I have been bitching publicly and privately about Apple lately and I’m not alone. Years ago when I finally jumped on the MAC bandwagon, I not only drank Mr. Jobs’s elixir, I became an evangelist for his wares like so many other disciples before me.
I was born into the PC world and for the longest time its staunchest defender, going so far as to persecute the MAC at every available opportunity, but like Paul on the road to Damascus, I finally saw the light sometime in 2005 and have been a MAC guy ever since.
I passed into that Elysium world in what would become Apple’s halcyon days. From iPhones to iPads to the company’s ranking as the most valuable in the world, when Steve Jobs, Apple’s messiah, passed on, the company was indeed on top of the world.
Their innovation, at least for the time being, has leveled off and I have found that a lot of stuff just isn’t working as well as I’d come to expect from Apple products. From iCloud / iTunes match glitches, to so called “improvements” to its Final Cut program, recently Apple’s been disappointing.
Such is life. We are born, we live, we grow old, we die. Sometimes we are elated, sometimes we are disappointed. Sometimes the disappointments are small, like defective Apple products, other times they are enormous, like a personal failure or loss of a loved one.
Seldom a day goes by that I don’t think about dying, whether it’s my own death or someone’s close to me, or both; whether it’s real, imagined, in the future, or a part of my brief history. I have been thinking about this stuff since I was a kid.
There is a simple truth to death and to deny it often leads to the absurd. And many of us, and I count myself among them, are all too willing to embrace some of that absurdity in the hopes of conquering the insurmountable.
“Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is not the stuff of motivation, but perhaps it’s reverse psychology of the most highest, cosmic order.
Surely we leave behind more than dust, at least in the short term, right?
A macro view of ancient history, the universe and stardust leaves us – or at least me – with an almost overwhelming feeling of insignificance.
I am not Steve Jobs. For that matter, I am not my Grandfather.
My father’s father passed away a few months before September 11th, 2001. I often think of how this World War II hero would have reacted. Like so many of us, he didn’t see such a tragedy coming and went to the grave believing things were of a certain order, as we all will.
I think of Vincent Van Gogh. Not only did he not have the opportunity to know if many people enjoyed his work, he went to the grave believing that few even knew it existed.
But who am I to say what he “believed”? Who am I to say what was running through my grandfather’s mind, Van Gogh’s, Steve Jobs’s?
One only really knows his own mind. Solipsism is the view that the self is all that can be known to exist at all.
So perhaps all of this is a construct of your imagination…or mine. Perhaps there’s no such thing as Vincent Van Gogh or Steve Jobs or Grandpa. Maybe it’s all in my head. Or maybe I don’t exist. Maybe I’m all in your head…
“Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust you shall return.” And that goes for all of us, so what does it matter?
If you knew all of the knowledge that mankind has acquired over the centuries, all of it, think about how much you still wouldn’t know.
How does the mind work? I began this essay over a month ago and since then my daughter was born. I am, of course, giddy with excitement. That excitement doesn’t necessarily gibe with the tone of this piece. However, up to this point, most of this material was composed before she emerged into our world…
See below:
This week James Gandolfini died who is closer to my age than he is to my father’s – which is a red flag for both of us. And literally as I write this, I find out that Gary David Goldberg, the creator of Family Ties, just died. 68 years old.
(and since then, Richard Matheson passed away as well, and just a few days ago that young man from Glee…)
As I’ve said earlier, I began re-watching The Sopranos from the very beginning earlier in the year and came to the realization as I watched it that I missed a lot of things. Meaning that I missed quite a few episodes…
Full disclosure, I started this post a few nights ago and I just wrapped up watching the entire series.
And now a few nights ago had become quite a few weeks ago…
Talk about dissonance. Watching an actor who actually passed away recently portraying a guy who may or may not have been killed on a show that hasn’t been broadcast on TV for six years.
And Tony Soprano was killed. There’s not question in my mind about that.
And yet the character lives on. Just a portion of Gandolfini’s legacy. I write this in italics because I write this now which will quickly be come then. I started this exercise with this thought:
Myself … what do I leave behind?
Which I wrote before my daughter was born…
And for clarity, I lose the italics. I’m back to today. Or rather tonight. And it’s questionable how clear any of this is, italics or not…
I’ve glanced at older entries. Typos. Embarrassing. Grammar? Sometimes.
Just a portion of my legacy…
Will this blog outlive me? Will it be found 1000 years from now? Is it somehow being read 1000 years from now? Is 1000 years from now, in fact, now?
Probably not on all counts. This continues to exist in somewhat of a vacuum, to be stumbled upon tomorrow or a century from now…but to what end?
What legacy is that?
I do have my children. And the hope that they grow and thrive and multiply…
But I am visiting. We are all visiting. Like Carmela Soprano in Paris (The Sopranos – “Cold Stones”, Season 6, Episode 11).
When one goes on vacation they don’t wonder what the beach will think of them after they’ve left, do they? Do they wonder what impact they had on the food they enjoyed at that restaurant at the Piazza del Campo, the wine they drank? And further, all those strangers one passes along the way – when one takes a sabbatical, how much thought is given to what’s left behind to the visited city’s citizenry after a return home?
I’m all over the place. It may have something to do with what I’m reading lately. I just finished this today:
Which reminded me a lot of this:
…which I had read some time ago. I’m also in the midst of simultaneously reading this:
and re-reading this:
which may at least partly explain the structure of this mess.
I do not know what it all adds up to other than that when I look into my children’s eyes, so much that seemed to matter, matters less now, and that while I’m certain of so little, those exchanged glances seem to suggest something more…
…but that could simply be my left brain creating a narrative that doesn’t truly exist. From what I’ve read recently, it does that. Who knows?
It may be as simple as this:
We are just dust on vacation, so let’s enjoy ourselves and try to pack as much in before we return…
C I P R I A N I 
Leave a comment