"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.