Talking, Pictures

The willows are budding...

..and Bidarki creek falling to the beach is making icicles of cathedral grandeur...

I sent in my fourth of the five packets for the second year of the MFA program. Can scarcely credit I have only one more to do. This one was delightful to me, as I'd had the space, with Phil gone, with the house-sitting, to focus and get excited about my work. It feels somewhat like the picture above--falling, falling; but with such a sense of uplift. A pointer to my new life. I also read a poet about whom I'm excited in a full-blown epiphanic way, more than I have been even about my very favorite poets. His name is Andrew Joron. He writes speculative lyric, and he is auditory! I get it! And he did things around words and alphabet that I'm doing in my work right now, so there were lots of spooky coincidences. I'm in awestruck admiration, and also avid to make a connection with the poet and share enthusiasms. Now, a day or so of busyness, and then back to the writing and work...until an Anchorage trip next week.

"Why is Roxy barking so ferociously?" one morning when I'd let her out. Here's the view from the bedroom window, what she was reacting to. Moose's butt. She thinks moose are for barking at, which is scary at times. 

Do you see the moose in this one? Bedded down. They are everywhere at the moment.

Sometimes all you need to do is show someone a picture. I always seem to have all these auras and epiphenomena (ephemera?) I need to include radiating from the picture. See how monochrome all these pictures are. See how each of them is subtly colored, each with a different shade and cast. Oh, and I try to speak that, in real time talk. No wonder I stammer and backtrack.

Siri is teaching me to speak, it turns out, far more than the other way around. I'm surprised by how quickly I can type on that tiny iPhone keypad with one or two fingers, but it is awkward, put mildly, and makes everything sore very quickly. So I dictate my texts and dates and to-do lists almost exclusively. Even with the time correcting Siri's mistakes, it's quicker. I'm learning to speak slowly but not too slowly--this is a speech recognition system that recognizes words in context and too much space will lose that context. On the other hand, I have to leave more space between the words than I would ordinarily, not run words together; I have to be precise about my front and back vowels, avoid affricating t's and d's at the ends of words...Not only is Siri teaching me to talk; also making me even more self-conscious about my own pronunciations. 
But if you're saying something to a speech recognition system that's going to start anticipating the next thing you'll say, accurate transcription will be more likely if you say something predictable. Yikes, what does that say about our communications with one another? Do we WANT to be predictable? I think I need to stop this right now. Sometimes when you go through and correct, Siri will offer its own correction. And sometimes this alternative would be more predictable than what it originally offered. I was dictating a text saying that I was booking Roxy to get her hair clipped (so she wouldn't have icicles in her eyes all the time), and this was transcribed as "I'm f***ing her to get clipped..." I was horrified. Yes, there's a bit of prude in me, which is why it's so scary for people when I actually curse. How did Siri come up with that in the context? When I went to fix it, I was sweetly offered "booking." Siri, you're a twit!

The dogs are teaching me to talk, too. Alone (otherwise) in this big house, I'd rather not talk, but I talk to them, and some of it they definitely understand, good things like "Wanna come to bed?" and "Ready to load up?" as well as things like "Lay down!" (they understand that better than "lie down," which shows that this verb "lay" has extended its meaning in contemporary English). They are keenly tuned to body language, but because they have certain biases, they anticipate (like Siri), not always accurately. They are very very biased toward outings and food. 

Back to the bluff as envoi--some of those icicles are at such interesting angles, especially toward the top left. A frozen weeping mane... 

What Remains, What Gets Left Behind

Hello everyone! Mornings here are becoming so light, and with some light still in the sky at 6pm, the sense of curfew, of having to hurry home, is eradicated. It's snowed us into black-and-white again this past week, but with the influx of light, the black and white are merely the poles upon which color plays.

I've been the dog-auntie for almost two weeks now, the denizen bedizening this beautiful big house--yes, I do feel gaudy and extravagant here! I've written about that before. 

More important, I've been very much by myself. Not completely alone, with writers' groups, meet-ups, appointments, chores and errands, etc. But by myself. On my own cognizance. And you know what? 
It feels so good!
Phil is still in Tucson, until the end of the month, and is likewise having a great time. I'll be up here through the end of March.
I've been writing and working and writing and pulling things buried in my notebook out like pieces of worked rock from an archaeological dig, finding that I can now move forward with the myriad blocked drafts. Well, maybe they were blocking a draft, and now the wind is in a different corner!
More on the draft and the different corner later.
For now, gratitude, with caution. It is such a joy to be writing. It is such a joy to be in what is mostly a very low-stress situation. Yes, this house's driveway, sheer and straight with a hairpin at the top, is notorious, and has been especially challenging with all the recent snow. But it got plowed and sanded this morning after I called for help--there is help at hand. And with my competent car, I got in and out over and over, my anxiety and stress about it diminishing every time. And yes, the dogs are demanding and one of them whines and sometimes yaps in the car, which drives me crazy and makes me scared for my driving...oh and my goodness, sends me back to carpools in grade school with one or another parent going ballistic over the noise we were making. Those parents' age now myself, I feel the role reversal with sickening clarity. But if you hike the dogs well in the morning, they're less demanding the rest of the day, and that even enjoins a welcome regular beach hike upon me.

But otherwise, the great majority of stressors are simply not present. Being alone most of the time feels restorative and agreeable, even if I'm not writing or working every moment.

And there's the caution (i.e. what happens when things get more stressful?), together with the observation that it's easy to ignore a problem in one area if you're feeling good in every other. Great thanks to ML for helping me with both those observations. And so, I have recommitted to a regular and adequate sleep schedule after a week or so of not sleeping much at all, in recognition that (a) I was simply getting exhausted and (b) much more of that and inevitably I'd start being crazy. And so, I am grabbing a hold of my physical self, puzzlement as that is. I haven't been "keeping it up" very well, through some sort of negligence; small differences being hard to see, they don't convince that it's necessary to do anything different. Plus, as I said, I feel so good--orders of magnitude better than other times I've left too much of myself behind. But the meds need something to ride on, and plumbing the limits of that in exploration would be a fool's errand; negligence would be criminal.

So, what remains? What gets left behind? The questions framed by a living space and situation familiar but utterly estranged from my normal home, with the possibility of moving even farther afield. And I've been talking for ages about changes to this blog. Writing, poetry, this blog remain, for sure--they might even be the foundation. Or the magic carpet. Seeking more outlets for my writing, submitting my work--those things fell by the wayside some when I got sick last year, but I've been solicited to write some book reviews (which I love to do) in a couple places, and am getting inspired to start submitting my creative work places again. 

In the bigger picture, of what my persona, my life, my living situation is going to look like, of the depth of my relationships with the people closest to me here, how they are going to be...well, bigger picture, bigger questions! I'm feeling some urgency to demonstrate that I can manage by myself, with some fey ebullience in the "Of course I can" direction.

I've left so much between the lines in this post because I don't even know how to talk about a lot of this right now. Hopefully what I've left out won't be left behind. Feel free to ask me if you have questions--you know how willing I am to be frank one to one.

Meanwhile, of course I'm going to be fine, when I am sleeping in the master bedroom with this pile of pups...(and let it be noted--I've watched dogs (these and others) many times before, but this happens to be the first time they've decided to sleep with me, and I've been ok with it).