北京時間10月31日消息,蘋果創始人喬布斯的妹妹莫娜·辛普森(Mona Simpson)昨天發表文章,悼念喬布斯,文章刊發於《紐約時報》,全文如下:
兄妹分離
我與母親相依為命一直到大,因為家裏窮,而我又早已得知父親是敘利亞移民而來的,在我的想像中他像奧瑪-沙裏夫(Omar Sharif)。我希望他富有而慈祥,進入我們的生活(以及我們還沒有配家具的公寓),幫助我們。後來,我遇到了父親,努力相信他改了電話號碼,沒有留下地址,因為他是一個理想主義革命者,為阿拉伯人民描繪一個新世界。
我主張男女平等,在我的一生中,一直等待我愛的男人,也等待他愛我。數十年來,我一直想,那個男人可能會是我父親。當我25歲時,我才遇到那個男人,他就是我的哥哥。
那時,我住在紐約,開始寫自己的第一部小說。我在小雜誌找到一份工作, 還有三個有誌的同事。有一天,一名律師跑來告訴我(我當時是一來自加州的中產階級女孩,和老板吵著要買健康保險),說他的客戶很有錢很有名,是我失散的哥 哥,編輯們全驚住了。那是1985年,我們在一個文學雜誌工作,我喜歡上了狄更斯的小說,我們都最喜歡他。律師拒絕告訴我哥哥的名字,同事們開始打賭。最 佳候選是約翰·特拉沃爾塔(美國演員)。我倒希望是文學家亨利·詹姆斯(美國著名小說家和批評家),他比我有天分,是天才。
第一次相見
蒙娜·辛普森(左)稱自己在1984年第一次遇見哥哥喬布斯。
當我遇到喬布斯,他年紀和我相仿,穿著牛仔褲,看起來有點像敘利亞人或者猶太人,比奧瑪-沙裏夫帥。
我們散了會步,挺長,看起來我們都喜歡散步。我不太記得第一天相見時說了什麽,隻是覺得如果挑朋友就會挑他。他解釋說,自己從事電腦工作。
我不太懂電腦,還在Olivetti打字機上工作。
我告訴喬布斯,最近才考慮買第一台電腦:它叫Cromemco。喬布斯說我的選擇不錯。他說他在造一些相當漂亮的東西。
想告訴大家幾件從喬布斯口中聽到的事,我們相識27年,有三個時間段:他的一生,他生病時,他去世時。
喬布斯從事自己喜歡的工作,他工作相當賣力,每天如此。
相當簡單,但確實如此。
最高價值在“漂亮”
喬布斯與心不在焉者完全不同。
對於努力工作,哪怕是最終失敗,他也從不覺得難為情。我從沒碰到一個人像喬布斯如此不恥“嚐試”的人。
在NEXT工作時,他受了傷,但依然前進。每天如此。
新奇不是喬布斯的最高價值所在,漂亮才是。
對於創新者,喬布斯相當崇拜。如果他喜歡一件T恤,他會訂10年或者100件。在帕洛阿爾托家中,每個人可能都有足夠多的黑色高翻領羊毛衣穿。
他不喜歡趨勢和噱頭,他喜歡人們遵從自己的年紀。
他對於美的哲學可以這樣來形容:“時尚現在看來漂亮,但隨後會醜陋,藝術最開始可以醜陋,但會越變越漂亮。”
喬布斯渴望變得更漂亮,他不介意被人誤解。
還沒有被請去蘋果之前,他開著跑車去Next,更換過三四輛相同的車,他與自己的團隊在那裏開發平台,後來蒂姆·伯納斯-李(Tim Berners-Lee)用它來為開發程序。
喜歡談戀愛
在戀愛花費的時間上,喬布斯和女孩不相上下。愛是他的最高美德,是他的眾神之神。對於共事之人的羅曼蒂克生活,他有所擔心。
有一次,他看到一個男人,他認為女的可能會感興趣,於是叫住他:“你單身嗎?介意與我妹妹約會嗎?”
喬布斯遇到Laurene(喬布斯之妻)後就打電話告訴我:“有一個美女,很聰明,她有一條狗,我要和她結婚。”
與親人相處
當Reed出生時,他更易動情,且一發不可收拾。他是一個好動的父親,孩子也一樣。他為Lisa的男朋友擔心,為Erin的旅行和裙子長度擔心,也怕Eve被馬傷著。
在Reed畢業晚會上,喬布斯與他共舞,讓人難忘。
對Laurene的愛讓他堅持。他相信愛一直在發生,在所有地方都存在。在這點上,他從不諷刺、冷嘲或者悲觀。我也向他學習,現在依然如此。
年輕時代,喬布斯就成功了,他覺得成功使他孤立。認識他後,他所做的大多決定都是為了化解隔閡。一個來自洛斯拉圖斯 (Los Altos)的中產階級男孩, 與一個新澤西州(New Jersey)女孩結婚,像其它孩子一樣養大Lisa、Reed、Erin和Eve,對於二人來說都相當重要。他們的家既不藝術,也不優雅,實際上,自從 認識他們多年以來,晚餐一般會在草地上進行,有進隻有一種蔬菜。許多蔬菜,但隻有一種。比如西蘭花。
盡管是年輕百萬富翁,他也常到機場接我,站在那裏,穿著牛仔褲。
有時他在工作,家人叫他,他的秘書Linetta會說:“你爸爸在開會,還要我去打擾他嗎?”
萬聖節前夕,兒子Reed堅持要做女巫打扮,於是全家隻好陪他。
他們曾想改造廚房,花了多年時間,他們便在車庫的電爐上做飯。那時,皮斯克大樓也正在興建,隻完成一半。
並不是說喬布斯不享受自己的成功:他喜歡成功,隻是並不癡迷。他說自己去了帕洛阿爾托自行車商店,並意識到自己可以買下最好的自行車,覺得相當高興。
他還真這麽做了。
眾多奇怪的愛好
喬布斯很謙虛,他不斷學習。
有一次,他告訴我,如果自己的成長方式不同,可能會成為數學家。他虔誠地談到大學,說自己喜歡在斯坦佛校園漫步。在生命的最後幾年,他還學習了馬克·羅斯科(Mark Rothko)的繪畫書,他早先並不知道這位藝術家,在未來的蘋果總部牆上,會找到類似的感覺。
喬布斯搞怪。有哪個CEO知道道英文和中文香水月季(tea roses)的曆史?又有誰喜歡大衛奧斯汀(David Austin)玫瑰?
他的口袋常裝滿東西,我敢打賭,Laurene一定會找到一些東西喜歡的歌、剪下的詩歌、可能放在抽屜裏,就算是結婚20年也會覺得奇怪。每兩天我們就 要談次話,當我在《紐約時報》開了專欄,看到蘋果的一些專利時,還是相當吃驚,看到樓梯草圖時很高興(喬布斯為蘋果專賣店琉璃樓梯申請專利)。
喬布斯給四個孩子、妻子、我們所有人帶來樂趣。
他珍愛幸福。
然而,喬布斯病了,他的生命漸漸流逝。曾經,他喜歡在巴黎散步,在京都找到一個小型手工蕎麥麵商店,滑雪時優雅下坡。一切不再了。
最終,一些普通的快樂也無法吸引它,如一個好的桃子。
從他的病中我才知道,他留下的比帶走的多得多。
手術時的痛苦
我記得我們兄妹曾一起散步。在肝移植(liver transplant)手術之後,他站起來,腿太瘦了,看起來連身體都支撐不了,他用手抓住椅子後背,推下Memphis醫院的走廊,然後坐在椅子上,休息一會,轉著輪子行走。他每天都數著步數,每天前進一點點。
Laurene跪在麵前,看著他的眼睛說:“你能做到的。”他的眼睛放大了,嘴唇卻合在一起。
他努力了,一直在努力,而愛是最大動力。他是一個讓人感動的人。
在最糟糕的時候,我知道他不是為了自己在忍耐。他有一個目標:等到兒子從高中畢業,女兒Erin去京都旅遊,他造的船下水,他想帶全家去周遊世界,他希望有一天自己能與Laurene退休。
盡管病了,品味、辨別與判斷還在。他換了67個護士才找到中意的人,有三個完全獲得他的信任,一直相伴到最後: Tracy、Arturo和Elham。
有一次在斯坦佛I.C.U部門就醫,喬布斯一貫不喜歡插隊,也不願亮出自己的名字,這一次卻承認:自己想有一點特殊優待。我告訴他:喬布斯,這次是特殊治療。他說:“我想要多一點特殊。”
當他不能說話時,就要一個筆記本。他畫了一些素描,比如在病床上安一個iPad,設計新的移動顯示器和X線設備,他還重新設計了“一些不特殊的”醫院部門。每次喬布斯妻子走進病房,笑容再會出現。
有一什大事要注意,他會在本子上寫東西,他抬頭看時,你也要抬頭看。這時,他的意思就是說想要一塊冰,你要給他,醫生本來不允許的。
沒有人知道,我們會在這裏呆多久。在喬布斯好轉時,甚至是去年,他開始著手各項目,向員工發信說自己會康複。在荷蘭的船工已經做好了不鏽鋼船體,準備安裝木頭。他的三個女兒還沒結婚,兩個小的還是女孩,他想參加婚禮,也參加我的婚禮。
對於一個癌症已久之人過逝,我的回憶可能不太準確,不過喬布斯去世是我們沒預料的。
最後的幾小時
從我哥哥的去世之中,有一點是最根本的:他是誰,他怎麽死的。
周二早上,他打電話給我,讓我快去帕洛阿爾托。他的語氣充滿深情和關愛,恰似一個行將遠離的人的語氣,雖然充滿遺憾,但必須離去。
他開始告別,而我打斷了他,說:“等等,我來了,我在去機場的的士上,我會到的。”
“我現在告訴你是因為我怕你趕不上。”
我到了後,他和妻子在開玩笑,像是生活和工作一輩子的夥伴。他看著孩子,視線仿佛永不離開。
直到下午2點,他的妻子還能叫醒他,喬布斯和蘋果的朋友談了話。
一會兒之後,他就再也無法醒來了。
他的呼吸改變了,變得劇烈、刻意,我覺得他又一次在數自己的腳步,想走得更遠一些。
我當時明白:他也將這當成工作。死,從未發生,他達到了目標。
當他向我告別,並告訴我自己很遺憾時,他還告訴我,不能像計劃的一樣相處更長時間,他非常遺憾,現在他要去更好的地方了。
費舍爾醫生說,要挨過當晚隻有50%的機會。
他完成了。直到現在,他的形象依然是嚴厲的、英俊的、專製的、浪漫的。他的呼吸暗示旅途之艱難,他看起來在攀登。
喬布斯的最後幾個字是臨別時幾個小時前說的,是單音節詞,重複了三次。
臨行時,他看著自己的妹妹Patty,然後盯著孩子看了一會,然後是自己的妻子,然後眼光飄向上方。
喬布斯最後的話是:OH WOW,OH WOW,OH WOW(哦,哇!)。
Op-Ed Contributor
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
By MONA SIMPSON
Published: October 30, 2011
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.
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.