Saturday, October 31st, 2020

The billboard in the city square no longer speaks about the virus. It bears a pink poster with a message about breast cancer. I don’t know if that’s an improvement, but at least it’s a slight return to things we saw before. A floodlight shines on it in the dark. I like walking at night. I usually come home from work around now, so I’ve seen these paths in the dark, but things look different when I’m walking away from my house rather than toward it. The middle of one block on the pedestrian street has no light. I hadn’t noticed that before. Looking around, I don’t see any streetlights that would illuminate it. Heading home, I must have just walked straight through the shadows. The Sabbath is over now. Downtown, a few small groceries and take-out eateries are open. As I walk past the open counter at one shop, a car pulls up and stops in the middle of the road. If there were any other traffic, it would be blocking it. Men yell from the car window, “Falafel? Falafel?” A woman inside yells back “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” The men yell again, “Falafel? Falafel?” Again, the woman calls back, “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” And again, the men yell twice, the woman three times. I wonder if I’ve just witnessed some sort of ritual or coded message. The men drive off. Several of the pizza places are open. The only open falafel joint is the popular one downtown. I hear loud music from the square outside the Great Synagogue. A man’s voice wails and slithers. I don’t know if he’s singing words, or, if so, in which language. The instruments roar along, playing something like “White Rabbit,” but in ⅞ time. It sounds like a celebration. When I get there, though, I see just one man, sitting, reading a newspaper, with a bluetooth speaker the size of a large thermos beside him blasting the sound. I take a different route than usual home, down the main street then up the one near mine where buses used to run. When I get in, I figure that I’ve been out for close to two hours. It’s only been 45 minutes. I have time to relax. I have fulfilled my mission. I have enough to write.