I’m doing an isolation journal prompt series and welcome you to join! I’m only sharing responses to prompts that feel acceptable enough to share (don’t involve others for example).
Prompt
What’s the funniest thing that happened to you last year? Write a paragraph from the point of view of an inanimate object that bore witness to it. Could be your hat. Could be your wedding ring, a streetlamp or the plant in the corner of the bar. Use as much sensory/sensual language as possible to describe the memory from that object’s perspective.
I don’t just bear witness to Anne’s world–I capture it. She wears me around her neck and often fumbles as she tries to use me to document whatever might have caught her attention. It can take a while for me to warm up even though I’m technically made up of lenses, buttons, metal, etc. I like to keep things interesting and Anne doesn’t seem to mind needing to cajole me into working with thoughtful setting changes and a quick cleanup of my lens. We both know it’ll take her 5-10 pictures of something dumb before she really begins to train her eye on something interesting anyway.
It was lightly raining and getting dark. I wasn’t happy about either but Anne hadn’t picked me up in a while. She was predictable at this point choosing reflection shots as she often does. I obliged.
As the rain grew heavier, I expected us to turn around. Instead, moments later, I found myself lens first nearly touching the concrete. I thought she dropped me… Snails? Snails. I wasn’t amused and was reluctant to get the shots I know Anne wanted.
Really? This is worth it? Anne was determined–on the ground and in the rain. Realizing she wouldn’t move onto anything else until I managed to snag the shot, I decided to focus.
This only added fuel to the fire. Sigh. Suddenly, before she could even review the pictures she took, I was yanked up from the sidewalk. I barely got a glimpse of the baffled man standing and watching as he smoked a cigarette. While neither of us knew how long he’d been there, we both knew it had been long enough and that these tiny snails that Anne almost accidentally crushed were not visible to anyone not willing to nearly lie down on concrete to witness them. We moved quickly away just as I was getting used to the idea that snails might be worth capturing.
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