Chapter 10 the road and rock face: Amman to Haifa 2006

Amman is a city of cheap abusive architecture, the buildings colored as coffee stained teeth. The car spun through it's traffic cirles and stopped before an abandoned looking building.   We walked into it's unlit staircase, passed through a steel door and entered the office. It had hanging wires for light fixtures and a variety of cheap anti-Semitic editorial cartoons (ranging from subtly implied to bat-shit crazy) taped onto the walls, covering them completely. Meet the cheap oily man hired by the FAT ASS. Chief Chuckles.  Welcome to the FAT bureau Amman and one can only guess how much it cost them.

The office, in its torture porn splendor, was also the bureau of five or six other channels, at least two of them American (guess which ones, fun game to play at parties). In the corner was a mic stand with six mics on it, each with a different meatball logo on it. Supporting diversity in media.

-Only one works, said this sleazy thin man with white hair in a cheap suit. Taller than me, bone colored thin fingers, he says : You only need one to work, the rest are just painted sticks.

He runs his finger beneath the head of one, with a delicate flair.

This is the FAT producer for Amman, next to him is the biggest fucking Arab that has walked the sands since Conan road on a tiger and lept out of Sumeria. This was the most postapocoplectic motherfucker imaginable, he should have been riding on top of a tricked out hummer, in nothing but football gear and a leather jockstrap, with Mad Max smeared beneath the wheels. Two meters tall, shoulder length black hair, goatee, a broad smile with yellow but strong teeth. The kind of strength an animal gets by gnawing at the bone. He was a wonderful human being.

Chapter 9 Gentrification : Ramallah 2004

The mosquitoes and flies that feed on sheep have teeth like knives and fangs which tear holes in your clothing. Sounds bad, but there is worse. There is a fly in Africa, which lays eggs in your clothing. The eggs hatch little worms that burrow into your flesh. That is the kind of stuff you want to put in the travel brochure. No, the mosquitoes and flies of the West Bank do not seem so bad when seen from places that are worse off.


Not so bad...

No matter how quaint it would seem, awaking to the sound of sheep grazing outside the window, those insects cling on to the window mesh and beg to be let in, wanting to keep you company. It was beautiful to see them; the sheep, the insects can go to hell.

Can’t blame them wanting to get in, there where my wife’s long pale body lay. The soft alabaster of her leg exposed, uncovered, underneath the thin sheet. Her wide eyes gently shut as her head deeply impresses the cushion beneath it, her red hair splayed upon it. What is touched by the sun’s tongue is a constellation of freckles, what is untouched by the sun, her milk smooth stomach, her roundness. Who wouldn’t want to crawl all over her, to receive a slap for waking her up.

Chapter 8 delivery boy : Jordan 2006

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Chapter 7 the parabola : Ramallah 2004

Riding a bicycle in Ramallah is not the most rational thing to do. Flying down the narrow streets, cars converge from all angles, dashing out from parking spaces where two wheels had been up on the sidewalk.

People here truly believe in God; no one bothers to look at the road, the road makes room for them, and God protects them, Enshalla. Bicycling here is like moving through an electron cloud; it is all potentials. You cannot determine the speed, position and direction of the vehicles simultaneously. Two way, one way, wrong way streets, alleys, dirt paths, sidewalks. If it were possible for cars to drop out of the sky, they would.

Chapter 6 : ...condemns the trap but not himself : Kiryat Shmona 2006

The dog looks at my plastic bag, she knows there is something in there. She steps up to it and sniffs it, steps back looks to the wind moving the branches of the cedar trees, looks back at me and walks twoard the movement, past the wall of someone’s abandoned home. The air is dead, hot and heavy. The mosquitos will be brutal tonight, funny how they didn’t have any bug repellant at the store.

The general store, here in Metula, seems to be more thrown together from random concreate slabs and a few sheets of glass. It could be any bodega from 145st, bare floors, dust, aluminum stained shelves, and the low lit floresecent lights. Far from the register are asian and phillipino noodles, lychee nuts, fish sauce, and canned fish parts. Close to the register are sunglasses, wine, and chewing gum. In the back there is bread, hummus, baba ganush, and foul, which is in my plastic bag. This is my breakfast, somthing has to be. The owner has wild and expansive red hair, broad shouldered, hairy chested in his late fifties. He smiles and hands me the bag.

The hotel room has a terrace, of about two cubic meters, with plastic chairs stacked on it, under a layer of dirt. In fact there are more chairs present than the terrace could ever accomodate, which is very generous of them. The view from it, at the horizon are hills and smoke, but at hand surrounding me are air-conditioning units.

Sit on the edge of the bed, the sweat filled, white sheet strewn, bed. The airconditioner was off last night, but the sweat  wasn’t from the heat. It was those damn dreams again. Stop thinking, eat breakfast and watch some TV.

Rough edged teeth of where the bread was torn. The long lines left in the salads after the hand dtrags the pita through them. Hummus is a great breakfast, the body seems to absorb it effortlessly, and sits well on the stomach for hours. 

TV news sits on the stomach like a 200lbs gorilla with gas. The press is running scared. Everyone is very upset with Hez(bollah), they are condemning them in the strongest terms. Hez doesn't give a fuck.  Worse, it is now clear the IAF and the IDF response has destroyed the cedar revolution.

Soon it is time for work. God what a shitty job this is. What a shameful shitty job. Me, an electric plumber, assisting the flow of digital shit, making sure it gets pumped into the post-modern sewer that was once called western civilization. It is morning in New York now, people are waking up, fire up the TV and open up the shit spout to help choke down their post toasties. Open wide America.

Chapter 5 - ice cream and isolation : Ramallah 2004

The baton beats down in a steady rythem, into the dark fridgid interior. Within the fluid gels, forming a spiders web of colored cream, building into a sweat gummy mass.

The Arabs invented ice cream, this is said the world over. Even in places where it approaches platonic perfection; in Sicily that is what they say. The Sicilians say the Arabs brought us ice cream, pasta, ceci, and lemons. The Arabs terraced our hills, tolerated all of the faiths, made us rich and a center of the world.Then we killed them. Thank God for the ice cream.

Chapter 4: ...among the hens : Kiryat Shmona 2006

 Look at the skies Jack, what do you see?

The night, not the ice pick stabbings of light that burn through it, but that night which rolls over us, no not rolls, there is nothing that comes. Not washes, not a tide, no. We sit beneath the sky and watch the collaping rays of our dying sun erode around us, and watch it reveal what the light concealed.

There are some decadent italian sweets, so rich that they are usualy served in cubic inch servings, which are composed of a light chocolate cake at it’s base and resting above is a black gel quivering shimering, impenetrable. Black, the absense of color, in it’s obsidian shimmer, we see it quiver as it shakes in the air, reflecting colors at radom off it’s surface with its core impenetrable. That reminds me of night.

Above us, in that darkness emerges fire, the forests are on fire, two heilocopters have gone down. It is a few miles down to the south, our eyes a yellow candle flame, through the lens, it becomes a camp fire, double extend the lens, it is an inferno. Pipe it back to NYC, it will look great to read the weather over. The guy behind the camera wears a cowboy hat and has an enormous cock.