Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-03-15
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 brief storm hits while I'm in the mall. I don't see it happen. I'm surprised, when I emerge, to see that the ground is wet. Some people are still carrying umbrellas.
When I get to the bus stop. I put my earbuds in and tell an app to play a random choice of music from my collection. It starts with a track by Paul Horn.
I expect to hear solo saxophone. Instead, the sax drifts over an Arabic-sounding vocal and a Latin-sounding accompaniment. The mix is beautiful, but incongruous.
When my random player switches to another track (a Stockhausen Klavierstück), the accompaniment keeps going. That can't be right. I take off my earbuds. A man sitting next to me is listening to Mizrachi music on his phone, without headphones. Oh. I'm moderately annoyed. He gets on the next bus. I get back to listening.
Kiddush at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers is strong. There are more people that I don't recognize.
The dining hall gets loud at times tonight. In one moment, as the loudest resident is shouting (not his fault -- due to a medical issue, he literally can't control the volume of his voice), a serving cart clatters past, and someone at a nearby table sneezes with gusto. Ow.
On my way home through the park, a large branch blocks much of the path. It may have fallen during the storm in the afternoon. It's a major limb, with many other branches growing from it. Long dark cylindrical pods hang from them. I've been seeing them on the ground for years, but haven't known what they were. I'm relieved to see that they're plant life and not animal droppings.
Further down the path, a man approaches me with two dogs on leashes. The larger dog lumbers along amiably. The tiny one goes into a barking fit.
The man stops right in front of me. "If you don't speak dog language, I will translate. He is saying, 'You are smaller than I am. I am --'" The man says something like adrakhan. I don't know the word. In some ways, I'm better at dog language than at Hebrew.
As I come down the steps onto my street, a couple of cats run toward me. When they get close enough, they see that I'm not one of the humans who bring them food. They lose interest and wander back toward the trash heap. I nod at them. Oh, well. Shabbat shalom. Bon appétit.
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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.