if i didn't drive the truck out of brooklyn i'd be thinking about leaving brooklyn and i don't want to do that so i take the first leg of the trip. new jersey is as unhospitable as you'd think, with bone snapping pot holes and little zippy cars that show up in my slow lumbering arm pit and speed away before my irritation becomes actionable. the better part of pennsylvania is merely an exercise in will, trying to get far enough away so i can't cry and clutch apron strings. i don't get to enjoy that state as much as i usually do, with neat farms buttoned into old mountains, red barns with their protective symbols, the occasional shimmering river.

he sews up the remainder of pennsylvania, and takes the rest of the midwest with it. we pass the bones of what will be the recreational vehicle and motor home hall of fame, gasping at what that might be when fully arrayed, but no more so than the flyover labelled, without any other fanfare: fangboner road. thank you to the good people of davenport iowa for the only decent dinner of the trip, with both good meat and good vegetables. and thank you also to the cheery hotel clerk who when asked to name the quad cities says, davenport, bettendorf, rock island, moline, and east moline.

i'm on again in wyoming and an uneven spring is melting the snow in crenulated slags, like the uneven nacre inside of an oyster. it's well time to retire it, dirt crusted and jagged, and only made more apparent when we move into utah. this is so immediately mormon country even the snow appears to have been steam cleaned than placed carefully onto the mountains. they have even gotten god to stage the lighting so you will know he lives here, greatly, expansively, powerfully.

nevada is the inverse, ruggedly beautiful yes, but with a godless earthiness, a more emphatic "here i am, you deal with it" than the preening peaks of utah. i get us over the california line and it's time to let him take me home.

he was a sheltered brain from inside the crime belt of detroit. i was at the hiring meeting and when i came to know him later i told him that mostly he was hired because they thought it was cool that he was black. he laughed and said if they were so stupid to give him a job for that reason, he was happy to take advantage of the situation.

his apartment was mostly furnished with sci-fi--books, comics, video tapes. i don't think he was emulating spockian detachment when he told me he didn't understand sex. had no interest in it. i thought about trying to introduce him to it, then realized that if it wasn't true, i wouldn't be doing him a favor, and if it were true, i'd just be violating him.

one day he stayed late after his shift, or maybe it was that he came in early. he had a little book of his drawings with him, like the notebooks 12 year old boys carry around with their smudgy penciled rocket cars, flames shooting out the back. he was designing his dream pod house of the future. he asked me what i wanted in the room he was making for me, and then i knew i had touched him in a way that mattered.

he moved west, hitching along with a guy we called andy boy from the boxes of broccoli delivered to the restaurants kitchen. andy boy was one of the cooks and he smoked a lot of dope and played drums and was in a band, or had friends who were in a band, or maybe just friends with a spare room, or something, somewhere in california. they gave me their address but the letter came back. for a long time i wondered where my friend was but when your name is dave taylor you can hide anywhere.

Holy flying monkeys! It's actually a garden! Lillies, roses, hydrangea, a flowering dogwood. Almost like the garden guy read my mind. Plus trumpet vine and honeysuckle for hummingbirds. Yes, there are hummingbirds in Brooklyn. Not the suicide bombing squadroons like in Marin, but still. And ivies and daisies and coreopsis and things that turn the color of pomegranate in the fall and things with red berries for the winter and things that are always green and not ouch-poky.

I'm tired and wired and excited and filthy. Tomorrow is moving day.

This is day four. No, I didn't forget. Day three I didn't get back until after dark. Day four is when my cel phone cam decided it didn't want to send pictures, and I got tired of trying.

This is the garden, day two.

I have lived in six different places since I came to New York 16 years ago. That's a lot of disassembling and re-assembling. Tonight I am sleeping on a mattress on the floor for the first time in a very long time.

This is supposed to be a garden by the end of the week. This is the end of day one.

I knew the moment I started packing was the moment I don't live here any more.

I had a new roof put on last week, an attempt at protection, the daily guardianship I can no longer provide.

She never made me a promise she couldn't keep. When I first approached her, she lightly slapped me away, and knew that I didn't even know how generous that was. I learned how to watch and pay attention, see how she breathed and how she moved, and for that she rewarded me. She didn't mature me, but she showed me how to grow myself up.

And now I leave Brooklyn. The next weeks are all about getting ready. People say you can always come back, but I don't allow myself that luxury. We've all seen it. You'll go, and you'll stay gone. The gutters and the asphalt and the iron will all move past you, you'll forget where the F and the Q diverge, and you will visit only in movies, misnaming rivers and streetscapes. Yeah, I'll be one of those.