About a week or so ago, I wrote a post titled, “Another Post Not About Flaneuring,” one of those short and sweet ramblings I put up when I get busy or distracted or there is a cute, half-naked man on my bed. (Some things never change.) As I do with my infrequent, sporadic postings, I left a link on my Facebook page letting my friends know that I actually wrote, along with the blurb, “One day, I'll write a blog post that actually relates to the title of my blog. Today is not that day. Today it's all Golden Girls and Cher.”
My wise friend Jamie C. commented on my Facebook wall:
“Perhaps it would be easier to change the name of the blog ...?”
To which I replied:
“Hmmm...true point...but then it would be called, ‘Feminism! Kitties! Procrastination! Whoo-hoo!’”
And it would. Seriously. Feminism! Kitties! Procrastination! Whoo-hoo!.blogspot.com has a ring to it. Maybe F!K!P!Whoo-hoo! would be better?
Wise Jamie C. reminded me of some lingering thoughts left on the back burner. What am I trying to do in this space? If the title were literal, I would be a photographer collecting images and sights of London. But many, many blogs already do that, and do it well. Better than I ever could. I like my flâneuring and I do want to keep it up. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?
There are times when I want to be found.
Here at FitC, I write my funny thoughts, share my view of our beautiful, fragile, scarred world, and post pictures of my dear kitty. My picture is brazenly displayed at your right hand; smiling, tangled-hair girl in front of one the world’s most iconic landmarks. My name is plastered on these pages: Natalie, simply Natalie, no hiding behind a nom de plume, just Natalie and sometimes a surname too, if you look hard enough. My life is laid bare on the Internet in careful words and photos, and open, completely open, for all the risks and privileges that entails.
I run the risk of plagiarism, of exposure, of every troll and asshole on the Internet finding me, taking my image, my words, my pictures and distorting them. I leave myself stripped bare of armor to mockery and hate, the default mode of Internet anonymity.
There are days when I don’t want to be found, at all, when I want to hide, delete, and censor my life to a limit of controls and passes which only I can dole out or deem appropriate.
But that’s no way to live, is it?
So I have my little page, and I can be found. For better or worse, I can be found. And there are people that I wish to find me, people I have lost and people I have never met.
Find me. Come on.
For instance, you ask?
David Bowie. Please. Find me. You’ve reached me already; my life ever altered and changed by your song. I’ll make you laugh in return. Employers – come find me. I’ve searched and searched for you. Publishers. Literary agents. Read this. These words? They barely scratch the surface. I’ll entertain you.
And readers. These promises I make? They are ten-fold for you.
A few things are certain.
1.) I will not abandon this without warning again. If I don’t post for a few days, or a week, it’s not because I’ve changed my mind. It’s because I’m in grad school and have work to do and a life to try and lead. Or I decided to use my free time that night to shave my legs. Either/or. But I’m here.
Sometimes all I can manage may be a Golden Girl quote, but I’m here.
2.) Flâneur in the City stays the title, but the URL may change. It’s a long-ass URL, I know. Flâneur-in-the-city takes some time to write. Hopefully you will bookmark this and decide to return and never need to know the site URL again. But Flâneur-in-the-city.blogspot is a mouthful when I try to tell people about the blog. This may change.
3.) When it comes to the blog: this is it. This is the place. I’m a writer. Remember that. First and foremost: I am a writer.
I’m also a former editor. It’s against years of training for me to post something that will not amuse, entertain, move or inform. The copy will be clean (or else I lay awake at night and worry over it – like, should I have used “whom” instead of “who” in a previous post? Damn.) And you will not growl in frustration with mistakes like “your” for “you’re” on a daily basis.
The city is wherever I am, be it Charlotte or New York or London or Amsterdam or Timbuktu. I wander and observe, I snap pictures and collect thoughts, I am the flâneur, and the city is ever under my feet.
That city can be a bit metaphorical, my dears.
There are many paths yet to walk. I write about politics, because it affects us daily. I write about feminism, because it affects the world daily. I write about pop culture and my cat and David Bowie because it is my life and only I can live it. And because we need humor and laughter too, lest the world become unbearable. We need the beauty, the scars, and we desperately need to laugh.
So all this becomes the path we walk, and you become flâneur with me. You may be my friend. You may be a stranger. You may know me only from Facebook, or an Internet forum, or a link from somewhere else. But you’re here.
Let’s see where this takes us, shall we?
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