I now see why I kept hearing about this piece of writing. Thanks for posting it, I have been meaning to look it up and read the whole text. On 31/10/2011, at 10:07 PM, Hai Nguyen Ly wrote:
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?_r=1 > > A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs > > I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and > because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like > Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives > (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my > father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding > address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for > the Arab people. > > Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who > could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I > was 25, I met that man and he was my brother. > > By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I > had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three > other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the > middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health > insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost > brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a > cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens > novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my > brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading > candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry > James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying. > > When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and > handsomer than Omar Sharif. > > We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I > don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like > someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers. > > I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti > typewriter. > > I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: > something called the Cromemco. > > Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something > that was going to be insanely beautiful. > > I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct > periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of > states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying. > > Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day. > > That’s incredibly simple, but true. > > He was the opposite of absent-minded. > > He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were > failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe > I didn’t have to be. > > When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a > dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. > Steve hadn’t been invited. > > He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day. > > Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was. > > For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order > 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black > cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church. > > He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age. > > His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like > this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be > ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.” > > Steve always aspired to make beautiful later. > > He was willing to be misunderstood. > > Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same > black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the > platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide > Web. > > Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of > California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve > Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford > University. > > > Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love > was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the > romantic lives of the people working with him. > > Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, > “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?” > > I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful > woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.” > > When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical > dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s > travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored. > > None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of > Reed and Steve slow dancing. > > His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened > all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, > never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still. > > Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. > Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to > dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in > love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of > them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their > house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first > years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and > sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But > one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently > snipped, herb. > > Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d > be standing there in his jeans. > > When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, > “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?” > > When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, > Erin and Eve all went wiccan. > > They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a > hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the > same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto > house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — > it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that. > > This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a > lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo > Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike > there. > > And he did. > > Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning. > > Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a > mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around > the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of > paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of > what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus. > > Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and > Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose? > > He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will > discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — > even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every > other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on > the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch > for a perfect staircase. > > With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun. > > He treasured happiness. > > Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of > California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve > Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford > University. > > > Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller > circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small > handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country > skied clumsily. No more. > > Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to > him. > > Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was > still left after so much had been taken away. > > I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver > transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear > him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis > hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the > chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each > day, pressed a little farther. > > Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes. > > “You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into > each other. > > He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that > effort. He was an intensely emotional man. > > I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain > for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, > his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on > which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he > and Laurene would someday retire. > > Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went > through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely > trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham. > > One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid > everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who > generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that > this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially. > > I told him: Steve, this is special treatment. > > He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.” > > Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices > to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray > equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every > time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his > face. > > For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his > sketchpad. He looked up. You have to. > > By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of > ice. > > None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, > even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from > his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands > have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing > wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and > he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my > wedding. > > We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many > stories. > > I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with > cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us. > > What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What > he was, was how he died. > > Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone > was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already > strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, > even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us. > > He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in > a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.” > > “I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.” > > When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d > lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his > children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze. > > Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his > friends from Apple. > > Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us. > > His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel > him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before. > > This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to > Steve, he achieved it. > > He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry > we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was > going to a better place. > > Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. > > He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked > up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at > each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again. > > This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the > profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous > journey, some steep path, altitude. > > He seemed to be climbing. > > But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet > Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still > more beautiful later. > > Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. > > Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at > his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their > shoulders past them. > > Steve’s final words were: > > OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW. > > Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of > California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve > Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford > University. > > > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
