The Dutch Man and his Herring- the trigger to my creativity.

I got home this evening and went straight to Selective Luddite. I knew Scott was having some ‘noob’ troubles with Tumblr so I thought I’d see how he made out [particularly reblogging my post]. Anyway, I got browsing his content and that’s when I found this article

The Mac Inventors Deathbed Gift…

Aza Raskin, son of Mac designer/inventor Jef Raskin, writes about receiving a very special gift from his father a few weeks before he passed away from pancreatic cancer.

“He had the sparkle back in his eye — the one that had been reduced by pancreatic cancer to an ashen ember — when he gave it to me. It was a small package, rectangular in shape, in crisp brown-paper wrapping. Twine neatly wrapped around the corners, crisscrossing back and forth arriving at a bow crafted by the sure hands of a man who built his first model airplane at age seven.”

Scott ended the post with a simple question: “What’s the most special gift you’ve ever received?”

That was it. I hadn’t thought much about it at all. My mind instantly indexed and catalogued every gift I could remember, but just as if scanning through the index cards at the library- I came across nothing of interest. Sure I’ve received gifts, great ones even, but nothing that really sat with me as I thought it should after reading that article.

“I stare at the package. In it is my father. The man who invented the Mac.”

“The gift was a message about an entire way of thought.”

Those two quotes stood out in my mind. Then I remembered: Robert.

I met Robert through a dear traveller. A friend of mine called Poppy Wise. Poppy was a girl I spent four years of high school with and we never spoke. When we did finally speak [after she spent a year in Zurich, and I in college] we didn’t stop speaking. The tale of us two is another story.

Robert is Poppy’s surrogate Grandfather. Robert lives with Cerebral Palsy- a disease that has controlled most of his body, for all of his life.

Except his brain. As I came to know Robert over a mere 24 hours, I learned him well. The introduction was tedious as he can hardly annunciate due to his condition, but I quickly learned Robert wouldn’t mind if I asked for clarification. Robert told me tales of his travels, and stories of his child hood. I learned how he has made a living from strategic investing, and how his sisters are ‘goodie-goods’ [who he showed no care for]. Robert travelled the world as he grew up. He spent time in Egypt, Rome, Germany, and China (to name a few). Robert has…

I can’t help but to get caught up in the countless stories I heard from Robert (with the help of Poppy), but if I was to convey how many things Robert has done in his life I would have to resort to my latest tagline: “all of them” [I use it more than you’d think].

So let’s say for me, Robert is my Jef Raskin. I have a lot of respect for this man, and with the photo you see above - I will always remember my experience with Robert.

“But why that slide?”

Shoot, I guess after all that I forgot to explain how I even received the slide. Well, after my time spent with Robert, Poppy and I frequented each other. She would tell me Roberts latest jokes, and I would reminisce my experience. I felt truly enlightened. A few days before Poppy was to leave for Panama (I told you she was my dear traveller) she handed me this single slide. Robert had noticed the sparkle in my eye as I skipped along through his dusty collection of thousands of slides we were projecting onto the wall. This slide in particular was shot on Kodachrome film in Holland [if I’m not mistaken]. To be honest it is one of the few slides that had hardly any history behind it, but I think Robert knew that this would be the trigger. I keep this slide in an envelope, in a box, in a drawer. I come across it while cleaning [infrequently albeit] but when I do, it reminds me of at least one of his stories, and inspires me to create something. Anything.