Asakiyume mita

I've started listening to Denis Bertet's 2021 Tikuna classes. OMG great French review because he says everything in French and then translates into Spanish, so if there's something I don't remember, I can catch it the second time around.

First class he shared a video of a man sitting in his house, introducing himself, and asked the students for things they noticed about the language on first hearing (although the class included both people who were familiar with the language and/or culture and absolute beginners), and also things they noticed in the situation.

One of the students mentioned about the microphone that the man is wearing, and Prof. Bertet says that it's a super great microphone, really good for situations like this, because it picks up just the speaker's voice (or mainly just that), whereas there's a lot of ambient noise--hens, dogs, children, birds, rain--which can interfere with hearing.

And I was thinking HOW MUCH I LOVE that about getting WhatsApp messages from my tutor, how it makes me smile, how it makes me feel that much closer. Someone drops a cup in the background and I can hear it bouncing on the floor. Chicks are peeping as they're fed. The rain is coming down. The birds are singing.

It is definitely valuable to be able to hear clearly what someone is saying, and I'm going to learn a lot from these recordings, I can tell already (not to mention other cultural stuff, like that daytime-use hammocks are called--in Spanish--chinchorro... looking online I find that the name comes from a type of hammock made by the Wayuu people), but if I had to choose only one way of learning, I'd choose learning with my tutor in a heartbeat. ... But I don't have to choose. Both are possible! And not just both but many. Multiplicity! So many different ways of doing things. In any given moment, we may have to choose one method or thing or another, but at some other moment we can choose something else. A little of this, a little of that. Or a lot of this for XX years... and then something different.

I got five questions from osprey_archer!

1. What's a skill that you're proud of having?

... I'm realizing that it's hard to write an answer to this because as soon as I start composing in a direction, I think, Now you really sound like an insufferable asshole.

Am I perhaps proud of the skill of being able to guess when I'm about to sound like an insufferable asshole? ... Mmmm, I am not particularly proud of that. And I'm not even sure if my assessment is correct, so.

So ... skill implies something that you've worked on and honed--so not, say, a one-off accomplishment, and not something that's just part of your personality without your particularly exerting yourself.

Okay, how's this: I don't know if I'm proud, exactly, but it gives me great joy and exuberance to have discovered, in my fifties, that it's possible to learn multiple languages more or less simultaneously well enough to read them and attempt rudimentary communication in them. It literally feels like having developed a new sense, like my brain has changed its shape. ... Other people knew this delight from a young age, but not me. And there's something about coming to it later in life--you can be very consciously grateful, appreciative.

2. What's a treasured memory?

Sleeping together as a family on summer nights in Japan--the tactile-ness. The in-out of our breathing, together; our hearts are beating, together. Our foreheads are touching, or someone has an arm flung this way, or someone's toes are touching someone else's calves. Outside, insects are singing.

3. Do you have any unusual yearly traditions?

Not really; I have a hard time repeating things cyclically. For a while our family did Boston's Walk for Hunger yearly, but that's not a very unusual thing, and anyway, we since stopped. There are certain things I like to forage when the time is right (cattail pollen in June, chestnuts and hickory nuts in September and October), but I'm not consistent.

4. If you could have a telepathic companion animal, what kind of animal would you want?
I waver between something small enough to sit on my shoulder and something large enough that I could drape my arm over its shoulders. Much as it would be fun to have a telepathic connection with a dolphin (hello Ring of Endless Light) and fascinating to have one with a celphalopod, I think I'd prefer to have a connection with a terrestrial animal because delightful as water is, I can't breathe in it or even keep air in my lungs for as long as dolphins and other water-living mammals can. OTOH, if there are some telepathic marine creatures out there who are hankering for a connection, I withdraw that caveat! Come to me, friends!

... I guess not someone really small, like a tardigrade. I want to be able to see my companion. Probably someone adapted to the type of climate I live in--hello coyotes, bobcats, foxes, bear, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, mice. And I don't want to exclude birds, though I think I would want a very friendly type of bird for an animal companion--someone like a catbird or chickadee, or like the starling that drank the last of my sister's wine the other day.


5. Favorite museum?

Without a doubt, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Anyone else like some questions?