Your Assignments, Should You Choose to Accept Them

1. Get on a bus and ride it to the end of the line, or as far in one direction as you can possibly go. Recommendation: the M15 downtown toward Battery Park.

2. Ride a bus down a long stretch of street at night so you can see all the streetlights strung out like Christmas lights into the distance, rising and falling with the lay of the land. Recommendation: the B75 north toward Atlantic Avenue.

3. Cook a simple dinner. Recommendation: fry a steak in butter, boil some new potatoes and sprinkle with dry rosemary, and serve with some short-boiled green beans. Put a slice of lemon in your water glass.

4. Call your parents or a close family member from a public place like a bus or train station. Recommendation: the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

5. Listen to music you've never heard before.