Sunday, January 17, 2010

Choose your* own adventure

Ah, the glories of the three-day weekend! After a lovely Saturday including a fabulous leisurely brunch, plenty of bear jokes, and the bizarre charms of Eddie Izzard ("In the 1800s Charles Darwin wrote a book, Great Expectations, about an amoeba named Pip. Oh, wait, that was Charles Dickens. Charles Darwin wrote the masterpiece Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, You!") I of course reverted to all my pre-workaday-schedule slothfulness, stayed up egregiously late, and awoke around noon to the sound of rain dripping down the window. (The rain is probably part of why I woke up at such an indolent hour--when the weather's nice, the sun streams through the windows so forcefully that its heat can wake me up.)

I groggily rose and tried to figure out what to do all day. Some people in my neighborhood were starting a movie-watching group, and that seemed promising...but my handy-dandy inbox informed me that the meeting was canceled for today. So after indulging in some piano practicing and granola eating, I decided to partake in my favorite activity: a walk.

I moseyed down to Prospect Park and through it, all the way to the giant Grand Army Plaza library, from which I finally write this post. (It was truly a labyrinthine, if not quite Trial-esque, affair to figure out how to reserve myself a computer, let me tell you.) While walking the park I passed through various points of interest--a candle memorial for Haiti's earthquake victims; the intriguing Lefferts House, no doubt not in its best season; the edge of the zoo, complete with a squirrel acrobat flipping from branch to branch just outside the more exotic barred creatures; the boarded-up carousel. (The ex-horseback-rider in me loves the idea of being able to walk to a ride, however small. What I really should work on is finding about the actual stable on the other side of the park.)

Sometimes when I act out this type of mental tourguiding and cataloguing, I think about audiences in general, and occasionally about this blog in particular. Are these scenic laundry lists the sorts of things people want to hear about? Or would they prefer to read the ridiculous (the woman next to me on the train Friday greeting someone, "Hello naughty girl!" only to then pull out a copy of Why Men Like Bitches, the last word elaborately curlicued) or the analytical (self- or otherwise) or the sublime (I wish)?

And so I conclude that maybe this blog needs a bit more direction. To that end, I poll y'all once more. What sort of thing would you like me to write about? Shall I continue with my tirades and bullet points? Would you like something more structured, such as (likely unqualified) reviews of music, theater, books, and food? Would you like a guided tour of what I think about when I think about walking? Or, at the risk of sounding like a bad self-help book, one of how I got inspired to run after reading this? Or something else? Sing to me, muses.






*or, um, mine.

8 comments:

  1. FIRST RULE OF BLOGGING:
    Don't blog about blogging.

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  2. Second rule of blogging? Don't blog about what you blog about when you blog about blogging.

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  3. yes yes all of the above! Which isn't helpful, I know - but can't you do a mixture?

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  4. I VOTE FOR FOOD.
    also, books.

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  5. only if it tastes like strawrberries

    sweet things!

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  6. blisters on your feet? write novella

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  7. I like reading the scenic tourguiding and the ridiculous. I confess I am a bad blog reader, though. When something gets too philosophical on the internet, I kind of skip ahead to look for something witty or funny. But I am a bad reader. I do like hearing your stories

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