Driving home to Brooklyn we came through Times Square. Culture shock on a grand scale.

For months now I’ve been thinking of New York as a demon lover – the one who doesn’t treat you well, who throws you just enough crumbs to keep you stumbling along in the relationship, who endlessly promises and rarely delivers. The one you stay with too long, can’t find a way to leave.

I’ve had a growing suspicion that my relationship with this city may be over. I no longer feel a deep sense of relief when the pilot announces the approach to La Guardia. I crave a garden and limited entertainment options. I’m even nostalgic for driving, for goodness sakes.

Our trip upriver was not merely a vacation, it was as a scientific experiment exploring the city-leaving premise. I didn’t expect a clear answer but within a day I knew. I felt the wide open sense that I could leave New York. Walk away. Like the moment when you look at your husband/lover/partner, the person you see morning and night, who is central to all your days and decisions, and realize that one day, possibly soon, this entire life you’ve constructed together will be gone. This person will be friend or memory. Your paths will part and start new.

But before anything changes there is today. And tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow. M and I just shacked up; his job isn’t as portable as mine; we may never want to revisit the trauma of moving which is reason enough to stay put. It isn’t clear where we would move to, and it isn’t enough to want to go.

Who knows where this will lead.

We had snow yesterday, making for a cozy day of making earrings, sewing in the studio, old movies, and hot tea to stay warm in between bursts of rattling heat in the old radiators.

M was busy with all things computer in the office. We visited each other to deliver peppermint patties and progress reports, and yelled companionably between rooms.

Today the snow has disappeared; just another damp city Monday.

I walked by this building a lot before noticing the intricate tiles above the main windows.

Somehow they manage to be bold and subtle at the same time, and remind me of this page from the 1989 Quilt Engagement Calendar, which I kept.

The quilt is called Late Fall, by Junko Okuyama based on the Broken Dishes pattern. I just googled the artist and found that Wee Wonderfuls blogged this same quilt 3 years ago. We should start a fan club.

I was meeting a friend uptown and arrived early so I walked a little along the reservoir in Central Park. There were lots of skinny people in high tech running gear, talking on cell phones, their ipods in their other hands.

The sky and water looked glum, which is how I’ve been feeling. Like I’ve fallen down and lost my way a little. I know that my mood will change, same as the weather; I want it to happen soon.

When I stepped out for lunch yesterday, this is what I saw:

I’ve been feeling challenged by our new neighborhood. In New York you can move a couple of miles and be in a different world. And I am.

Our part of Crown Heights is mainly Caribbean and the corner stores carry unfamiliar foods: stacks of dried fish, pickled meats in open buckets, eight kinds of yam, as well as roots I don’t recognize. Things smell strange to me, and I don’t feel at home.

Last Saturday we were plopped on the couch, watching TV, when we heard gun shots. I turned to M and said “There’s nothing else that sounds like that, right?” When we looked out the window there were people hanging out on the street corner, chatting. Some cops ran by. Street life continued. End of story.

When I traveled in Italy, I kept trying to figure out whether the people yelling in the street were fighting. I’m doing the same thing here, struggling to understand what the street life dynamics are. I don’t so much feel unsafe as unskilled. I don’t understand what’s going on around me, I can’t read the signs, it’s as if I don’t know the language, and I can’t quite relax.

A friend told me that in every place she’s moved to – “EVERY place”, she repeated – she has felt like she’s made a terrible mistake and simply won’t be able to tolerate living there.

I don’t feel that way. I love the apartment, and there’s no question that it was the right choice to move here. But I can’t stop vigilantly attempting to understand what is going on around me. I want to make the pieces of this new world fit so that I can file them away and stop paying attention. I think it’s going to take me a while, like learning a new language.

Saturday was the farmers market at McCarren Park. There was a live band playing; I saw a toddler doing the butt-squat dance.

There were lines for fresh milk and for chicken. I bought tomatoes and corn. It felt like taking a tiny, colorful, glorious vacation.

Now that I only have 3 weeks left in this neighborhood I’m feeling equally sentimental about the many ‘must try’ places that are about to be abandoned unexperienced, as I am about my favorites, like Maggie Brown. Especially Sunday brunch on the terrace.

And I’m trying not to order Thai food every single night, knowing that there won’t be Thai in the new hood. How will we survive?

Tis done. There remains paperwork to fax, and a lease to sign, but we’ve paid our deposit and we have a new home.

There were 20 minutes of real despair when I stood outside the building waiting for the broker, thinking that he wasn’t going to show up, wouldn’t call me, that we had missed our chance. But he arrived, and the sky was blue, and a crew was cleaning up the park across the street.

It hasn’t sunk in – I’m still tensed up and furrowy, doing my usual horizon scan for things to worry about. A little yoga might help. Sleeping in felt great. The growing garage sale pile is making me as happy as if it were my own growing treasure.

Change is frightening, and freeing at the same time.

Searching for a new home is a full-time job that is sucking my will to live. Also, it cuts into blogging time. Hear me groan.

I keep walking past this garden.

It’s private, and there’s a little bench on which I often see a cat. I’m going to go sit in that garden. Please have someone call me when they’ve found me a new home.