Sorry to join the B&T set? Not hardly.

On Sunday, I rolled up my tent, packed my sleeping bag, and walked out of my apartment, leaving the keys in the mailbox before I closed the vestibule door. Yep, I moved out of the city — and for the next ten days, until Kate and I close on our house, I’m a Man Without a State, like all the expatriate dignitaries in a Krister Stendahl book. Well, maybe not just like the stateless dignitaries in a Krister Stendahl book.

Anyhow, when I walked from Penn Station to [My employer] today, I felt like I had cut the rubber band that connected me to New York — for me, now, like for umpteen million others, New York is the dirty place I go to during the day to make money. Which I seem to be fine with. I was always envious, as a kid, of my parent’s New York Years — my dad, living in a loft above a motorcycle shop and working at Look magazine, and my mom, living in the west village and going to see Charles Mingus in jazz clubs — but I feel like I’ve had a good run in New York, too, and I’m ready to move on. [later addition:] After all, how’s this for a New York Coolness high water mark? I walked into Vice UK, the hipster brit-shirt store around the corner, and they had filled the shelves with Defend Brooklyn merchandise since my last visit. The small, dirty Brit ravers gathered around to hear my stories about the origins of the shirt. (“Look! He has communed with the Mighty One! He knows about the origins of The Shirt!”)

There were birds singing outside Kate’s apartment window this morning, and all the cherry and dogwood trees are in early bloom, and the grass smelled of fresh rain. And there are tennis courts you don’t have to fight a stockbroker to use, and if you go down a flight of stairs in West Chester, it’s okay to touch the railing. And Amtrak runs between New York and Exton every day. I always knew that I’d move out of New York someday, and I was always afraid that I’d feel really sad about it, and always regret moving. Nope, didn’t happen: frankly, I feel almost like it’s the first day of summer vacation. And, if I miss it, Kate and I can just get rich and have a pied-a-terre (so that our teenage kids will have somewhere to go raid the liquor cabinet. Ha! I’ll show them: alum in the gin!)