Shimagunikonjo

That´s a wonderful Japanese term, which means¨"island nation consciousness." If you´ve ever lived on an island, you´d know how different things are on them.

And this one is . . . quite different. It was clear in town, pouring rain and there was so much fog I could barely see the road at the top of the mountain, and then half-naked people on a very uncomfortable beach, at the other end of the road.

What´s the line from the John Mellancamp song? Something like "This might not be the end of the world, but you can see the place from here."

Which is true. Face away from the black stones of the beach and the people gingerly walking over them. Off in the distance, under a couple clouds, is El Hierro, one of the many ends of the world in ancient times.

Glycon the Elder said,¨"For surely, if it were not an evil thing, God would not have placed it at the end of the world." Maybe true, maybe not. I´m headed the other direction tomorrow, moving to Tenerife, then London, then home, no doubt cursing British Air the whole way, now that they´ve managed to corner the market on the most uncomfortable airplanes in the world. Never again. I´ll swim before I fly British Air after this trip.

Sheer entropy. They used to be so good.

I stopped on the side of a cliff--the road hugged the edge, buses looked like they were about to pitch over--and watched a bird with red wings fall off the slope, hover in the wind, dive, swoop, hover again, dive, and fly into the distance, all without beating its wings a single time.