(slightly edited from my journal version)
2:30 pm
I can't recall ever being here in February before, but I could be wrong. I don't have a list of all the previous moonshots, nor does that seem like something I'm likely to put together any time soon. What matters is the now, and I'm sitting at the Bell in Tring, drinking a Greene King IPA. I landed five hours ago and it took me that long to get here.
Henry will be heading out of school in about an hour, and I'm just going to sit here quietly. I'm trying to steal Internet from the restaurant across the street where I was taken to lunch last year. Someone in here is eating something with vinegar, likely on the chips, I guess, and I'm reminded of the fish and chips I had that last time there as a guest of a lovely couple who live here.
It's quite warm here at the moment, and ridiculously sunny, and it's so much more pleasant than back home. The narrow road is busy, and the 500 to Aylesbury rolls past. These roads would never work at home, but here these roads are home. It's supposed to be this way, or at least, it always has been this way. Differences, but the people largely look the same.
A man just drove by in a white convertible, and that's followed by a little boy in his own convertible, on a narrow sidewalk, right next to the roadway. That would make me nervous if I were his father, but again, there's an ease with it that seems to fit in.
As I took the bus from the station, I noticed that Henry's picture adorns the advert for the History Boys that's posted on the way to the theatre. That made me smile.
A dog defecates mere inches from the road, and a man carrying a large parcel stops to pick up the deposit. Vehicles zoom past. In the 15 minutes I've sat here, so many people have come past, and I'm struck with the sense that it's impossible to catch all of it. The dog is now tied to a post while his master sends the parcel off on its way.
The bus I was riding zooms back the other way. I could have taken it all the way to Henry's house, but I don't want to go there yet. I'm barely going to be here. This time next week I'll be back in the office, getting ready to pick up Sam from his mother's house. There's no way I can stay here, no way I can do anything else other than come over here periodically to see the world I left behind.
I can't seem to get on the Internet, it seems to have dried up. I don't really want to connect except to tell Henry that I am here, and to figure out what happens next for our evening. I'm staying at an inn in Wiggington, I think, and I'm already looking forward to being asleep. I didn't sleep much on the plane.
Mack the Knife, or a version of it, plays on the speakers, and the line "back in town" strikes out at me. There are people here who know me, though that's more the case in Dunstable than here. Tomorrow night I will go there, and it will be an adventure.
I keep thinking I see people I know, people from Charlottesville, but they're not the same people. Similar looking faces, but different. A world that's incredibly different, and here I am again, six months later.
The building across the street has soaped up windows, and I can't tell what it was supposed to be, or what it will be. It's for sale, and maybe I could buy it, maybe I could make that work out, somehow. Another impossible idea, another fantasy that won't come true, now would I want it to. I have enough crazy ideas, but I find myself not wanting to implement them. I'm scared of being myself back home, especially in these days where everyone can be a target. I don't want to be a target. Who does?
The beer isn't as nice as I would like it to be, but this could be because I'm looking forward to seeing Henry and I'm tired and I'm nervous. This trip will be over before it begins, and that's just the way of it.
I'm mesmerized by the cars speeding past on a narrow street. I'm fascinated by the people, such as the man walking past with the balloons for someone's 60th birthday. A woman around my ages tries to jog in the opposite direction. So many people, and what do we do about it but sit here and try to document it?
The time I am here, though, I have to think about what will happen when I get back. I don't want to think about that, because I'd like to be here, would love to find a way to stay here. I keep looking at the women around my age who walk past, and then remember I have so little to offer anyone. I dismiss myself from the picture before its even resolved.
It's almost three in the afternoon, and the sun is at a different angle. I saw the moon in the eastern sky as I waited for the bus, and I remember seeing it on the plane last night. I'm a fifth of the way around the world, or something like that, and there's more than a bit of confusion related to this travel.
I thought I just saw Jay Urgo walk past, but of course it's not him. In a moment I'm going to head out. It's a nice day and I'm here. I feel incredibly fortunate, and slightly foolish, to be here. I'm going to make the most of it.
9:40 pm
"You've lost that loving feeling" plays on the speaker system at the Greyhound Inn here in Wiggington. There's maybe ten people left here in the bar, which is proper and real, and unlike what we have at Court Square. I keep forgetting what these places are supposed to be like, as opposed to what I'm used to.
I'm exhausted after the journey, but I had a 45 minute nap after being dropped off here by Henry. and his mother. Wiggington is not that far away, maybe the distance between my house and Beer Run. It's not fair to compare the two, though, not fair to really combine these things together in any kind of a way that would create a direct comparison. I wonder, though, if there's any place this remote outside of D.C. It would seem that everything there is overgrown, everything is a little overbuilt. The land use patterns are something to behold, and I'm always amazed at how that all works. I should explore more.
I'm a stranger here, despite these being familiar surroundings. I took the tube from the airport to Euston, and got the train to Tring. Then I took the bus to the town centre where I had a couple of pints while I waited for Henry to get off from school. He's much older now, and every time I see him he's closer to being a man. This is the shortest turn-around I've ever had between trips, and it already feels like it's going to be over before it's even begun.
I waited an hour and a half or so, at two different pubs, and there he was. I'm trying my best to not be a stranger to him, which is why I'm here. I'm also trying to think about what my life will be like in the time I have remaining. The exhaustion consumes me these days.
Tring is much the same as I left it. There's a couple more new restaurants, and Henry seems to know more people than he did before. He genuinely seems to love being here, and I'm so glad for him. I wish that Sam and Phin could be here with me, but they're not going to be over here. That's an avenue closed off to me for well beyond the foreseeable future. I'm a problem to be solved, it would seem.
Tomorrow I'll head to Dunstable in the evening, though there's part of me that would just like to stay here. I won't, though. It's necessary to go there and get a little more of an urban experience, compared to the more rural one I'm having at the moment in this country inn.
It's the first day, and I'm already thinking about how I get back over here again. Obviously it would be smart to get through this trip first, but the reality is to remember that the here and now is about trying to get to what I want. And what I want is to try my best to be here as much as I can, with "here" being defined as where I want to be.
The young bartender knows Henry, and it was quite amazing to be able to talk to a stranger about him. He's been here since he was five months old and this is where he has grown up. I don't have any claim on him, but here I am all the same, trying to make sure that he knows that I love him and that he's an amazing human being.
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