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My travels in early 2001: Andrew Hodges Back to Gran Canaria (3) |
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Gran Canaria: pages 1 | 2 | 3 America (east): pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 America (west): pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 and page 10 More pages will follow. | |
On the Beach
I'm at Vista Bonita, Gran Canaria. This page continues from my thoughts by the pool on the previous page.I'm walking to the beach, over the DUNES...
 | I'm still thinking... How did the apes get that leap of intelligence, for us Third Chimpanzees to emerge? According to Roger Penrose it was evolution taking advantage of the potential for the brain to use quantum-mechanical reduction processes to a much enhanced degree. I find this far more magic an idea than anything in 2001.Could there be greater levels of consciousness yet to be materialised...? |
Back to the present. Every night the Yumbo Centrum turns into a gay centre. But in the daytime the scene is on the dunes and the beach. A lot of Third Chimpanzees are in the emperor's new clothes. Many of them are doing things that don't fit very well into evolutionary sociobiology. I don't think human sexuality is any more explicable than consciousness on the basis of present scientific knowledge.
 | Here you see the patterns made in the human ecology of cruising... |
Back to Complex Analysis
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This is the view from the poolside bar, where music is playing... Sometimes sex and music hold more for me than brainy science and maths.
So... back to human life. I am riveted by William Dalrymple's travel book From the Holy Mountain, so that I am virtually travelling from Istanbul to upper Egypt, and in Byzantium as well as in the present moment. This book is written from a Christian perspective which I don't share, but in shedding light on that minority amidst the underdogs, the Christian Palestinians, it enables me to see more of the complexity of that epicentre of world painfulness. |
I am also reminding myself of my general ignorance of the history under the surfaces of life... that I do not know what has happened to make this island off Africa into a winter-sun enclave of rich Euroland. Behind this idyllic poolside vista lie Spanish imperial conquests, and the Franco regime which started developing the desert in the 1950s...
Last day! The dawn breaks and it is perfect sun, just as we have to leave. The view of the complex is ravishing.
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 | This is Lee, in period 2000-1 costume. He has fierce tattoos, and this is a brand new one. I am thinking of having tattoos myself now that I have devoted my body to art. |
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He has also written a book of thoughts and experiences, and asks me how to get it published. If he only knew the grief I get from the literary establishment! Publishers are overdogs, the most snobbish people I have ever encountered, and they are horrified by the draft of my novel, The Unwelding, (which includes a chapter set on Gran Canaria) because it takes seriously the experiences of young people who are not from the ruling class. Unsophisticated, dumbed-down, they call me. Do it on a website, I suggest to Lee, then you'll have all the interaction with people who read what you have to say. | |
| Lee restores my belief in the value of honest writing and communication. |  The Unwelding |
 my Second Home Page |
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