see him. He must have gone down another road. That may have been where he was headed when I first saw him. Or he may just be letting the ball lead him wherever it wants to go.
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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.