Day 131 - Back to Aberystwyth by Train - Five minutes from Barmouth

When I arrived in Barmouth a number of people asked whether I would be walking back to Aberystwyth. 'Of course not' I thought, and said. It's not that I couldn't see the logic in this proposition, it was more that the thought of retracing my steps filled me with dread. That same journey that had been filled with so much adventure because of the motivation provided by the destination and the Barmouth show were gone. Places of concrete experience had been created, and that was of course the purpose, but somehow it seemed too soon to go back to them. Memory and time need to operate together for a while before I will feel the lure to retrace those steps. In either direction, except possibly mentally, through film or through performance.

The journey back by train was considerably shorter. Witnessing half a day's travel being reversed in five minutes reveals a great deal about the society that we live in. The automobile, the train, indeed the plane, further more the internet, the new space without boundary, never to be conquered, and too vast for anyone one person to ever hope to see. The five minutes that it took to reverse 2 hours of walking revealed how technology might enable faster, longer journeys at the expense of caring for, or understanding, either the places we pass through or the physical relationship between the place that we have come from and the place that we have been to.

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