Writing Prompt #45: THE ART OF EAVESDROPPING

Hi Everyone,

Today, I’d like to exhort you to pay extra close attention to the world in which you live. Get out from behind your computers and I-phones and listen, watch carefully, keep your antennae up. There’s a rich randomness all around us that’s available for the plucking.

Some years ago I was strolling along one of the main drags of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, my sister’s neighborhood, when I overheard an older, middle-aged woman buttonhole her companion: “There’s no way I’m going nowhere without no teeth!”

Intrigued by her urgent tone, I stopped in my tracks to listen for more. But the pair got away from me. Now I still don’t know what, if anything, I might do with that phrase but it’s the listening, and the reward of the listening, that matters.

If you live in the world with all your senses open and at the ready, be prepared to receive its gifts. Don’t worry if these gifts make no sense at first, or strain credulity. Play along, navigate the perforated lines of magic and incredulity, that sweet spot between what’s remotely possible and what’s technically, logically impossible.

YOUR PROMPT: Go sit in a park or another public place and just listen—as if your ears were butterfly nets. What did you catch? Anything you might be able to harness for your work?

Have fun!

Abrazos,

Cristina