Lonsdale #2

I've been here for one week now. Maggie feels comfortable enough to leave me responsible for the shop all day, sometimes, today she was gone at lunchtime and I have not seen her since. I thought I'd be more anxious here, instead I grapple with loneliness. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the play, actually, which is probably not a surprise, since we only have about a month and a half left before the show, not to mention all of the shit I've had to go through to make this happen. Of course it comes up in the everyday here, too, or I find it because I'm so consumed by it, I await the arrival of my Athena and suspect her in the guise of visitors to the stand. Maggie is no Athena, if anything I feel like Telemachus and Maggie is sometimes like Odysseus and sometimes like Penelope.

Maggie is grateful, I guess, that I came here. I am grateful, too, I have to admit, for something that has begun to stir in me which doesn't when I'm not away like this. I think she knows it and tries to encourage me, yet she's barely around, busying herself with new friends and adventures, when she knows that I know that's not "it" for her either. Some of the best moments for either of us are when we are together and alone. The second day I was here I was shaky from shit sleep and an even stupider hangover and that morning she woke me up to watch the sunrise, and then she began to teach me about the shop and how to make each of these sandwiches. They do grow most (almost all of it) of the ingredients locally, she's even taken me to some spots where they grow mushrooms, cabbage, pickles, leek. There were moments that morning and have been some since where things have been perfect. Sitting indian-style on the sand, I watched her finish cooking peppers in a melt over the fire, her small, worn, pretty hands at work, I suggested she lift it higher away from the fire to cook it slower and she did, I watched her and made jokes every once in a while, and she would smile, and I would then look up the shore and see the top of a tree I had never seen before even though there are not many trees along the coast, anyway I'd see it for the first time, and fill up with admiration for it. That tree had been there all the while and I had only discovered its secrets now.

I wish Maggie could see the play. She inspires me without knowing it. In two days I'm going away alone to travel for the weekend. Then I'll be back and fly home shortly after. Who cares if her new friends are silly, anyway, she's doing what she wants to be doing right now, for that reason I give her more credit than...well, I give her the most credit, my love for her explodes, my respect for her, my appreciation of her. There's even a television here, by the way (!) Too bad I despise television and never watch it back in the States anyway, but there's some weird movie channels, and actually I found "License to Kill" was on yesterday morning. I remember when I took my nephew, Shaun, to that movie, it wasn't so long ago (he was 7 at the time, but his parents assured me it was okay for him to see an action movie). When we came out of the movie, Shaun said something to me which I had been thinking about for most of the second half of the film, he told me after Bond got his license revoked in the movie, he was worried that he would just go back to having an ordinary life, and no one would be there to save the world anymore. He added that he was relieved when Bond did come back as 007. I always liked Tim Dalton as Bond, regardless of how short his stint was, he has a look that is different from the rest of them, Connery, Moore, even Lazenby, it's that, Dalton seems serious, he seems hurt or that he carries something within him that the others didn't have to. Whether he could act or not is almost immaterial, because his appearance is powerful, it moved me to watch him sometimes. One last thing - this from Colin Potter.