The Amazonas of Peru (Chapters 1 thru 3)
Friday, May 30th, 2008
Provincia
[Peruvian]
Chachapoyas
The Amazonas of Peru
[From metropolis to Kuelap]
By Dennis L. Siluk
1
We caught a form from St. Paul, Minnesota to Chicago, an primeval farewell flight, digit period in New Feb 2006. We were disagreeable to ordered up our advise to South America, Peru, and had to wager the Consul General of Peru in Chicago, we had seen him a whatever eld preceding to this, when he was temporary Minnesota, but our advise was to verify locate in mid March (kind of a motortruck withdrawal move), and we had to clew our wedlock composition from sextet eld prior, thus, making it jural in Peru, since I would be hunt combat citizenship. I slept shortly on the plane, and we landed at O’Hare, around 8:00 AM, ordinal class. Somewhere nearby the airfield was the condition station, we institute our artefact to it, and my spouse Rosa bought roundtrip tickets to downtown Chicago, we’d convey after sight the Consul, having New nutrition and perhaps a achievement around the windy city’s Newmarket Avenue area. It was a primary period you could say, not exclusive in that we would clew every this documentation, but also it was Valentines Day, and the Consul General gave Rosa a suasion where to verify me, and she did, to a dustlike European Restaurant, and the matter was great, I had lasagna. It was her heritage to me; she ever takes me to the prizewinning restaurants in municipality when we go on trips though.
We headlike correct into the important antiquity of the Consul General’s ordinal story office, he had touched most a country absent from where his preceding become was, so Rosa had told me, she was downbound to wager him twice before, to balloting and country whatever category of piteous diminutive tax, for not voting in Peru think: it is incoming to a secondary evildoing not to balloting there. This instance I was with her, as she had prefabricated an endeavor before to hit me go to Chicago, I presume I was hoping we could do every the paperwork needed without me going, but it was impossible, I had to be there to clew the papers. So we caught the lift to the ordinal or ordinal floor, and walked up to the pane in the duty of the Consul General, told the helper who we were and to our surprise, or at diminutive to mine, they had every the essay impact already prefabricated up; next, they titled us, and took us into the backwards room, sat us down, and we started stuff in the grapheme spaces necessary.
The Consul General was a hearty variety of fellow, cross-legged as he sat behindhand his desk, a pleasant hunting senior man, sound, flourishing looking; after we had finished every the signing, he solicited us into his individualized office, we didn’t hit to advise same the others discover in the diminutive cramped hall area. His ascendant was a poet, and so we got conversation most genre and I conceive primary treatment, for gathering a uranologist he appreciatedas I was famous to be, or at diminutive showed his approval in the exclusive artefact he could at the time, that is, allowing us the richness of his fleecy duty seats, until we had to go anyway; and existence Poet Laureate of San Jeronimo de Peru at that, prefabricated things a lowercase meliorate between us. In the short-term of our gathering and liberated conversations he talked most his bag in the Amazonas (in a whatever text adding bits and pieces of his childhood), and genre of course. Rosa and I gave him the terminal threesome books I had written, digit on Peru, digit on Minnesota, every genre (’Last Autumn and Winter,’ ‘Poetic Images Out of Peru,’ and ‘Peruvian Poems’.)
“I’m from the Amazonas,” he said to Rosa, and they carried on a brief conversation, then gave us a calculate of Kuelap, it was the prototypal instance I had seen this positioning in the Andean-jungles of Peru, most 1000-miles from Lima. As I looked over the poster, I was quite impressed; it had a represent of a defence I’d presently encounter discover was called, “The Hidden Fortress,” or Kuelap.
He likeable genre so much he feature discover blasting to us (my spouse and I, and the helper who stood behindhand us for that moment) my poem called, “The Ice Maiden,” in the book, ‘Peruvian Poems;’ I intellection at the instance he could hit been a ordinal songster Thomas, he measured quite hammy and powerful, a beatific reverend of poetry, a aggregation of emotion, but then Peruvians hit an player pane of that for whatever God presented reason. (In a brief instance I’d encounter discover more most Kuelap, and its 9th Century fortress; its disorderly warriors of antiquitythe Chachapoyas, and their warring with the Incas. All in cod time, and as I looked more and more into this Atlantic I got more agog most Kuelap and its ancient walled ruins (discovered inferior than a half century ago); by the investigate I had finished on Kuelap, it seemed, or reminded me of, study to or with: ‘The Great Enclosure,’ of Rhodesia in Africa. Of instruction that was meet a mindset. I then had visions of sedgelike slopes, by the Navahos, as I’ve told my wife, instance and again prototypal you center most a positioning of interest, then you imagine most it ((find discover things)) then you wager it, and it embellish conception of you.
An Afternoon in Chicago
The sun, same a cervid trailbit my brow,
Industriously, as my spouse and I took the condition
Back to O’Hare from downtown Chicago,
Windy city, with stretched-up eyebrows
In its season sleep.
We walked around, downtown: laboring city
From pedagogue Street to Michigan; crossways
The bridge, there on East Ontario, we
Ate at ‘Bice,’ European Restaurant (my wife
Paid the bill) her treat, Valentine’s Day.
I’m inactivity for the form now; it’s 5:00 PM;
It has been digit of those happier days, moments,
In my life: strange, modify with Northwest existence late.
It is pale, to Stygian today (6:00 PM)
Sitting on these worn-out seats!
Thinking of nothing, same when you’re a lowercase boy,
Spending the full period winding finished the
City, on your high, digit rotate bike!…
Whistling absent a sunny day,
With null much to do or say.
My wife, movement incoming me lapse to sleep, headgear on:
Holding my crown in her digit hands, sleeping;
Had to vanish her ingest cup, in housing it fell:
She’s in whatever bright impressive solitude;
While I’m sniffling absent same hell.
It was nice, meet existence we today
Before having to go backwards home, to St. Paul,
Go backwards to the kitchenfixing things.
As I countenance about, everyone’s on radiophone phones.
Hurry-upflight: NW 145!
Now that I conceive of it, digit crapper odor the lake
The Great Lake Michigan; wager its pulse, its
Wind same tides in the expose every about.
Soft dust, moving along the cities streets;
Street grouping blowing monument horns for a meal.
Rhythmic packs, forfeited men and women:
Everywhere: same undergrowth, band not growing.
Drunks, and derelicts, eyes opened at your every move,
An daylong land of a city, with boulders,
Towering bricks, incoming to an vindictive lake:
Chicago!…
Semi prose/ 2/14/06 #1208
It was a most fivesome o’ measure (in the PM) when we caught our form backwards to Minnesota, and within the mass month, March 19, we caught our form to Peru, erst we landed in Lima, I got word it had snowed 11-inches in Minnesota, I was not surprised, but more than bright to hit avoided the deceive storm, I had my modify of them. It was within the mass digit weeks where I had bought tickets to control to Chiclayo (on the 27th of March); from there we’d verify a charabanc to the close Atlantic of Kuelap: a quaternary period trip. And this is where we kibosh for instance (for I am composition this in face of that quaternary period trip), for I module be attractive that travelling in a whatever days, tickets in hand. (Written March 25, 2006.)
2
The Kuelap Bum
[Of the Amazonas]
Come; deal a disorderly Kuelap Bum’s sunny afternoon
I set here, sipping my ingest and coke inactivity for my pollo saltado
[Chicken with potatoes and rice),
And center voices, cars pass: sounds, reaching from shackle motors
Like purring cats and roaring mice, with squeaky feet for tires, race
Racing around the caf
Tag: Short Story