From Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magnificent One Hundred Years of Solitude:
Instead of going to the chestnut tree, Colonel Aureliano Buendia also went to the street door and mingled with the bystanders who were watching the parade. He saw a woman dressed in gold sitting on the head of an elephant. He saw a sad dromedary. He saw a bear dressed like a Dutch girl keeping time to the music with a soup spoon and a pan. He saw the clowns doing cartwheels at the end of the parade and once more he saw the face of his miserable solitude when everything had passed by and there was nothing but the bright expanse of the street and the air full of flying ants with a few onlookers peering into the precipices of uncertainty. Then he went to the chestnut tree, thinking about the circus, and while he urinated he tried to keep on thinking about the circus, but he could no longer find the memory. He pulled his head in between his shoulders like a baby chick and remained motionless with his forehead against the trunk of the chestnut tree. The family did not find him until the following day at eleven o’clock in the morning when Santa Sofia de la Piedad went to throw out the garbage in back and her attention was attracted by the descending vultures.
No matter how many times self reads this passage, that pulling of the head in, so that the Colonel resembles “a baby chick,” always gets to her, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
George Augustine said,
December 7, 2011 at 6:38 am
I remember his birth.He was born with his eyes open.Later lost many battles.He fathered 17 children.He survived countless attempts on his life.He even survived a suicide attempt.Thanks to the Doctor. He himself said that a man dies not when he should but when he can.I salute Colnel Aureliano Beundia.Let his soul rest in peace.