love: easy or complicated?

Whether or not we think about them, feelings and sensations play a key role in anyone´s lifetime.
In the novel ´La llamada de la carne´ by Frederik Koning the main character Apolonios, as he studies to be a doctor, he wonders about his inner world as well as his senses. Neron rules the roman empire, and people worship different gods and goddesses, and christians begin to increase in number and represent a threat to the goverment, which starts to pursue and execute them.
At the very beginning of the novel, when Apolonios is just 14 years old, and works as his father´s apprentice, he witnesses a sad event: the dead of a slave woman when she is about to give birth. He feels sorrow because she meant something for him, eventhough they were never together as a couple. However, he soon forgets her. This puzzles him. what does anybody need to make a bond last longer: a pledge, vow, kiss or caress?. This first notion would become a background to compare his upcoming experiences.
Few years later, being a student at the Asklepieion, the school of doctors, Apolonios finds and enjoys sex. As a guest at friends´s homes, he is allowed to overnight with slave women. Besides, his classmates or colleagues takes him to the house of women. He is driven by passion and lust, but he asks himself whether or not there is a reality far beyond the sensual reality; something that exists behind the reality of his own body farther than his mere senses.
Not long after, he answers his own question when he meets and falls in love with Frine, a yound and beautiful woman who wants to be an actress. He is willing to commit and marry her. Having to play in Rome, Frine leaves him, but promises to come back. During her absent, he decides to be faithful to her, and denies any invitation to spend nights with slave women. However, one night as one slave is washing his feet, he can´t help having sex with her. He believes that this is just a failure of his senses, and he recognizes his own weakness. Nevertheless, he still loves Frine. He is sure that complete happiness exists if both feel and share their love. Life makes an unexpected turn, though: Frine never comes back. Apolonios ponders: is it that men´s nature is always to give while women´s is always to demand or require?, would women´s sacrifice be the giving of her virginity or the giving birth of children?, has Frine given herself away as he has?. Now he knows that Frine´s career as an actress is more important than her relationship with him.
He meets other women, but his thoughts about love and desire remain a mystery to him: would it be that affection start and grow through a strong desire of the flesh?, where is the boundary between love and sexual desire? Through our entire life, our own experiences can mould our points of view and behavior. As Demetrios, Apolonios´ teacher, says: time makes things change, and we also change through time. However, he adds that love, happiness, suffer, hatred, and jealousy are passions that never change.
Apolonios, as a doctor and scientist, try to find a reasonable explanation, but it is a woman, Foibe, who tells him that human thinking makes love a tough issue, when, in fact, love is an easy matter: when you find it, there won´t be any doubt in your heart. Love creates beauty, in your body and spirit too.
He also witnesses another kind of love. Many christians rather die before rejecting their faith because they strongly believe that the supreme love is God, infinite and sublime, who is able to redeem human from his own misery.
Almost at the end of the novel, the matter of love seems to keep unresolved, as one of Apolonio´s friend, Helenos, claims that love is just an abstract and subjective concept which only serves to measure a pleasant or unpleasant experience. Now Apolonios is about 25 years old, and he thinks that his friend is wrong. He believes that the most important thing about love is to regard himself as a spiritual unity with the loved one. Finally, he states that the true love is mutual understanding.
Once i read this verse: i love because i like you. All in all, the search and find of love is just a personal challenge and achievement.

History of the conquest of Peru

A few days ago i finished reading "History of the conquest of Peru" by W. H. Prescott.The book has five books or parts with 32 chapters and one appendix which contains documents and letters from the chroniclers and conquistadors, though most of them are presented in spanish.The author gives a general overview of the inca culture and society in the first book or part. It doesn't contain too much detail for the person who want to know more about this culture, though it is useful if you just want to have an idea of the political, economical and social organization of these peoples before the arrival of the Spaniards.However, from the second part until the last one, the author leads the reader to the events that changed history in this part of the world from the discovery of this "new" continent by the europeans until the middle of the XVI century.The reader becomes a vivid witness of the lives and deeds of the main characters of this story, especially of the spaniard conquistadors whose leader was Francisco Pizarro. On the other hand, inca names or characters seldom appear, except of the last two incas Huascar and Atahualpa, and the inca who was enthroned by the spaniard: Manco Inca, who, at first, followed the foreigners, but after a few years, he run away from them and lay seige the capital of the inca kingdom, Cusco. Eventually he was defeated by the conquistadors and so this original and unique culture.However, history continues with the fight between the two conquistadors, Pizarro and Almagro. This civil war would spread the blood of Pizarros's brothers and Almagro's son too. The spanish crown sent two emissaries to crack down this revolt. The first, Vaca de Castro, was defeated. The second, the clergy Blasco Nuñez de Vela was able to end this civil war in the batlle of Huarina in the middle of the sixteeth century. Every event is told with minute detail by the author, so reading the book seems to be as watching the events with your own eyes.