fui!
terça-feira, 1 de novembro de 2011
O Haver - Vinicius de Moraes (participação de Edu Lobo)
O Haver
Vinicius de Moraes
Resta, acima de tudo, essa capacidade de ternura
Essa intimidade perfeita com o silêncio
Resta essa voz íntima pedindo perdão por tudo
- Perdoai!eles não têm culpa de ter nascido...
Resta esse antigo respeito pela noite, esse falar baixo
Essa mão que tateia antes de ter, esse medo
De ferir tocando, essa forte mão de homem
Cheia de mansidão para com tudo que existe.
Resta essa imobilidade, essa economia de gestos
Essa inércia cada vez maior diante do Infinito
Essa gagueira infantil de quem quer exprimir o inexprimível
Essa irredutível recusa à poesia não vivida.
Resta essa comunhão com os sons, esse sentimento
Da matéria em repouso, essa angústia da simultaneidade
Do tempo, essa lenta decomposição poética
Em busca de uma só vida, uma só morte, um só Vinicius.
Resta esse coração queimando como um círio
Numa catedral em ruínas, essa tristeza
Diante do cotidiano; ou essa súbita alegria
Ao ouvir passos na noite que se perdem sem história...
Resta essa vontade de chorar diante da beleza
Essa cólera em face da injustiça e do mal-entendido
Essa imensa piedade de si mesmo, essa imensa
Piedade de si mesmo e de sua força inútil.
Resta esse sentimento de infância subitamente desentranhado
De pequenos absurdos, essa capacidade
De rir à toa, esse ridículo desejo de ser útil
E essa coragem para comprometer-se sem necessidade.
Resta essa distração, essa disponibilidade, essa vagueza
De quem sabe que tudo já foi como será no vir-a-ser
E ao mesmo tempo essa vontade de servir, essa
Contemporaneidade com o amanhã dos que não tiveram ontem nem hoje.
Resta essa faculdade incoercível de sonhar
De transfigurar a realidade, dentro dessa incapacidade
De aceitá-la tal como é, e essa visão
Ampla dos acontecimentos, e essa impressionante
E desnecessária presciência, e essa memória anterior
De mundos inexistentes, e esse heroísmo
Estático, e essa pequenina luz indecifrável
A que às vezes os poetas dão o nome de esperança.
Resta esse desejo de sentir-se igual a todos
De refletir-se em olhares sem curiosidade e sem memória
Resta essa pobreza intrínseca, essa vaidade
De não querer ser príncipe senão do seu reino.
Resta esse diálogo cotidiano com a morte, essa curiosidade
Pelo momento a vir, quando, apressada
Ela virá me entreabrir a porta como uma velha amante
Mas recuará em véus ao ver-me junto à bem-amada...
Resta esse constante esforço para caminhar dentro do labirinto
Esse eterno levantar-se depois de cada queda
Essa busca de equilíbrio no fio da navalha
Essa terrível coragem diante do grande medo, e esse medo
Infantil de ter pequenas coragens.
Essa intimidade perfeita com o silêncio
Resta essa voz íntima pedindo perdão por tudo
- Perdoai!eles não têm culpa de ter nascido...
Resta esse antigo respeito pela noite, esse falar baixo
Essa mão que tateia antes de ter, esse medo
De ferir tocando, essa forte mão de homem
Cheia de mansidão para com tudo que existe.
Resta essa imobilidade, essa economia de gestos
Essa inércia cada vez maior diante do Infinito
Essa gagueira infantil de quem quer exprimir o inexprimível
Essa irredutível recusa à poesia não vivida.
Resta essa comunhão com os sons, esse sentimento
Da matéria em repouso, essa angústia da simultaneidade
Do tempo, essa lenta decomposição poética
Em busca de uma só vida, uma só morte, um só Vinicius.
Resta esse coração queimando como um círio
Numa catedral em ruínas, essa tristeza
Diante do cotidiano; ou essa súbita alegria
Ao ouvir passos na noite que se perdem sem história...
Resta essa vontade de chorar diante da beleza
Essa cólera em face da injustiça e do mal-entendido
Essa imensa piedade de si mesmo, essa imensa
Piedade de si mesmo e de sua força inútil.
Resta esse sentimento de infância subitamente desentranhado
De pequenos absurdos, essa capacidade
De rir à toa, esse ridículo desejo de ser útil
E essa coragem para comprometer-se sem necessidade.
Resta essa distração, essa disponibilidade, essa vagueza
De quem sabe que tudo já foi como será no vir-a-ser
E ao mesmo tempo essa vontade de servir, essa
Contemporaneidade com o amanhã dos que não tiveram ontem nem hoje.
Resta essa faculdade incoercível de sonhar
De transfigurar a realidade, dentro dessa incapacidade
De aceitá-la tal como é, e essa visão
Ampla dos acontecimentos, e essa impressionante
E desnecessária presciência, e essa memória anterior
De mundos inexistentes, e esse heroísmo
Estático, e essa pequenina luz indecifrável
A que às vezes os poetas dão o nome de esperança.
Resta esse desejo de sentir-se igual a todos
De refletir-se em olhares sem curiosidade e sem memória
Resta essa pobreza intrínseca, essa vaidade
De não querer ser príncipe senão do seu reino.
Resta esse diálogo cotidiano com a morte, essa curiosidade
Pelo momento a vir, quando, apressada
Ela virá me entreabrir a porta como uma velha amante
Mas recuará em véus ao ver-me junto à bem-amada...
Resta esse constante esforço para caminhar dentro do labirinto
Esse eterno levantar-se depois de cada queda
Essa busca de equilíbrio no fio da navalha
Essa terrível coragem diante do grande medo, e esse medo
Infantil de ter pequenas coragens.
Sobre Relacionamentos Que Não Vão dar Certo
Mais autonomia às tuas esperanças.
Impossível marcar lugar e hora para as surpresas.
Nunca dá certo.
Receberás aquilo com que já não contas
Receberás aquilo com que já não contas
na festa que não esperas.
(Aníbal Machado)
Ele: casa dos 30, intelectual, charmoso, gente boa. Ela: simpática, trinta, espirituosa, gente boa. Um bar, amigos comuns, uma noite de conversa. Uma balada. Contatos: FB, celular, tudo. Então: mensagens, conversas, cinema, jantar. Um encontro, outro, sexo. Mais conversa, mais comida. Tudo por melhorar, do sexo à comida, mas, ainda assim, tudo gostoso. E aí um: vamos almoçar? querendo soar despretensioso mas já soando decisivo. Ele vai, meio ansioso, a cabeça rodando com: puxa, logo agora que resolvi investir, ela é tão especial, fez eu me mexer em relação ao meu passado. Sim, o moço tem um sofrer na história. E é isso mesmo, ele acertou, ela diz: não é você, sou eu. Pensei e acho que não vai dar certo entre nós. Ela está assim, em um momento mais dela, sabe? Quer uma televisão nova, um sofá novo, ficar mais só. Ele concorda (o que mais pode fazer) e seguem, um pra cada lado que não seja ao lado do outro. Fim, né? Ele me conta. Se lamenta um pouco. Queria que tivesse dado certo.
E aí eu digo as duas coisas sobre as quais quero escrever aqui e que me definem em relacionamentos: 1) não existem pessoas especiais; 2) relacionamentos não vão dar certo. Aí acrescento que acho tão fofinho que ele é romântico e penso que vou perder um querido, mas ele fica e eu explico um pouquinho do meu pensar.
Não existem pessoas especiais, eu disse, mas poderia dizer que todos somos especiais. Cada pessoa tem, sei lá: um sotaque, um meneio, um sinalzinho, um timbre, um jeitinho que a faz especial. Que a faz amável. Que a faz única. Então, ninguém especial. O que é especial é o nosso olhar. Nosso olhar elege, diferencia, nosso olhar confere, ao que é único naquela pessoa, a qualidade de interessante, desejável (claro que a escolha não é, de todo, consciente).
Relacionamentos não vão dar certo. A idéia de que relacionamentos devem dar certo é uma forma contemporânea de dizer: finais felizes. Os finais não são felizes, alguém parte, alguém trai ou, ainda que se viva em risos por sessenta anos, alguém morre. Um final pode trazer alívio, ser triste, angustiante, libertador, indiferente, aterrorizante, mas não feliz. Pra mim, um relacionamento não pode ser pautado no futuro, pelo que ele pode vir a ser. Um relacionamento é o que ele é, o que ele está sendo. Um relacionamento não vai dar certo, ele está dando certo, agora, neste instante, ou não.
A idéia de pessoas especiais, certinhas pra gente, que fazem com que nos movamos, superemos histórias passadas e finalmente tentemos de novo eu acho bem romântica. Meu amigo é um romântico – embora se ache descolado, cínico e sei mais lá o quê que pensam os moços bonitos de fala mansa. Essa idéia, penso, além de romântica, é, também, uma perda de tempo. Ele diz: ela fez eu me mover, eu superar. Eu digo: você perdeu um monte de bonde, amigo. A nossa felicidade não está no outro e sim com um outro. Pra mim essa é uma diferença essencial. O que importa não sou eu, não é ele, é o processo, o que construímos, é nossa capacidade de manter o tal olhar na ativa.
A idéia de que um relacionamento deva ter uma perspectiva ideal de futuro, é – penso - romântica, achei a moça da história também bem romântica, embora se ache descolada, cínica e sei lá mais o quê que pensam as moças bonitas de fala segura. Ela, como ele, tem a idéia de que deve estar “pronta” para quando O relacionamento chegar. Que há um momento certo para o querer bem que não é um momento qualquer, tipo quando se precisa fazer as unhas ou se quer comprar um sofá. E a vida sendo, pondero, justamente, o miúdo.
Cultura
Bienal do Livro da Bahia chega à sua 10a edição
Ele será tema da mesa “Jorge Amado e o mundo”, que abre a programação do Café Literário, além de muitas atrações e novidades para aproximar mais ainda o público do universo dos livros. Ingressos: R$8 e R$4. Mais informações: www.bienaldolivrobahia. com.br.
Na “Ciranda dos Livros”, área de atividades voltadas às crianças, a literatura infantil será explorada por meio de oficinas, contadores de histórias, teatro, música e fantoches. Com a curadoria de José Inácio Vieira de Melo, serão mais de 50 sessões de contação de histórias com o grupo de teatro “A Outra Cia de Teatro”.
Café Literário
Grandes nomes da literatura contemporânea brasileira já garantiram sua presença no Café Literário da 10ª Bienal do Livro da Bahia: Ana Paula Maia, Márcio Souza, Kátia Borges, Ronaldo Correia de Brito, Cristóvão Tezza, Armando Avena, Mariana Ianelli, Nelson Motta, Fabrício Carpinejar, Luis Eduardo Matta, Cleise Mendes, Ordep Serra, Nelson Pretto, entre outros.Um dos espaços mais tradicionais, o Café Literário é um descontraído bate-papo entre autores, mediadores e público.
Praça de Cordel e Poesia
Ponto de encontro de poetas, repentistas e cordelistas, a Praça de Cordel e Poesia acontecerá com todo o ímpeto e encanto que são característicos da linguagem poética. Nesta edição, contempla, mais uma vez, as diversas faces da poesia baiana contemporânea, além de apresentar ao público alguns poetas de outros estados e até de outro país. Ao todo serão 83 artistas ao longo das dez noites de Bienal.A cada noite, a partir das 18h, acontecerão três sessões de poesia, cada uma com dois ou três artistas e com duração de 50 minutos. Poetas consagrados, como Ruy Espinheira Filho e Luís Antonio Cajazeira Ramos, e jovens estreantes, como Vanny Araújo e Darlon Silva, estarão na Praça de Cordel e Poesia recitando seus versos.
Representando a cultura popular, estarão presentes grandes cordelistas, como Antônio Barreto, Jotacê Freitas e Franklin Maxado. A ligação da poesia com a música também será explorada através das cantoras Flávia Wenceslau e Lane Quinto, além de outros intérpretes e compositores. A Praça de Cordel e Poesia tem como curador o poeta, jornalista e produtor cultural José Inácio Vieira de Melo.
Visitação Escolar
A Visitação Escolar é também um dos programas mais importantes da X Bienal do Livro Bahia. O projeto conta com a participação de estudantes da capital e do interior do estado.Com o objetivo de incentivar desde cedo o hábito da leitura, a Visitação Escolar convida alunos de 7 a 14 anos da rede pública e particular do ensino fundamental a conhecer gratuitamente a principal festa literária do estado.
As visitas acontecem nos 28 e 31 de outubro; 1º, 3 e 4 de novembro, em horários especialmente reservados. Além de contar com uma grade de atividades desenvolvidas especialmente para aproximar, de forma lúdica, o pequeno visitante do universo dos livros e narrativas.
http://www.tribunadabahia.com.br/news.php?idAtual=96881
“I Know My Best Angles” - Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson on Those Nude Photos She Sent to Ryan Reynolds: “I Know My Best Angles”
Scarlett Johansson does not seem the least bit ashamed when discussing her recent nude-photo scandal with Vanity Fair contributing editor Peter Biskind. “I know my best angles,” she says with her trademark insouciance. “They were sent to my husband,” now ex Ryan Reynolds. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like I was shooting a porno.” She adds saucily, “Although there’s nothing wrong with that either.”
Johansson, who has been active in campaigning for various Democratic political leaders, including Barack Obama, tells Biskind that nearly one term later “we’re all guilty of being idealistic, I and everyone who voted for him.” But in response to being asked if she would work for him again, she says, “It would be irresponsible not to.” She also discusses her friendship with Woody Allen, spawned by their shared tendency toward hypochondria and, subsequently, shared Purell. “He shakes a lot of hands,” Johansson explains. “I’ll squirt some in my hand and then squirt in his.” She also has a bizarre penchant for diagnosing him. “The only reason why Woody and I are still friends is because I’ve diagnosed all kinds of his skin tags, lesions, ailments. I’ve prescribed things for Woody that he’s then asked his doctor to prescribe for him.”
Johansson, who has been active in campaigning for various Democratic political leaders, including Barack Obama, tells Biskind that nearly one term later “we’re all guilty of being idealistic, I and everyone who voted for him.” But in response to being asked if she would work for him again, she says, “It would be irresponsible not to.” She also discusses her friendship with Woody Allen, spawned by their shared tendency toward hypochondria and, subsequently, shared Purell. “He shakes a lot of hands,” Johansson explains. “I’ll squirt some in my hand and then squirt in his.” She also has a bizarre penchant for diagnosing him. “The only reason why Woody and I are still friends is because I’ve diagnosed all kinds of his skin tags, lesions, ailments. I’ve prescribed things for Woody that he’s then asked his doctor to prescribe for him.”
Despite their compatibility, after working with Johansson on several films, Allen decided they should take a break: “I have every intention of working with her again, but I just didn’t think it was a great idea for either one of us to work together too intensely, picture after picture. I didn’t want her to be burdened by, ‘Oh, she’s in all the Woody Allen pictures, it’s so predictable,’ and she’s my new muse, and all that silliness.” Johansson does not share his opinion: “I don’t think anything’s played out. I’m waiting for him to write my Citizen Kane.”
Johansson says that her role in a revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge in 2009 opposite Liev Schreiber “completely took me over in every way. I’d spent four months bleeding all over the stage, completely exposed. I felt I was forever changed by that experience. It was unbelievable holding that Tony.” Her emotional and physical exhaustion after the end of the run was compounded by her subsequent divorce from Reynolds. “I didn’t really know what to do with myself. It was such a strange time. There was nothing that was interesting to me. I had a very public separation. It was difficult. I felt very uncomfortable.”
Related: For behind-the-scenes footage of Scarlett’s last Vanity Fair cover shoot, click here.
Johansson says that her role in a revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge in 2009 opposite Liev Schreiber “completely took me over in every way. I’d spent four months bleeding all over the stage, completely exposed. I felt I was forever changed by that experience. It was unbelievable holding that Tony.” Her emotional and physical exhaustion after the end of the run was compounded by her subsequent divorce from Reynolds. “I didn’t really know what to do with myself. It was such a strange time. There was nothing that was interesting to me. I had a very public separation. It was difficult. I felt very uncomfortable.”
Related: For behind-the-scenes footage of Scarlett’s last Vanity Fair cover shoot, click here.
segunda-feira, 31 de outubro de 2011
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
Published: October 30, 2011
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.
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.
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.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
Halloween (or Hallowe'en), a contraction of All-Hallows-Eve ("evening"), is an annual holiday observed on October 31, and common activities include guising/trick-or-treating, attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.
The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls' Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain,[6] although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.[20] Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas."[21]
Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. For instance, the carving of jack-o'-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory.[12] The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween,[13][14] but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips.[13] The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837[15] and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.[16]
Haunted attractions are entertainment venues designed to thrill and scare patrons. Most attractions are seasonal Halloween businesses. Origins of these paid scare venues are difficult to pinpoint, but it is generally accepted that they were first commonly used by the Junior Chamber International (Jaycees) for fundraising.[36] They include haunted houses, corn mazes, and hayrides,[37] and the level of sophistication of the effects has risen as the industry has grown. Haunted attractions in the United States bring in an estimate $300–500 million each year, and draw some 400,000 customers, although press sources writing in 2005 speculated that the industry had reached its peak at that time.[36] This maturing and growth within the industry has led to more technically-advanced special effects and costuming, comparable with that of Hollywood films.[38]
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
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