The Midnight Crawler

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The Midnight Crawler

By Homo sapien a.k.a …. .. ………

– Not suitable for the faint of heart –

My heart sunk. No, I wasn’t staring inside the gun barrel of a Zionist solider. No, I haven’t stepped on a bobby-trapped bomb set up by a rogue Iraqi insurgent.

And no, I wasn’t gazing at the floor fearing the inquisitive and piercing eyes of an authoritarian figure.

I was gazing at the financial abyss looming in the horizon. Why worry when the entire world plummeted in a financial turmoil; compliments of the Unites States of America’s VISA card owners?

I know—there is more to the world economic crisis than insipid and greedy VISA card owners.

I abandoned a good job position because the people I worked with were dishonest and to put it more bluntly—utter idiots.

I was driving around my New York, my Amman, thinking of what I have to do before I am consumed by this abyss.

Born in Amman 30 years ago I grew up to love it, to hate, to adore it, to despise it and to abhor it and to fall in love with it again before I remembered that I hated it.

Tough love…hah…

To be honest with you I am not its spirit. I am not its driving force. I am not even a cog in its ever revolving wheel, which is part of an intricate complex web of machinations driven by elements that the ordinary Joe and Josephine wouldn’t comprehend.

A poet once announced before collapsing on its merciless pavement, “Amman is my New York evermore. Though I am not its spirit, neither its drive nor its force, I am one of its children and no more…”

I am simply one of its citizens: A citizen consumed by its cruelty towards its own children. She is like a wretched woman clinging on to a naked child on cold cold day, sitting in the middle of the street, cashing in on our pity.

Shouldn’t she cover us with its blanket!

I am consumed by it…forever consumed. Still I am not going to pack my suitcase and apply for a visa as I am sadly and emphatically deeply rooted in its soil. However, I am positive that the time will come when someone, who is irritated by my dried-up stump and branches, will cut me down.

Do not turn the topsoil for their not lie our roots. Our roots are deeply buried. Our weary roots are more and more clinging on to this land. Dig deeper, dig deeper and dig deeper for there our stories of blood, sweat and sorrow are buried and hid next to our childhood memories of family homes, loved ones and laughter.

In a few years time a new tenant will occupy the apartment in the building, where I lived with my parents, got married in, raised my little daughter, who in turn raised hers, and where I hopefully passed away in the arms of my aging wife.

That same tenant is going to look up from the same window that I looked from, lean on the same window sill that I leaned on, gaze at the same extending horizon that I gazed and admire the blueness of the clear sky that I so often admired.

So you see we own nothing. Existence explained in a single paragraph. Aren’t I a good writer?

I drove around Amman’s serpentine streets trying to memorize all the quotes and thoughts that weighed down my mind so that I can write them down again in this Microsoft 97 – 2003 document.

Some were lost, some were not meant to be and some are here being read by you. Some were not meant to live beyond the cortex lining the walls of my thick skull the same way some cockroaches are not meant to live. Like the brown cockroach that unknowingly ventured into your toilet hoping for something. Don’t ask me what a cockroach that unknowingly ventured into your toilet would hope for as I wouldn’t know what a cockroach would hope to find in your toilet. Honest…

Some people, the same idiots surrounding us, and for no apparent reason simply like to dabble in shit. Maybe that’s one reason why a cockroach would venture into your toilet.

Bottom line that cockroach is dead and so are some of the ideas and phrases that I’ve been meaning to include in this piece. At least the title, The Midnight Crawler, stuck. Right!

Broken promises lie on the ground next to honor. Well, I am picking up the pieces, and as ideas rush to my mind the same way insects hover aimlessly around neon lights, I find it comforting that I am beginning to differentiate between friends and foes.

Men I mistook for torch bearers of culture and art turned out to be false prophets, who spoon feed people what they wish to hear. This is one writer who is no longer in the business of crowd pleasing. I don’t wish to be the vox populi.

If the populi doesn’t like what I write they can read sensational newspaper headlines that sugar coat bodies of work devoid of substance inked by idiotic writers, who simply copy what they read in the press kit presented to them at the entrance of a lobby by a beguiling enchantress; and repeat in writing what others repeated to them orally in boring press conferences, where none dares ask the right question.

Six years in the business and all I got was a broken blood pump all because someone decided it was time to retire a young heart. Bullets are not the only things that kill, whimsical executive decisions have the same effect, and superglue won’t work.

Went out to get some but couldn’t find any that would plaster back fleshy and bloodied pieces.

Speaking of flesh: I smell some burning on a brazier manned by a young man. Children huddled around him with watery mouths await their turn. I stood in line asking, “How much?”

“Half a JD” the young man answered. “Give me two”.

What is this yearning for burning flesh that I have. I am a boundless carnivore that consumes everything that breathes save my own kind. Maybe I should as they say as it is cheaper to eat your own kind’s meat. What don’t you watch the news?

A pound of flesh and no more…they took more and are still taking more!

Tired of waiting I went to order another feast from another place. What best way to kill time than to kill it with another pastime?

Impatient I hurried to another bucket of water and placed it under another faucet until the first one got filled. Place two kettles on the oven and look at the second and the first will boil right away.

Time makes no sense to me…Time to head home with my loot. Wish I could find the eternal lute of answers, strum and regain my innocence.

Alas all is lost…

To be continued…or not…