Sunday, October 30, 2011

Día de los Muertos

When Steve Jobs died, I didn't care. I bless his mind that bore me this MacBook, my black iPod named Troy, products for my father to sell many rainbow-striped apples ago. But, Steve Jobs was just a guy.

Today I read the eulogy his sister gave. It was very good. But, you know, she's a famous novelist. Get a great writer to deliver anyone's eulogy and he will sound saintly. Despite my cynicism, this choked me up:

"Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed."

The man was creative and driven literally until the day he expired. And what did he have to gain at that point? That's magic. That's tragic. That's life, or, I guess, death.

It's Halloween weekend and spirits of my youth, of college haunt me. I try to focus on this Bakhtin essay on carnivale--well-timed--but I just eat all the orange creme Oreos. I just open my heart a little more. I make another list, and another, and I wish that burning leaves weren't bad for the environment, and I wish my body were still small enough to snake through them raked.

My grandmother passed away five point five years ago. When the paperwork was dug out, someone noticed a doodle in the corner. It was a cartoon apparition that said, in Gramps' handwriting, "Boo! I'm a ghost. Boo." He saw it, chuckled. Things didn't go as he had guessed they would.

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