Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Iquitos, Peru: The Great Yellow-headed Vulture

Jorge Samsa awoke one morning to find he had been transformed into a giant vulture.

Being of a philosophical turn of mind Jorge's first thought was, “Thank God I'm not a giant cockroach like my cousin Gregor.”

But then, what exactly was Jorge, now that he found himself to be a big, ugly bird? He looked into the mirror and squawked in horror as he saw that not only was he a two kilogram black vulture, but that in his weird transformation he had rearrived in this life as – Horror! – bald! Jorge Samsa was now a Greater Yellow-headed Amazonian vulture.

To read the rest of this story, please turn to the following link;
http://www.amazon.com/Iquitos-Peru-D-W-Walker/dp/098776151X




My book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:
http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1
And here are some reviews and comments on said book:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

6 comments:

truepeers said...

A wake? Really? Heh, do cats survive in Iquitos?

Dag said...

Some folks have fun coming up with names for groups of beasties, huh? A pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, flourish of swans. A wake of vultures!

My grandparents had the whole set of card playing dogs painted on black velvet cloth hanging in their living room. Not a pack, but a deck of dogs, I think.

There are a few cats here, though not so many as one would think. The rat population is tiny, too. I have a fruit rat in my place, something that looks like Yoda from Star Wars, light brown fur with huge pointy ears and big, huge brown eyes. He manages to escape the cat in the area, but both of them are always on the watch for snakes, the kings of this jungle. There are many dogs here, mostly stray, and one could wish for more snakes as the dogs howl all night at passing motocarros and bark at the moon. I'd love to have a wake for them, inviting all my vulture friends for dinner.

Impressed the hell out of my working class buddies here by quoting the first line from Kafka's "Metamorphosis."

Yup, another day in paradise.

truepeers said...

For when you have a decent internet connection: http://www.openculture.com/2011/07/franz_kafkas_its_a_wonderful_life.html

Dag said...

Man, it's taking hours just to leave acknowledgement of getting your comment. If you like, leave a summary for readers and I'll do what I can to catch up with the whole thing when... whenever.

It's truly wonderful here in Iquitos, but the Internet connection absolutely sucks.

truepeers said...

It's just a silly, sometimes funny, short film whereby writer Franz Kafka kind of morphs into Frank Capra. It plays on Kafka trying to complete his first sentence, ,"Gregor Samsa...." And suffering writer's block while weird things go on in his house on Christmas eve,

Dag said...

I'm laughing already. I will have to leave it at that because the Internet connection in Iquitos is so slow that video is simply impossible. Hope to read from others about this vid.