The Magic Box

Dear Steve,
I love you.
Okay? Is that okay?
I remember when the word "computer" meant something with which to launch space ships, which meant something housed in a basement under strict temperature controls, which meant punch cards and scientists and geniuses who could figure out how to use such an insanely space-age device. Machine. Hal-Thing.
Whatever.

And then, Steve, you came along and you said, "No. A computer is something that people should be able to use in their house." And oh, I don't know. You incorporated the use of the mouse so that to do something on the computer you didn't have to do function 1w2, 4-8, XYZ12.
A mouse. Mmmmm...
And you called your company McIntosh and those of us who grew up in the olden days remembered Apple Records.
And how James Taylor was the first artist to release an album on Apple which was invented, incorporated, visualized by the Beatles.
Well.
Unless you grew up in the olden days you have no idea what the Beatles meant to a generation or to the world, either one. Let me just say that this video



was the first global television link and if you didn't grow up watching the Viet Nam war on TV and Richard Nixon sweating as he lied and unless you ate a mushroom growing out of a cow field in Central Florida or the chemical equivalent in the late sixties or early seventies, you have no idea the importance of all of this.

All we grew up with was war, war, war and fear, fear, fear.

Castro, Khrushchev, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy assassination, hide-under-the-desk, bomb-shelter, The Red Curtain, Commies, The Red Menace....
It never ended and it was horrible and there was the bomb and we were not the only ones who had it and then suddenly, for no reason, there was the Beatles.

Love Me Do. Eight Days A Week. She Loves You, Twist And Shout, and that first song, I Want To Hold Your Hand may have let us breathe a full breath for the first time ever in our lives that we could remember.
You can't imagine how long their hair was. You can't imagine how much the world was shocked. You can't imagine how joyful it was to hear their songs.. And so. When Steve Jobs came up with the McIntosh Computer he was a genius.
The Beatles had already changed the world and now, Steve Jobs was about to do it again and he was tying it in, somehow (maybe illegally) to John, Paul, George and Ringo.

And I am still waiting for Saint Ringo to be anointed Pope. We've already had John and Paul. George can't be far behind. And Ringo? Oh yes.

I remember when I got my first computer like it was yesterday. An Apple Performa. Oh, Lord. It was probably a piece of shit but I loved it. There was MacWorld and I had an e-mail address that was mgmoon@macworld.com.

Or something like that. And I got a printer and my world did a one-eighty. I learned to use that Performa in a heartbeat and I fell in love with the spinning beach ball and the dogcow
and learning to use the computer wasn't scary at all. It was fun. And I felt my mind expand and instead of being a Hal-Like device, my Mac was a friend, an ally, a direct link to the collective unconscious as I realized that the newly born internet was about to become.

I still use a Mac. I've written several novels on Macs and approximately 1,630 blog posts in the last three years and I have thousands of pictures on my iPhotos and I've watched Apple go from a disdained little computer company which had all of its best system features stolen by Microsoft to the company who came up with the iPod and the iPhone and now the iPad and well, creativity will tell and maybe all you need is love and a Mac.
Steve Jobs said recently that Bill Gates should have dropped some acid. Not that Bill's done too badly for himself. No. He has not. And he is doing great things for the world with his money but let's face it- Apple's products are cherry and Microsoft's are soft banana and the world needs both but I am SO glad I have a Mac.

Mr. Moon keeps asking me what I want for my birthday and I keep saying, Nothing! Just save our money for when I need a new computer because I'll be wanting a new Mac. I've had this one for over three years and although it works like a champ, a charm, a jewel, a glory, it's a machine. A magic machine, but a machine. And I'll need a new one sooner or later.

I started playing a Beatle's CD when I started writing this and in the time that I have been writing it I've gotten an e-mail from my daughter May about how her brother Hank needs a new computer and another one from an old friend who helped me learn about Macs in the very, very beginning.
Look. I do believe in magic. I believe that the forces gather together when need be to change the world. Galileo, Da Vinci, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Alcott, Leary, Ram Dass, Ginsberg, King Arthur, Nelson Mandela, St. Francis, MLK, Jr., The Virgin of Guadalupe, Socrates, Hippocrates, George Washington Carver, Billy Holiday, B. B. King, Copernicus, Harriet Tubman, John Gorey, Sacajawea, John, Paul, George, Ringo, Jobs....

I have my list. You have yours. Mine is listed on a Mac which is not just a machine to me, but a conduit to my muse.

So Steve. I love you. Whether it's okay or not.
I do. And I don't just love you for your mind. I think you're really cute, too.
Always and forever....Ms. Moon


P.S. Kathleen's oncologist uses a Mac. A laptop, just like this one. This is one more thing which gives us hope. A doctor whom you want to cure your cancer better be an artist as well as a scientist. And a man who uses a Mac can be both. We believe that. We do.