Paso a Paso.

1. Infrared — The Spark

Mind(less) Shop, Wetherby.

An instant behind the till, under the hum of fluorescent light and the shuffle of small donations.

Then she was there — eighty or so, rigid, unblinking. A presence that filled the space and waited for disappearance.

She offered one carrier bag as if it were law. Hovered.

Every movement of hers a quiet test: will he still exist when I’m done?

Then came the line —

“Everyone’s on the spectrum.”

A sentence that pretends inclusion but flattens difference.

I said:

“I’m not on the spectrum. I’m infrared.”

She blinked, once.

“Then you must be warm.”

“No,” I said. “I’m moving away.”

And I did — one small step. The red wave band of the universe shifting distance. The colour of things receding.

The moment passed.

The air reset.

But something had changed in me — not decision, not plan, just a quiet tilt away from the noise.

Infrared.

---

Sunday 12th October.

2. Leeds — The Emergence

Coming up out of Leeds, the city falls away in folds of mist—the kind that hides nothing, only blurs the truth. Horsforth rises ahead, unbridled and pale in the half-light, while behind me the valley exhales its human fog: kebab smoke, perfume, protest chants, all sinking back into the lungs of Sunday.

A “spectacular” Saturday, they’d said—heat swelling through the streets, shirts off, tempers up, the familiar roar of shopping and football and faiths colliding at every corner. I wade through it, half-ghost, the pilgrim with a rucksack among revellers.

Albion Street spills its aftermath across my path. The entrails of the night lie open—beer cans, fast-food cartons, a single shoe pointing nowhere. Boar Lane gleams like a surgical cut through the city’s gut. I wait for the A1 Flyer, uneasy, torn between two currents: part of me drawn south to the Delta, the other tugged west toward Logroño and the slower grace of the walk.

Above, the mist begins to lift; the valley’s body turns over in its sleep. Soon the bus will break free of it, and I’ll leave the Umbra behind—just another breath escaping the shrouded corpse of Saturday.

---

3. LBA — The Compression

The bus breaks free of the valley, the mist thinning to gauze. Leeds sinks behind me, its body folded into the haze. Up here the air sharpens; I can almost believe in distance.

Then the system begins. Scan, shuffle, queue. Locked doors leading to smaller locked doors. The new terminal glows like a promise and behaves like a trap. Airportal cluster-fuck, I mutter, moving with the herd. The prayer room’s gone, replaced by Aperol and perfume. Prices absurd. Faces empty. A holiday crowd rehearsing freedom.

Every barrier closes a little tighter. Boarding pass, passport, metal detector, patience. The walls hum; the light never changes. My head starts to throb in the press of it.

And then the aircraft itself — the most ordered space on earth. Air that isn’t air. Smiles that don’t reach the eyes. Safety cards fluttering like commandments: don’t panic, don’t breathe, don’t be.

I sit, belt clicked, knees grazing the seat ahead. The hum rises; reality drops away. For two hours we’re passengers in the Umbra—suspended, obedient, humourless.

Just when the pressure peaks, the gate of heaven opens sideways: a rectangle of light, a step down onto another shore. The air outside is real again, unpressurised, unmeasured.

The expanse waits.

---

4. Contrails

Above the Pyrenees, the questions rise first.

How do I start going the right way only?

You don’t. You start where you stand and steer back when you drift. “Right” is just the pull toward quiet.

How do I place trust in the right way only?

Trust smaller, nearer things—the breath, the step, the dog, the road. Big trust grows from those.

How do I choose only the right voice to listen to?

The right one never shouts. It doesn’t bargain or scare. Calm that doesn’t need to win—that’s it.

How do I return to the peace which is my right?

Stop fighting the noise. Let it pass like weather. Peace isn’t reached; it’s what’s left when the struggle runs out of air.

I’ve decided I’m afraid of my mother.

I was afraid of my father too—his volume, his threat.

He shouted me into shape; she persuades me out of it.

I’ve lived so long between those tones that even silence feels like danger.

Now the aircraft hums around me, metal hive of obedience. Thirty thousand feet of managed order: knees locked, trays folded, hearts ticking to the rattle of trolleys.

They call this freedom. It’s the purest Umbra—efficiency without soul. Sit back, relax, the loudspeaker lies. I fight fear with anger, and anger with stillness. Earplugs, headphones, shoes off, breath. My own sustenance hidden like contraband grace.

Ghosts push trolleys, ghosts buy scratch cards, ghosts cheer the landing as if deliverance came by announcement.

I don’t clap. I breathe.

Outside, contrails fade into cloud—the brief record of our confinement dissolving into sky.

Part Two

5: Reus - Dismantling

The aircraft spat us out into sunlight—air thick, living, tasting of metal and heat.

After hours of canned pressure my body forgot its own mass; now gravity drags it back like a penance.

I follow the backs of the sun-seekers through Customs, one narrow corridor for the island exiles.

Sortie. Salut. A gate opens. The hum of turbines fades to tinnitus.

Four hours to spare — I walk.

Beyond the sliding iron gates that guard the “sanctuary,” the world is suddenly unmeasured.

A right turn onto the camí. The dust rises.

I pick a pomegranate, not a grenade, and split it with my thumb.

The juice stains red, proof of life returning.

My socks—thin, salt-stiff—left where the stones will remember me.

Bare feet relearn the weight of the ground.

Reus begins as a shimmer: petrol, pine, and noise.

I find lunch in an Asturias restaurant, vino poured without hurry.

From one to five the hours spread beneath the skin like a bruise.

The sun drops behind the tiled roofs, slow and theatrical.

Reus, I am leaving you—but not forever?

---

6. Tracks - Leaving the Umbra.

Now platform 2, Reus — 17:09 regional express to Zaragoza.

Sun and train both lean west toward their separate conclusions,

a condescending contusion where light and cloud bleed together.

My body is fatigued; my mind still orbiting another body.

The tannoy warns, For my own security don’t leave baggage unattended.

But it’s the flies, mosquitoes, and station drunks I attend.

They move through the heat as if born of it, sacred idiots of the Umbra.

The train’s delayed — death on the track somewhere east.

Time stalls, the air thickens.

When it comes, the air shifts first — diesel, dust, that metal sigh.

I board without hurry, walking the length of the train like a corridor of moods.

The first carriage too warm, baked under the sun through the delay.

The second too cold, sealed and humming with its own absence.

The third — just right.

A mother and her children. A couple with a puppy.

The right temperature of life.

We pull away from Reus.

The suburbs slip to vine and olive.

Catalonia’s ridges begin to fade — the Haut thinning like breath.

The children swing from the handrails, small orangutans in orbit,

their laughter brief and complete, the sound of Bas itself — innocent, sufficient, alive.

Then the cry: a thin whimper from the puppy

as the father leaves for the toilet.

The ache of separation — the Umbra’s last trick.

I offer a crumb, a wordless comfort,

and the light through the window softens its edge.

Past Móra the Ebro flashes; the family departs.

I help the old couple with their bags and the dog. Gràcies.

The word lands softly; their warmth lingers.

Across the river, the towers of Ascó rise —

white steam, concrete, control.

Power contained, light caged: the summit of the Haut.

By Flix, the husks appear —

warehouses collapsing beside the river,

walls bleached back to dust.

The residue of belief.

Once a supply site, now a ruin humming with absence.

The Haut beginning to rot in its own shadow.

We follow the Ebro north-west.

The sky deepens from amber to iron.

At Caspe, the sun is gone.

Only lights remain: farms, crossings, distant stations.

The carriage is empty now; even my reflection fades from the glass.

No loneliness yet — just suspension.

The human moment has slipped away

and the world waits to see what will replace it.

Infrared now — warmth without sight.

The train a thin pulse across Aragón,

carrying me toward a darkness I do not yet call my own.