departure

“Realizing how well I understood these places, I clung to what was familiar and was reluctant to surrender it to the distance. That bridge, that church, that field. There is nothing shocking about leaving home, but rather a slow feeling of gathering sadness as each familiar place flashes by the window, and disappears, and becomes part of the past. Time is made visible, and it moves as the landscape moves. I was shown each second passing as the train belted along, ticking off the buildings with a speed that made me melancholy.”

Paul Theroux, The Patagonian Express, 1979, p. 10

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