Status Updates From Arauco

still magnificent... I don't care if this takes me two months; once ended, what can possibly replace it?

Even better on the second read. In part, because I don't have to wonder whether I'm going to (continue to) love it, with that smidgen of anxiety; I can be confident of it, and in it, and sink in to enjoy.

'This was no Thomist but a tome, an excess of More, a book on shanks, a library on fire, a man improbably begotten of Guttenberg and God.'

A re-read. Happy to be back. Pedro's 'indument' (fantastic attire) is delightful. 'To this day Pedro was stunned by his own presence.'

Like air, love clung to all it wed. Love was a clarity abolishing corporeal separation. Love was the crystal substance on which Heaven’s ponderous spheres depended, with their sun and planets, moon and stars. And, yes, love was like these last warm days of April—a harvest joy, profound and melancholy, as all harvests were. Love was an autumn moment seen by winter’s eye.

Wan had become too comprehensible.. He recalled his own frustration in Tiako, his refusal to have anything to do with his oppressors, his anger at Raytrayen, who was content to learn likwinkadungun, taking on the customs of lik winka, dressing as they did. The lik winka was like her, in a way. What made him want to wear his hair like che, dress like che, speak like che? p.548

"You do not need to know who you are to do what you have to, Pangi. You did, and will do, what you think is right, which is not easy. No one can ask more.”

"But I am Ñamku, not myself, when I act…when I speak!”

“No one is himself, alone. We all speak with the voices of the past.”

"I learned from you the words I spoke. I did not create what I received.”

"As I learned—and did not create—what I taught." p. 501

By saving two lives he had precipitated a conflict for which these Indians—who had no polity—had no word…for this was civil war. Who could have thought that his affection for two children would shatter their own people! He wondered if those who befriended Indians—like Inés, Juan Lobo, and himself—were paradoxically working harder at their extermination than Spanish cavalry, by corrupting the purity of their hate…

Money proved difficult for Blanca. Being ‘rich’ she could not fathom. To exchange she was accustomed, but why trade gold—which was essentially worthless in her opinion—for something useful? Whatever it might buy, gold was good for nothing in itself. It was stupid to have too much of anything anyway, as attracting envy and the nasty work of kalku.

Tomorrow he would take the machi to his resting place.

At dawn—having put Ñamku in a large wilal—Pangi was about to leave, when a white butterfly came to rest on the black mask. He smiled, seeing it prepare to fly with that pulse of wings that makes one think they are breathing with anticipation. Then—like a leaf with soul and purpose—it fluttered into the air. p. 416

The machi sighed and closed his eyes. Words fell like drops of rain around him, and it did not seem he could catch one.

"In kume mognen you are what you see. In kume mognen you see what you are. But the lik winka do not see what we see, or see what we are. Therefore they destroy both our mapu and us with strange innocence. For all their knowledge, they do not know what they are doing.”