9.30.12       Siri-ously 

Hadley Moon, 2.25.13

Last Friday night, after collapsing from the work week, I spilled a little bit of water on the living room table without noticing. Then noticed it. Then my cell phone, which is my only phone, and little and red and old and happily taped together and working just fine, able to write long missives and contact whomever I need to, died. The end. And in case you too are going to suggest rice baths for two days and other errant solutions to wet cellphone maladies, nope. Too late. Of course, I’m also too old to mess around fretting  and wringing my hands. But I did wonder what my business would do until Monday when I made more money and could somehow navigate the world of buying cell phones.

So, lucky  I am to somehow be with my best friend here, who happens to be male, and despite not having a fancy dancey phone himself, quickly and happily got into what I derisively call ‘the man/machine excitement phase’, and ran right off and came home holding...a.....machine. Yes, folks, a new small machine. a man-thing machine, a new cell phone.

Or maybe there are women who get into a human/machine ecstasy kinda thing, staying out overnight in sleeping bags downtown in some city I don't know, to be closer in line to get a new....machine...before others can...and go have fun with their new...machine.

Thus, I find myself here with last years IPhone. Which has a mechanism that is built to sound like a female’s voice complete with complex and at times irritable intonations living in it ,that you can talk to.

Now, I know those of you with fancy dancey phones already think this is old news, the woman voice machine thing in the phone. It does remind me of someone I knew years ago, if you care to pull your cocoa into your hands to warm yourself while I diverge…

 Many years ago, I was having a hard time of it. I had been seeing two guys for a year or so and the two of them had simultaneously broke up with me around the same time, (and then twice, unbeknownst to each of them, would surface, within days of each other, to ask me to marry them, just when they were about to A. move in with someone or B. get married to someone.)Yep. I know.

I then relished knowing another wonderful person for a few years, but eventually that came to an end also, and I found myself, around age 25, single for a year or so, my life bashing about like a half broken muffler dragging along a dirt road.

I was going to Umass, living with a group of roommates in a haunted house with a ghost that whispered past you certain nights (seriously), and  I was working hard to find happiness and contentment in what each night and day offered. I  eventually got so good at this that the predictable happened, which occurs when you are not in dire need and desperately seeking anyone to complete you or your happiness- someone shows up seeking you.

 Somehow there was a nice handful of people suddenly all interested in me. And I thought, ok, maybe I’m not ALL that weird or smelly or have terrible breath or something mysteriously deflecting. And one of them was a cyber genius guy who was developing a way for computers to talk to us and write down what we say. Now, here, I’m finally rounding the bend, back to the point.

He went gaga for me the night I baked a huge mountain cake for my in-the-future sister-in-law’s elegant party, later in the evening helped deconstruct the mostly eaten cake with gusto and great enthusiasm, wiping off the leftovers in a semi food fight, finishing off the evening dancing and laughing.

He soon got in touch, invited me on a beautiful hike, and on this hike ,complete with lovely picnic lunch and polite conversation, did interview me for the job of wife/candidate/lover thing, with some trepidation  asking me if I planned to stop drinking and smoking so much. Which at the time seemed a ridiculous question, as all the things I know and teach today might as well have been lingering in Mars or the Milky Way, so little I had thought of them at that age. So I said 'of course not', at which point he kissed me nicely, and went off to find a better, cleaner candidate.

         Yet, here, years later, remained an older, not smoking, mostly not drinking newer model of my self, with a new a machine that reflects the labors of this genius guy and others, and my husband is happily presenting it to me. And it HAS the little machine voice that is politely female, answering your questions and writing down your texts and notes, to the best of their little machine ability.

     So, yeah, I did that thing where you are unquestionably silly even as a sixty year old, and ask the pretend machine person stupid things like.. . (and these answers are true- go try it)-

Me- ."Siri, what is the meaning of life?"

Siri- "All evidence to date suggests it's chocolate".

Me- "What is your favorite color?" (they must have been prepared for idiots like me)

Siri- "My favorite color is...well, I don’t' know how to say it in your language. It’s sort of greenish, but with more dimensions."

Wow. That floored me.

Me- "Who keeps the home fires burning?" ( I know, couldn’t' I have been more creative than that?)...

She asks if she should check the web. I say no, thanks. And to myself, geeze, Gwen, dig deeper.

Me- "Do you like James Joyce?"

Siri- "This is about you, not me". (Good boundaries.) 

Me- "It's cold in here."

Siri- " It doesn't seem particularly cold to me- 55 degrees."

I then enjoyed  exploring this website on my fancy dancy new phone that describes how Apple programmed answers for stupid human idiots who ask stupid questions of their new phone. I would still defend this stupid human activity in comparison to one a friend showed me, where people try to get their trucks to climb rocks and weird places, and then have fun standing around winching each other out. I mean, really.   

Now a few days have passed, and Siri and I have reached a compromise. She writes down texts and journal entries, helps me write books and poems and songs rather well, and I stopped asking her ridiculous questions.  

And besides, this new unsmall, untapped-together phone  is what my husband explained is “Gwen-proof”. It can be thrown from the Empire State Building, immersed in the deepest sea, have a grenade blown up on it, or just walk in the rain by the Connecticut River each night, taking photos that look like old paintings, writing things, and connecting me to others just well enough.

Of course, yesterday, I was trying to Siri-text my husband about something with the word ‘rot’ in it, which was incomprehensible to the Siri-thing. I was sick and tired, and kept at the siri attempts instead of having half a brain and simply using my fingers to text the word.

Rot turned into rock and Johnnie Watson (as opposed to Jonny Rotten) and yet like an addict, I kept at it, trying and trying verbally to convey the ‘rot’ tedness to him in the text, each time having the Siri response that became more and more hilarious until finally I helplessly slid to the kitchen floor, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Seriously.

And that was the moment I realized I had somehow morphed into that woman/machine thing or person/machine excitement phase ,myself. I had arrived. Completely infected