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...