"I'm ready to make--out of whatever you give me--a story."

Incomparable things about this part of the world:

Hay carts everywhere, empty and waiting for August. (If you've never seen a hay cart, they look like enormous cages made of wood, often painted blue or red, and when they are pulled, they are pulled by tractors. The rest of the time, like now, they sit empty at the edges of the sprawling hay fields that are all across the state, and they are gorgeous.)

Men can call me "dude" and still, somehow, be flirting with me. (How is it that they look so strong and outdoorsy even in the summer, when they are dressed just like everyone anywhere that's hot? It's like they are wearing invisible flannel shirts.)

The primary ways people suggest hanging out are a) going swimming or b) eating ice cream. (The lake is warm now--people are saying in the seventies--though I haven't been in yet. And when we talk about ice cream up here, we call it "creemees." As in, "I'll meet you down at the creemee stand after dinner," which is a phrase I have uttered countless times in my life, including earlier today.)

Lyra, in the passenger seat of the car (don't tell JRoss) with the window all the way down and her front paws on the armrest, her head out the window so that the wind pushes her ears back and her mouth is open and grinning. (Even better is when she turns back and looks at me, like, "Hey! Mom! Can you see? This is so fucking awesome!")

"We are too ill to bear the cure."

I am staying with my parents. They are up so early that no matter what time I get up, if I want to sit outside and write, there is no way to avoid letting them in before the day starts, no way to work before the world is too much with me. However, if I can push past them, if I can get outside and I can sit down, the yard, with its gardens and its wildflowers and its lilac bushes and its wood pile and its pine trees and its barn, stretches out before me.

Right now, it's the kind of light that only happens on summer mornings--yellow--and there's a coolness in the air, and the birds, who woke up hours ago, are still very busy and very loud.

Yesterday, when I woke, this was paradise and I knew it. But as the day wore on, some kind of darkness came back, and by evening, when I saw the beautiful face of my beautiful person Skyped across half the country, I could only weep, I could only wish for some word from him or from G-d that would somehow alleviate this thing inside me that is spoiling this adventure and, it seems at times, this life. And no word like that can come from anyone, except possibly G-d, and G-d, so far, is not speaking.

But again it is morning, again the sun has risen and again I am awake. Again, today, I see this paradise, I know it is paradise, I am filled with hope, with gratitude that New England is a place on this earth and that it is the place from which I come and the place to which I have returned... grateful for the beards and the flannel and the men wearing clogs Schnipper and I saw in Burlington last night; grateful for Schnipper entirely and how she reflects a world I understand, a world I am part of; grateful for the joy I find in my work; grateful for the dream I had about Hannah that was filled with love and the years and years of our friendship; grateful that I woke being able to hold space for the love of my sweetperson, the love of my family--given and chosen.

Good morning, Vermont. Good morning, Chicago. Good morning, Brooklyn.

"The subject does not pre-exist. It emerges out of the interaction between the artist and the medium... between the subject and the object."

Good morning, Vermont.

Hi. It's amazing to wake to you.

I slept for eleven hours, a kind of sleep I have not slept in months--definitely not since 2010. And it was glorious. I had my cards read before I left New York, and the card reader said that I'd start getting real rest when I left, that this move would be good for my sleep. And it's pretty fucking thrilling that, day one, that's starting off true.

Now I am sitting in my childhood bed and there are birds out the window, and a cool breeze coming in, and the sound of the trees moving slightly, and the sky is grey, but a beautiful grey, and the only other sound is my fingers on the keys (and if you've ever been in the same room as me, typing, you know that sound is pretty loud).

Next I will get up and shower and take the dog to play. I will eat something and then go to a yoga class that the neighbor up the hill teaches in the studio on the top floor of her barn. It's walking distance, but--this is not New York, and I no longer have to agitate my injured foot just to get where I want to go, and so I will drive. And then I will go to the post office and the dentist, and then back to Charlotte, to read and write and eat dinner with the fam and my parents' friends who are coming over. Real vacation, if vacation means a vacation from my entire life, including my dearests.

The torment of yesterday as I anticipated leaving has abated for the moment. I am not missing anything or anyone. I am not longing for something that is not here. I am just here, just letting this be the day and this be the adventure and knowing that you all whom I love will join me on it at some point down the line.

Good morning, Brooklyn.

"Choosing a ground by something pre-existent in you... presumably the object that has aroused in you something."

We made it. Barely, but we made it. Lots of weeping, lots of scrambling, lots of traffic. But here we are. And it is green, and the gardens are in bloom, and Lyra lept around and dug for mice and I sat outside with my parents as the sun dropped behind the Adirondacks at the pace it takes this time of year--slightly faster than a month ago, but still slow.

There is respite here, I think. There are dentist appointments and a trip to the vet, and there are late night mojitos with the Schnip, and there are late night beers at the OP, and there are walks along Church Street and walks along the lakes, and there is swimming, and there are mornings spent working in the sun, and there is yoga class, and there is building a job for myself out of the seed I have been carrying with me. There are Skype dates with friends afar, and there is unpacking and repacking and watering the plants I've almost killed in the last months, there is the chance of bringing back life. The plants' and my own. There is fetch with Lyra in the park, there is hoping she might try to swim, there are movies with my brother and meals he cook,s where "meals" equals meat alone.

There is also a sore throat and exhaustion, there are episodes of Real Housewives, there are books--I'ma read something indulgent, something delicious, something kind of dumb but not dumbing. I am going to repair myself and write a children's book and I am going to apply and apply and apply for jobs in Massachusetts. I am going to write letters to Brooklyn here and on paper, I am going to go to the post office and buy forty stamps and I am going to use them all before the week is out.

Goodnight, Brooklyn, I say from Vermont. Sleep sweetly and send sweet sleep to me.

"The more I can postpone death by telling pointless tales, the better--for me."

Dear Brooklyn,

I'm trying to get out the door. The last three days have been filled with sadness and weeping and wishing for this to be easier, wishing to know more about what I am leaving for, what I am moving toward, wishing to be someone who can pack and go, someone who can change her life without it being some kind of disaster, some kind of crisis, but--it seems like that will never be the case. It seems like something in me just cannot handle certain difficulties, including things that, for other people, are insignificant, barely noticeable. And here I am, sprawled and weeping, paralyzed with loneliness and fear and wanting to be saved and knowing that wanting to be saved is how I might lose everything I care about.

JRoss and Cooper are on their way to Chicago. Lyra and I are in Meghan and Christy's bedroom, Lyra hiding under the bed, me getting snot all over the pillowcase I'm not going to have time to wash before I go. Not that I am in any kind of shape to do the laundry/dish-washing/tub-scrubbing/dog-hair-vacuuming I'd planned to do, even if there were time. Which I can add to the list of things that should not break me or anyone and yet break me and in breaking me, act as proof that what I am trying to do is impossible, that my limitations are unbearable--that I cannot bear them and that I cannot ask others to help me bear them; they cannot be alleviated.

To get out the door I need to pack the things I've left to the last minute--some of Lyra's toys and treats, my toiletries, my dry laundry that's been sitting in the dryer since Friday, the few food items I'm taking, my plants. I need to take out the trash and wash the dishes. I need to sweep up some dog hair and make the bed and wipe down the surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom. I need to eat something and walk Lyra. I need to leave a note for Christy and Meghan. I need to dig some kind of music situation out of the back of my packed-to-the-brim car. (Well, JRoss's car.) I need to not hold myself accountable for all the ways in which I wish I were different--that I wish I'd organized this summer better and was not doing this part alone, that I'd organized my stuff better and was not bringing a whole house worth of stuff up to Vermont, only to have to bring it all over creation in the next two months in order to get it to where I'll end up. Though it's impossible to believe I'll end up where I'd hoped to.

Brooklyn, I wish I could leave in some other state--that I could celebrate you and thank you and love you and depart full of joy and hope and excitement and enthusiasm. I will close my eyes for a minute, rest. And then I will leave in whatever way I can leave, I will take the steps I can take and I will be on my way somewhere.

"The way you do anything is the way you do everything."

I am fighting my inclination to leave without saying anything. I have made space to be with people--in groups, mostly, some individual farewells--though I keep wishing I had just packed my car two weeks ago and gone quietly north, informed people that I was gone once they asked, but said nothing beforehand, certainly not goodbye.

Last night Liz came to say goodbye to Lyra, and also, theoretically, to me, though it didn't really feel like goodbye, or so much like anything, between us. She said, "It's really more like 'see you soon,'" and though she is right, there is still a finality for me, a finality in me.

Tonight I see Abbi and tomorrow, Lauren, and then it's over; Saturday with JRoss and Sunday I'm Vermont-bound.

I am doing my best to say goodbye, doing my best to stay here until I am actually gone, to stay here until I said I would leave, to mark the end on the calendar where I have already marked the end on the calendar and to not quit before and to not quit quietly.

Later, Brooklyn, I will say, I am saying. See you soon.

Refusing Heaven

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt.

–Jack Gilbert

"A life saved by allowing a substitution. This thing is a substitution. It replaces the given."

Dear Brooklyn,

This is a serious countdown. A deposit-on-a-New-England-apartment-no-turning-back-start-the-Subaru-engines countdown. In 22 minutes, it will be Wednesday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and I leave. We leave. Me and Littles, headed to Vermont. The lake, the Schnip, the dentist, my mother's flower garden. Also lots of looking for work (where "looking," at this point, largely means "hoping that there is, actually, something to The Secret") and sleeping without fear of bugs, and star-seeing, and limping up Mount Philo.

And then Times Square for a minute to celebrate the birth of Carolyn Pincus and then Chicago to see my sweetperson making a movie and to hug his big bear dog. And then Vermont again and then Chicago again, this time at the end of Can You Catch Up on a Year Between New York and Chicago? A Marielle/Alex Adventure. And then back to Vermont to make a toast in honor of Jorie Pollak and Hal Himmel, and then, and then, and then, the real adventure--the I'm-walking-away-from-that-which-is-known adventure--begins.

And already, Brooklyn, I miss you. And Inwood. And Tenth Street. And Washington Heights. I miss you, all the lives I've lived here, and I step on your backs and I'm gone.

"The grisly fact is that whatever space you intend to enter words into already has in it a multitude of words into infinition."

I'm feeling all kinds of sorrow and grief and worry and fear and excitement about leaving New York and, quite literally, heading for the hills. One of the things I'm thinking about is how to stay connected to the humans I love here, the humans who've become my humans, the friends who are my family.

While I have every intention of writing a million letters and postcards, of sending packages and making Skype dates, the reality is that I've chosen to leave this home and make another, and that with making a home comes work and life and new people and my sweetheart living close, and I probably won't be as connected to this former home as I'd like to be. So I am going to use this space as letters to Brooklyn (and Manhattan, obviously, and Philadelphia, and Boston, and Bellingham, and Illinois), and I am going to hope that some of you, my people, my family, check in with it once in awhile, though I hope even harder that you also check in with the actual me, and that we do send a million letters and postcards, that we do send packages and make Skype dates, that we stay close.

So, this is where you'll find me--one place, anyway. You'll also find me, in the next months, in Lake Champlain, in Chicago, in someone's car (mine or JRoss's). And come September, you'll find me in Gay City, USA, shopping at a co-op (!), walking my dog in the woods (and picking ticks off her stomach), and climbing apple trees--all while wearing Carhartts and wool sweaters and clogs. Yup. It's happening.