On airplanes the seating is aligned with the direction of travel: passengers face the point toward which the aircraft is moving. The same logic applies in cars, trams, motorcycles, and bicycles. Yet on a train, a seat can press a traveler to confront the path behind rather than the horizon ahead. At first the subtle unease may go unnoticed, or a strange sensation emerges that remains hard to name. Eventually, however, the realization arrives: a backward motion, as if one were walking in reverse, takes hold and grows tiring. The author writes these lines aboard an AVE where the journey was completed in reverse. Instead of meeting the landscape, the view seems to slip away. The traveler shifts back and forth, as if rewinding a scene, and the experience resembles a rider who is mounted on an inverted charger, compelled to look backward rather than forward.
Sleep comes to the traveler with the clatter of wheels, and in that quiet a dream unfolds: a story beginning on the last page, like watching a spectator savor a banana in a cinema and realizing only then what is to come. The dream dissolves into wakefulness as the trees, streetlamps, flocks of sheep, and the small patches of vegetation outside rush past in fear. The mind drifts to childhood, to a moment at six years old when one stood before a bedroom mirror housed in a closet door. A careful inspection ensued, asking whether the reflection might be an imitator, a flawless double. The aim was to discover a flaw in this mirrored self. When the eyes opened, a blink was attempted to catch the other side blinking first. A raised brow, a contorted smile, a small gesture—yet the synchronization between self and reflection proved perfect, every movement mirrored with uncanny precision.
If attention strays from the reflection, steps are taken back, and the image shifts away. If the room carried on without boundaries and one could retreat forever, the reflection would vanish along with the trees, lampposts, flocks, and the tiny scenes outside the train. The very idea of moving away from oneself unsettles the mind. Then the door opens and a figure appears—father, stepping into the threshold of the room:
— May I know what you are doing here? And the reply comes softly, almost timidly:
“No,” is the quiet answer.