Monday, May 25, 2020

As I walk past my landlord’s porch, I see a large white bag waiting for me. My laundry person has returned the clothes that I put out yesterday. I pick it up, turn around, and bring it back down to my apartment. I’ll unpack it in the evening. As I carry it, a nonsense phrase loops in my head: “Buffalo Gals, put the laundry outside.” It sticks with me until another earworm drives it out. On the way to work, on a narrow path, I suddenly hear a motorcycle come up behind me, slightly to my left. I instinctively shift and crash into the hedge to my right. The branches scrape my arm. The sound of the motorcycle passes me, but I don’t see it. I then realize that it had been in the driveway next door, on the other side of the other hedge. A few minutes later, when I check my phone, I see that my hand has been bleeding a bit. I wash it off in the restroom at work, though I can’t use the soap there. I hope the alcohol gel next to the prayer books on the reception desk helps. When I step into the company kitchen to get coffee, one of my coworkers turns to me and says, “Joe, in Yiddish, it’s a brokh, right?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. I shrug. “But it is a brokh?” I don’t know. My Yiddish is worse than my Hebrew, other than what I picked up from my father and from Leo Rosten books as a kid. I guess that a brokh has something to do with blessings, but I don’t know for sure. I make my coffee and wander off, muttering vaguely. Later, I look the word up. It means a wreck. Or a failure. Or a curse. Or something. I still don't know what he was talking about.