I do not know what to say about America anymore. Only that I am done.

We are done, America. It is over.

For a while I thought NY was separate; I could love NY and leave it, but still maybe one day come back to it. That may not be true now.

My train caught fire last week. At 50th St, the conductor announced that due to an investigation this would be the last stop on our train. I got off, from one of the cars in the back, and started walking forward, not really knowing what to do next. I could switch from the B to the E, but that wasn't remotely useful in terms of getting to work. As I got toward the front of the train though I realized that -- either on the track, directly in front of it, or the front carriage itself was on fire. Like, a big bonfire filling the entire tunnel. I wrapped my scarf around my face and headed back the way I'd come, to wait for an E going the wrong direction, so I could switch to an A...

The next night my B train turned into a D, halfway home. This weekend I took the shuttle to the C, but the C was stopped in the station for a sick passenger. It had been there ten minutes already; I waited ten more, then gave up and got back on the shuttle, which I took to the 4 (because the 2/3 wasn't running), to get to Union Square, which had not been my original destination. At least I got a babka out of it.

The point is NY is no great shakes. It is too hot in summer and too cold in winter. The MTA is crumbling. It may be kind and thoughtful on an individual level (it is! it really is) but en masse, it is hard. Brutal. I love Prospect Park but I don't think I could still be here without it.

And however much I want to separate NY from America, the fundamentals remain the same. Too many cars. Guns. Lack of health care.

We are not okay. This -- none of this -- is okay.

I can't fix it. I can't change it. The best I can do is boycott it.

I will not send my child to school in this country.

Can I raise her with any pride in her American half? Pride perhaps in what was, what could have been, in the idea of an America that never was? Pride in simulacrum. Pride in Disney World and Sesame Street and Mister Rogers and The Parent Trap. Pride in the stories we tell, especially those we tell about ourselves. Pride tempered with the knowledge that we have failed. We dreamed, but it did not come true.

Is this overly pessimistic? I had dinner with an old friend last night and he seemed to think so. He claims humanity will be fine, ultimately. We'll have self-driving cars and yes we're all self-interested but actually that will eventually lead us to utopia. Or something. Anyway he was more optimistic than me.

But he doesn't have children. He can talk about the survival of humanity without worrying about how it will actually feel to be a human. Like sure, humanity survives in Planet of the Apes but dude, that is not how I want my daughter to live. I want to believe the way people in the 50s believed (if they did), that for my children it's all up, up up! from here.

I don't. All I can do is apologize to her, for that.

And then teach her which plants are edible, how to find water and start a fire and climb trees and snare small rodents and incapacitate a person with her bare hands if she needs to.

Not here though.

Bye, America.