Today’s Prompt: Screensaver
Puppies are good. Kittens. Though I am not a cat person, and kittens do grow into cats. Penguins and cows. Definitely goats. Oh, and a miniature donkey. Much better than a miniature horse, which seem like the teacup poodles of the equine community. Precious, like a stuffed animal and not a living creature with a bit of the wild inside. But donkeys have a combination of sweet and stubborn that melts my heart. Elephants. I want to feel it for elephants, but I am uncomfortable. Like around a disabled person. I know that the disability is a superficial variant on an completely familiar human core. I do my best to put it aside and feel shame if I can’t. That’s what elephants inspire in me: shame. So no elephants. I get enough feelings of shame facing an empty page with blinking cursor once sleep has vanished along with the lovely parade of images. So no elephants. Flowers. Sunsets. Sky. Family photos, but those can backfire. Dogs. My dogs. Long after they are gone. Still there. Alive in memory at least.
Gifs too. Not as screensavers. Memory. These play over and over on the screen in my head. A bird sledding on a plastic lid. An otter playing with a stone. A goat climbing impossibly to the top of a tree. A dog trying to bring a long stick through a narrow door. A rat eating spaghetti or a hedgehog walking on piano keys. What does it all mean?
Shall I interpret these screensaver dreams? Maybe they keep the inner display from burning out, keep it refreshing. Awake or asleep. Or both at the same time sometimes.
HOW THIS WORKS: I have a jar of nouns. I pick one at random and post it. If I’ve done this right, none of the prompts will be something you’re excited to write about. The excitement comes through what you find as you write about the commonplace.
By the end of the day, write a minimum of 250 words but no more than 500 instigated by the noun.
Tomorrow, I will post my effort here and make a new post for whatever word comes out of the jar next. You are invited to post your writing or link to it in the comments so others can read it. Visit yesterday’s prompt to see what showed up there, whether you wrote your own or posted it.
You can comment without contributing. However: No critiques, please, but discussion of the process most welcome.
