Irony or what you will....

What poured from the heavens were what he thought would come to pass, and they had, but now they returned with the sadness of a drop sliding down his French window. He watched it glisten and find support in other laments as it stretched itself towards that which held the heavens themselves. He heard the threnody of many voices call to him to be merciful and that drop found reflection in his eye. While he rocked on his chair, he questioned the base rock of all his relationships with people, especially women and when he thought of them, the heavens thundered and poured baleful on his window, for what was gone and past could never touch him, but would never leave his world... the sighs, the heartaches, the whispered nothings, his untold promises, his unquestionable love, his extended hand which was never within reach. He walked to the window and the mist of familiarity held itself in a hazy circle between his face and the drops. He wiped that mist and let the moistness stay in his palm.
"I love you and I always will. It is sad that when I gave you love, all you took was pain."
He turned and strolled towards the inner recesses of his world. The heavens threatened him with lightening and bursty rain but he kept ambling on.
"Coward!" they cried, "Why love when you couldn't let us keep you?"
His smile was pulled by the thorny hooks of irony and wasted relationships...

Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher

To force the pace and never to be still
Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;
Until the one who knows that she is loved
No longer waits but risks surrendering -
In this the poet finds his moral proved
Who never spoke before his spirit moved.

The slow movement seems, somehow, to say much more.
To watch the rarer birds, you have to go
Along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow
In silence near the source, or by a shore
Remote and thorny like the heart's dark floor.
And there the women slowly turn around,
Not only flesh and bone but myths of light
With darkness at the core, and sense is found
But poets lost in crooked, restless flight,
The deaf can hear, the blind recover sight.

-- Nissim Ezekiel

I have never really liked Ezekiel. I still remember, way back when I was 12 or so, I was made to read his "Night of the scorpion" (or something like that) and I hated him for that. I hated him for threatening poetry under the guise of modern tolerance and modernistic style of poetry. I remember going back home and creating a lot of noise about this. I was still in the grip of Daffodils and Ozymandias and such a piece was blasphemy to me. It was like having a girl dress in overalls or something like that. No, no, don't get started with "But she can look beautiful in them too." Please. She might, but the beauty of delicate efforts of weaving the softest and finest of threads and curls is lost. Forget it; I am lamenting for a pointless cause....

This poem is an exception and I wanted to share it with you. Its a lot of what I go through as writer and lover (been a long while since I did any serious bird watching!!).

Size doesn't matter

You know what gets my goatee? When someone walks up and thinks that they can have things their way by sheer force of presence or clout or what you will. For those who have met me, please, I don't quite utilise "anything" in my favour. Come on. Give it to me at least for a minute!
Recently I was driving to office and there is this stretch of road (just a stretch guys, nothing fabulous) which doesn't have a divider. Coming to think of it... there is only a stretch of road that actually has a divider! Anyway, here I was driving in my little car and happily humming songs which only I could recognise and drumming away on my poor wheel. For those who aren't familiar with this stretch of road, there are a lot of uphill climbs and enough expanse to roll downhill. On one of the crests I saw this huge burly truck driving on my side of the road. For those who aren't used to Indian roads, every bit of tarmac belongs to any piece of machine that got there first. So here we have a behemoth of cranking metal rolling up towards me. My car can't protect a mouse if it had to and I was running a list of all those I should inform after this accident.

For some wild and foolish reason I headed straight towards him and stopped my car. I shut off the engine quickly and this guy stopped short of kissing my panting 800 (now I know how she felt in Beauty and the Beast). I distinctly saw my 800 pull its fenders in. I was less than 3 feet away from sickly yellow metal with an oval plate hanging which pronounced the credo of every populated country: "We two ours two". Yeah right! Try impressing my 800 with that line!!

The driver put his balding head out and I looked at him through my windshield chewing on gum that I had left back at home. I needed to do something to shut the thumping in my chest. Come on. Try standing up against a few tonnes of crazy steel which might not have stopped its mad rush towards you! He started shouting something at me. I lowered my glass slowly and put my head out and gave him a half closed I-am-inspired-by-Clint-Eastwood look. He gunned his engine and moved it a foot closer. My poor 800 sucked the grills in and away from the frothing mouth of this ugly thing. I stepped outside and tipped my head to either side and cracked my neck a bit (you have to do it in style!). I got my mobile out and peered towards his number plate and called mom!! :-)) I cut the call, of course. Mom should be the last person on earth to know that I pulled this stunt.

I spoke reverently and then loudly against the metallic monotony of an annoying tone.
"Haanji. Sartaj saab hain gharpar?" ("Yes, Is Mr. Sartaj at home?")
Pause
"Bula dijiyega" ("Please call him")
Pause
"Namaste Uncle. Kaise hain? Sab khairiyat to hai?" Pause "Ji ammi bilkul teekh hain" ("Hello Uncle. How are you? Everything fine? Yes, mom is doing good.")
Pause
"Nahin nahin. Everything is fine" ("No, no" come on, the rest of that was in English!)
Pause and a smile and then sternly looking at the driver.
"Uncle aap office pahunch gaye?" ("Uncle, have you reached office?")
Pause
"Uncle, This truck driver" then I realised that he might not know English "nahin nahin. Ye truck driver galat raste pe chalaake humari gaadi ko thokne wala tha. Abhi gaali de raha hai hume" ("This truck driver was driving on the wrong side of the road and was about to collide with my car. Now he is swearing at me."
Pause
"Haan, haan. Office ke paas." ("Yes, yes, near the office")
Pause and I smile a "I gotcha egg-head" smile
"Nahin uncle aapke aane ki koi zaroorat nahin. Madhapur Police Station se Nageshwar Rao ko..." ("No uncle, you needn't come down for this. If you could get Nageshwar Rao from the Madhapur Police Station to...")
I looked up to see a scared driver. I ended the call with the usual niceties and put my phone back and walked over to my car. The driver got down and started asking me why I was making a big issue out of this (which I now realise I did! :-( but actually I didn't!! ;-) and that he would back off and go his way. I told him that he could go anywhere but I have his license plate number. Then I cocked my head to the right asking him to leave and he frog jumped into his cockpit and slowly backed his truck. I watched my 800 relax and get back her sneer!! He went back on his road (after getting shouted at by other people who were already driving on it and whose way he was cutting into)....

Phew!

We don't end thus...

Haath Choote Bhi To Rishtey Nahi Choda Karte..
Waqt Ki Shakh Se Lamhein Nahi Toda Karte..

Should we depart, let not our bonds end thus
From the boughs of time, let's not pluck memories thus

Jiski Awaaz Mein Silwat Ho NigahoN Mei Shikan..
Aisi Tasvir Ke TukDe Nahi Joda Karte..

A voice which tremors with passion and a wrinkled eye;
Fragments of such an image aren't pieced together thus

Shahad Jeene Ka Mila Karta Hai ThoDa ThoDa..
Jaane WaaloN Ke Liye Dil Nahi Toda Karte..

The sweetness of life is begotten in mere sips
Hence, we do not grieve for the departing thus.

Lagke Sahil Se Jo Behta Hai Usse Behne Do..
Aise Dariya Ka Kabhi Rukh Nahi Moda Karte..

That which rolls over banks and flows on, let it.
Never change the course of such a river thus.

And where is my love?

Rarely do I see such irony
A nightingale stops to listen to her song
Straining thro' ears downy
For that voice struck in her breast's gong

I think I love her...

Days grow bleaker
with her breathing familiarity.
Is it she I loved
or the tangy taste of novelty?

The emperor wears no clothes...

A re-post of an old one...

I happened to unfortunately land my eyes and my senses on the wrong pages of a catalogue. It displayed paintings up for sale. My senses ran away pretty much immediately, but my eyes stayed on. I couldn't believe what I saw. Paintings which could have been passed as the works of a 12 year old kid were up for ridiculous prices! Really ridiculous. Amazingly ridiculous. Unbearably ridiculous. I have dabbled with paint and canvas and hence, couldn't pass the page with a "Maybe it is the right price. What would I know?" thought. I shut the catalogue with least reverence, and rushed to look online for other pieces of painting which make me laugh or pull my eyes out of their sockets. I found plenty and managed to keep my eyes intact.
How do we decide the price of a painting or any piece of art and beauty? I go to a silk cloth shop downtown where the finest pieces of silk are sold. Wonderful designs on them using gold thread threads and threads of other colours which do not stand out in themselves but add a hue which makes you sigh and hand out that piece of plastic with least fear as to what will be charged on it. Creating such a piece of art is extremely difficult. The silk must be of the finest quality. The gold and silver threads should be such that they do not tarnish with age. The weave must be so perfect that thread knots do not appear on the fabric. Now interplay of silk and gold threads is not one that can be handled by a casual hand. Utmost care is demanded and a lapse of it can be quite frustrating to all those involved. So, we sum the prices of all this and add a fraction of the sum as a tip to the creative hand behind the entire piece. We pretty much arrive at the price, which was charged to your card. Not very far away from it. Mind you, some of these pieces are hand woven so let us not blame it on machining the silk world.
Let's apply the same logic to a painting. Let's consider oil painting (watercolours are cheap and water still so). We need canvas (good quality), brushes (reused across various pieces of the painting) and paint (also used across various canvases). What else, do we need here? So how much would that cost us? Around $100 (please check various online sites for the prices of canvas, a set of 12-18 brushes, paints, thinner, solvents, etc.) is my guess. Lets add a 100% as the artist's effort and imagination and creativity. If you sit at it, a painting can be done in a single day (no I am not exaggerating). So the work should be in the range of $200-$300. Fine, fine, fine, let's make $500. Happy? We used to work out the cost of food dishes in hotels (while we were students and every cent cost a lot). We would take a dish and figure out its ingredients and the cost of making it (chopping, boiling/frying/baking, etc.) and then add establishment costs (well, the hotel must exist before we are served the dish, right?). When we found that the number arrived at and the quote on the menu card matched, we would continue eating with least guilt!! As my friend would say candidly, "I will not pay an exorbitant amount for a lick, burp and fart!" Well, painting is not much the same. It is now viewed as an avenue of investment. I love the IBM advertisement about On-Demand when those guys keep discussing about how the painting is SCM and CRM and all that stuff, and an honest man walks up and says, "It looks like a horse to me." I think we need to see things as they are, rather than conjure images and beliefs about them. The hype is what drives me against and up a wall.
I have picked a few paintings. Be honest to yourself and let me (or at least yourself) know whether you would truly pay so much for these. Forget about the names behind these paintings. It is important to realise beauty without knowledge of the hand that carved it. If I loved a beautiful piece of music, and someone tells me it was Chopin, I would respect Chopin for that piece. But that is it. If I here another piece and didn't like it, and you came back to me simply to tell me that that was Chopin again, I would not respect Chopin's work on that piece and ask you "why are you taking so much pains in impressing upon me Chopin's worth or otherwise?".
Nude in a Black Armchair (Price: $45 million)
Celebration (Price: $317,000)
Garçon à la pipe (Price: $104 million)
Mahasnan I (Price: $7954)
The Tomato Eaters (Price: $512)

Amongst these, I liked "Garcon a la pipe" (not because it is the costliest!) but would never pay a thousandth of the price. There are many more such pieces available. "Mahasnan I" demands INR 3.5 Lakh. This is pretty much what an average software engineer fresh out of college earns for a year at one of the good companies in India!! Try convincing them that their efforts throughout the year is worth that painting! You could visit Indian Art Circle and search for Gogi Saroj Pal to actually see the painting called "Mahasnan I". Now for the names, The million dollar paintings are both by Pablo Picasso (so big deal). Celebrations is by Tyeb Mehta and "Mahasnan I", as you might have figured out, is by Gogi Saroj Pal. I am sure everyone has heard of Picasso and a few might have heard of Tyeb Mehta. "Tomato eaters" by Heeral Trivedi is the closest to our acceptable price of $500, but I am never going to buy that piece!!!

Now I show you paintings that I like, but will still not pay in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars or their quoted price. A note before that, I like works of Camille Pissaro and in India I happened to find (well, while I was looking through Indian Art Circle and after I searched for and reached her homepage) Shuchi Krishan interesting. I will present some of their works below as well as one by Shuchi Krishan which made me wonder, "For this? Its good, but I am not going to pay so much for this."

Boulevard Montmartre Rainy Weather Afternoon
Portrait of a Young Man with a Pipe
Soul-C (the play of light and shadow is beautiful)
Some of the paintings on this page
Thirumalai Naicker Mahal (This is not exactly a painting, so our estimate of $500 would drop to about $200-$300. Nonetheless, the price quoted is less than $100!! Go on, buy it.)
Dreams of Nature

Before I start lamenting, please visit Shuchi Krishan's homepage as well as this page for paintings by Camille Pissaro. Do lookup the web for the Camille Pissaro's homepage (I didn't do it, but might update this post later when I find one. Updated with this link. Here is another link to a good collection of Pissaro's works.)

What is the world of art coming to? Earlier (and I am not saying that those days were better than now) an artisan did a fine job and was paid for it. I have hardly heard of artists being paid on the amounts of what $1 million means to us today. Think about it, if I paint 12-24 paintings a year, I would be earning as much as $20 million. And this is per year. A little more math for the next 10-20 years before I retire, should give you an idea and enough reason to take up art seriously!! But please don't. As foolish and idealistic as I seem, do not get into art for the sake of money and merely because a huge number of super-rich fools exist who are ready to pay you such obscene amounts of money.

Before I close, I would like to draw your attention to this piece of news. A 4 year old child splashes paint around and enjoys her innocent self and the colours dancing on the canvas laid out for her. Her parents test waters by quoting a price for the finished works. Buyers are clueless that it is the work of a 4 year old. Soon, the kid sells over a dozen pieces and has her own show!!
Some excerpts from the news piece:

They rave how she makes colors interact with intensity. And her pieces are selling - some for as much as $15,000.

"She builds her paintings in layers. Children don't do that. She starts with big swatches of colors and then adds details and accents on to that. That's what is so impressive and beyond what other children do," said Brunelli, who gave Marla her first show in August.

"She paints with emotion," Brunelli said.

Excuse me, give a child bottles of paints and you will find enough layers all over the house and the intended canvas!! Emotion?? She is a 4 year old for Pete's sake. I thought 4 year old had not much emotion apart from laughing and crying and shying away from playful adult eyes!! Don't make me look at the tonnes of kids I play, with seriousness. They are kids. You love them and when they are done with their toys, they love you! Simple. Listen to her words for yourself.

In hushed answers of few words, Marla says she likes that people like her paintings. "It makes them happy. I like that," the young painter says.

Buzz Spector, chairman of Cornell University's art department, said Marla's vision and process were exceptional, but that many children provided with the right materials and influences can produce surprisingly complicated abstract art pieces. While they show a "beautiful sense of color and material," Marla's pieces still lack the cultural and spiritual sophistication to be considered museum pieces, he said.

Her parents are sensible when they say:

"We thought they were pretty. We were proud," Laura Olmstead says. "We honestly didn't think it was beyond anything any other 3-year-old would do."

The family gave The Associated Press an interview at Brunelli's loft apartment, atop his gallery, a short ride from their home. Marla romped and rolled on the floor with her brother and later snacked on some cookies while her parents talked. Marla - as is mostly the case - had little to say about her paintings.

Bravo, bravo. I love this kid Marla. What more could one want from life? Paints and playthings and cookies and lots of space.


The earlier title I had for this post was "Art-schmart... Or Why should I pay so much for this?"

Over and out...

I realised that I hadn't been to my fav blogs for quite some time. I had visited Misha's blog and then realised that I couldn't do it... Really tired.
I think I will be off blogging, which includes visiting blogs, for a fair amount of time.

Spirit

This one was an old sketch of mine which I had abandoned nearly immediately. It was part of a study (I have graduated from using rough drafts or rough sketches to calling them studies!!) for a painting I was planning on doing for my friend's wedding gift. I abandoned it as soon as I knew that I wasn't going to be there for her wedding...

Often solace is found in things left incomplete.

She was, and still is in parts, a free spirited girl who loved the world and embraced it in its entirety. I really couldn't get a scan of it as it had very light lines, and this is what a quick picture looks like. She loved the sea, but had not seen much of it.

I am currently working on the Life series (basically a bunch of sketches/paintings all named Life and placing various aspects of life in contrapposto). Let's see if I stick to it...

A quick peek...

Hi,
Do find time to stop by Alvibest to get a peek into what's coming up for the Aug '05 issue of Alvibest. This list will be updated occasionally...

Order of Nature

It amazes me when the order of nature presents itself in a manner as silent and as astounding as today, which seems so familiar to be any day. I was done with my bath and readied myself for my prayers. Once inside the prayer room, I seated myself and went about my prayers (which I shant call a routine as it isn't one). Once I was done, I noticed this rose finding support on the wooden frames of one of the pictures in the room. The rose was fairly large and in its size had destroyed all romantic innuendoes that one usually associates with this flower. It was a rarely seen colour. A shade of orange predominated, although all shades of tangerine could be seen. I focused on one of the petals. I have been sketching and painting over the past few days and the eye which trained itself on this innocent flower was that of an artist and not a lover, a lesson I am still to learn. As I watched the petal intently, I noticed that the colours seemed to flow against gravity and darken towards the tapered point of the petal. The petal, which stood upright, was a pale hue which darkened gradually to a bright orange which gave way to a dark nacarat at the tip and it seemed to want to escape from this petal and colour the walls with a similar hue. And I told myself, "Thus all petals will darken and brighten towards the periphery. Remember this while painting or sketching a flower" and as if to mock at me, my eye was pulled towards a petal pointing in the nearly opposite direction as an antithesis to this petal. It was pale at its tip and darker towards the nether regions. I couldn't help but smile and realise that the ways of nature are not for us to discern. It would be so difficult to look at a bud and be able to know the spread of petals and colours. I looked at each one of the petals and realised that each and every one of them was a canvas in itself. I spent a long while in the room and admired each petal with the eye of a lover.
It was a wonderfully beautiful experience...

MIT Weblog Survey

It's tough to refuse...

Some friends of mine asked me why I wasn't updating my blog with "my" stuff in lieu of quotes and general content. Well, the Alvibest post was "my" stuff... :-)
I wanted to stay away from my blog and focus on the journal (which is demanding a good amount of my effort), but I couldn't refuse.
So here is a quick one.

This is something I composed while talking (yesterday) to a very dear friend of mine. She accused (in a jocular manner) me of dreaming too much, and here was my response (reworded for this post)

Well, all I'd say milady
Is life is full of dreams;
Some are for me to realise,
Some stay behind closed eyes.

We laughed as soon as I was done and she shot out with her usual question "Where did you pick that up? Which movie?" and I was so bugged, exactly as she wanted it!! :-(

I love to dream and I love to include people I care for in my dreams and then share it with them. Nothing romantic (Oh! Puhlllleeeeaaaasssse) but something personal (which you could mistake for romanticism ;-). I loved creating things and possibilities. I remember telling myself stories over dinner. This habit stuck to me since I was 6 or so. I remember creating a character called Condor 2000 who had a suit which reflected bullets and a shiny armour on which any light blinded onlookers (its complicated, I'll explain later). His car was cool. It had all the gadgets you could think of. Actually the best part about that car was its adaptability; anything I wanted Condor 2000 to have was already there or was under development and final stages of testing (words I picked up from James Bond movies and Knightrider). The car was sleek, the gadgets sleeker.
In school, when I sported a wound and friends would ask me about it, each of them got a different story. It would be anything from an elephant in musth which I tripped to a high adrenaline rescue of some girl :-D
As I grew up(I assure you I have) the stories demanded credibility, nay, I think the people around me stopped believing in the possibility of an elephant tripping over my shin and landing headlong (of course, after a somersault) in an ice cream cart and the strawberry ice-cream cooling him and making him docile. I don't know what is so unbelievable about it. So my stories grew into serious prosaic ones but never ceased to roll out. They were usually extensions of my dreams. Something I would have dreamt of would find its way into a story and I would spend long hours pondering over what made me come up with that story. It was fun not being able to figure it out!!
I really don't know what I would do without my dreams and crazy scenes.
I really don't know what a lark would do without a chirp or terns without wings.
There is a lot I don't know.
Hence I dream! :-)

Alvibest

I have been waiting for today for quite some time. Nothing special about today save the decision to finally create the blog associated with the literary journal I was talking about a few weeks ago.
Feel free to visit the official blog for Alvibest. :-)

So, what are we planning to do?
Alvibest is a literary journal which will contain within its folds various art forms captured with the magic that words are known to create. After several discussions with various people, we decided to be non-restrictive and let Alvibest create her own image. We intend to paint the beauty of life with ink.

How do we intend going about it?
Alvibest is a quarterly journal and we hope to get the first issue out in the first week of August. Alvibest will present to the reader various literary forms in variegated styles. The content that one can expect from this journal would surely contain the following genres:

1. Fiction (Short stories, serials)
2. Non-fiction
3. Articles
4. Poetry
5. Book reviews
6. Translations
7. Art work (sketches, paintings, photographs, etc.)

Articles include all works which are not fiction, non-fiction or poetry. This is very vast in what it encompasses. Here we would have articles raising general awareness, description of various art forms like music, dance, architecture, etc., articles related to the art of writing, etc.

How will the journal be presented?
The journal will be compiled and distributed as a colour PDF document. The initial year (first 4 issues) will be rounds of experiments. We would be playing with layout, content, format, etc. As soon as the issue is ready, we will distribute it to a few people and encourage them to distribute it to anyone who might be interested in the same. Those who have subscribed to the journal, will also receive the magazine issue. We will not be putting the articles on the blog, although snippets might be put up in order to make the reader aware of the contents of an issue.

What about the finances?
Currently everything is free. For the first year, there will be no role for money. Once Alvibest beats to a chosen rhythm, we might pay writers/contributors and those desirous of a printed version of the issue might be charged! But these things aren't yet firm. Frankly, finance is not an issue.

What can we do for Alvibest?
We looking for contributors as well as people to help us in getting the issue ready and out. We would need a small number of submission reviewers, designers et al. We would encourage people to submit their works to be published in Alvibest. We aren't accepting material published on someone's blog. We would also be glad if you could rope in the right talent for this effort.

So, how is this going to be any different from other literary magazines?
In India, there aren't any purely literary magazine (not to my knowledge). Some of them are highly steeped in politics/economics and their quality of fiction/non-fiction/poetry leaves a lot wanting. There are plenty in North America and some in Europe. We aren't competing with anyone. All that we promise is a wonderful compilation of very good to excellent quality works, ensuring that the reader picks up Alvibest for getting her/himself a wonderful journey through the world of words.... And then, there aren't any advertisements!! :-)

Would there be anything else that a reader might want to know? Feel free to put it as a comment.

Come in ... join us on this journey!

Steve Jobs says

I am sure many of you must have read this, but I wanted to share it with those who haven't and those who would like to read it again. This man was my hero at one time... till I parted ways with all heroes in my life. He made sense then, and he still makes wonderful sense... Read on. The original is available at: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

And it caught my eye...

I was reading my daily share of words and I came across this:

"Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Is some dish brought to you? Then put forth your hand and help yourself in seemly fashion. Does it pass you by? Then do not hold it back. Has it not yet come to you? Then do not stretch out for it at a distance, but wait till it is at your hand. And thus doing with regard to children, and wife, and authority, and wealth, you will be a worthy guest at the table of the gods. And if you even pass over things that are offered to you, and refuse to take of them, then you will not only share the banquet of the gods, but also their dominion."

Epictetus (c. 55-c. 135). Greek Stoic philosopher. Encheiridion (1881).

Dark shadows...

As I watched him stand by the lamppost with the collars drawn up to keep the cold and peering eyes away, I realised that along with the misty breath he let out into the dim light awarded by the street and a lone window above, which housed a familiar quarrelling couple, so familiar that one never stopped and looked around with an attempt to pin the source of the sudden noise which could have been a gunshot, if we still believed that people owned muskets, or a vessel thrown to span a few meters and the dawning worthlessness of a marriage which was intended to keep them happy, in all that countable sources of light, Brince's breath stood heavy and grey and at places yellow where the heaviness managed to hold the lightness of sodium vapour lights, for that breath carried all the force of his patience and belief that she would come, although they all said she wouldn't and even those who mocked at him so long and sharp had left to find better and more responsive entertainment, although he knew that she was at a party tonight, although he knew that the silhouette he saw outside David's house was hers as it bent forward and kissed him and followed him into his house, although he knew that she had broken up with David and was seen on Sly's arm yesterday, Sly's silver covered arm which also helped cover those hit marks, although he knew it all, although he knew her promise of coming was in the same tone with which she had promised the pastor his twenty hail Mary's, he waited and would wait as long as his breath could hold itself up in front of him in the light that shone from above, for all that lay beneath that breath was dark and dead and he feared walking away from under the post, feared that he might find his heart amidst the morbid remains of his life....

Images....

He turned away from her and stared at the painting she had made for him. She had blurred from his life like the sanguine painting lost in the reflection of the madly spinning ceiling fan. Then he noticed the cobwebs near the corners of the frame and the cracks on the frame itself. He had loved the teak frame with intricately carved leaves and cherubs on it smiling at the painting.
Now it was cracked wood and the crack ran through the face of those little angels.
"Sorry, Kamala. I can't take it any more" his voice cracked to the shape of what lay on the frame.