The Philosopher's Attic

The Apple Tablet and its craze offers more than just the prospect of a shiny new geek toy: my take on a rumour and a symbol of hope.

Mashable. com is usually not known for their intellectual insight in things. It’s a site for news about new media and computers. It’s a synthesising site, that will mash up all the news into small and quickly readable articles. It does a great job at it and I am glad that I don’t have to read 20 articles to get the same info. So, thank you Mashable.
However, I was amazed to read the lead title of one of their latest articles on the famed ‘ipad’ or simply the Apple Tablet this morning which is supposed to come out today: “Why the idea of the Apple Tablet May Be Better Than the Reality”.

Truly platonic.

The article then states that “as a rumor, the Apple tablet can be anything to anyone.”

A bit less platonic.

Still. The point stands to be argued. It’s a common truth that things that don’t have a substantiated reality either based in experience or axiomatic proof, are free to be filled with whatever it is that we need. The idea of being with someone, the idea of love, the idea of being in love, the idea of being successful, the idea of being famed… they all are wonderful in themselves and as such they guide our thoughts if not our dreams, because they are devoid of reality. Because come to think of it, being in love means a lot of work, staying in love even more; being successful means having to work and compromise and then compromise some more, being famed means you’ll expose yourself to a whole set of problems you wouldn’t have otherwise etc. etc.

Mashable states the same thing: “The anticipation and the lofty expectations surrounding the product launch put the Apple tablet atop a pedestal. Once the curtain lifts, it could take years before it returns to the same level of glory.”

The same is true with any high idea. It can be argued however that the ’same level of glory’ is reached much earlier in the process. By filling what up to that point was just an empty idea, potentiality in every sense possible, the thing, your dream becomes truly real. And that in itself gives it more weight and more glory than a simple idea ever could. A lost love is always better than no love at all, and a dream in itself is bound to be killed either by use or reality.

The conclusion is basic really: dreams and ideas are bound to be destroyed, replaced and remade. Reality has that crushing quality like nothing else out there.

As for the whole question about the Apple Tablet. Will it be great? I have no doubt about it. Will it save the printing industry as Mashable states the Apple fans? Absolutely not. Will it be an actual concurrence to the e-readers such as the Kindle or the Nook? Probably not. Will it advance the victory over said e-readers over the traditional book? No.

There is a certain distinctive quality that comes with every single book that a Kindle or Nook cannot replace, no matter how many pretty author pictures they put into their digitalised book formats. The physical appearance, the weight, the difference in paperweight, the font, the printing style… it all gives a book it’s primary qualities while the text, good or bad, gives it its character. Nothing in an e-reader can come even close to that particular thrill that you feel when you take a book into your hands before buying it, because something in its cover, appearance or title called out to you. All these e-readers will ever achieve is to be a tool in a world where multitasking is a standard and where we fill even the smallest minute with some kind of chatter (the book in the train, music while walking, your Hebrew course while working out…). And as such, the Apple Table wont change anything. If the rumours are correct and it is in fact a netbook, I doubt it will even establish as an e-reader. Because I personally, don’t need yet another PC to distract me from what I really want to do: read. With the touch of paper on my hands and sometimes the wonderful warm feeling that comes when you toss a book wholeheartedly into a corner or on the floor because the author really, really couldn’t resist drawing that card on you. Imagine doing that with a Kindle?

The e-readers, reading on the computer, OCR, surfing on the phone, being online all the time, web 2.0… they all have been empty ideas at some point. And then we started filling them up with real life use, with our own version of their initial form. So, no matter how much people want to see symbols of hope in the clouds or their tea leaves, the Apple Tablet or a President, it never, ever lifts the responsibility from us to make use of that symbol. Evaluate it and then actually use it, fill it up with meaning.

A crisis is never just overcome with symbols. But they certainly help to not lose hope completely.

yseult Issues apple tablet, reality, symbols

Draw me a heart, my love,
to paint all over the walls,
over the airs of jealousy,
the hate and the flaws.

Draw me a heart the size
of your mountains,
your valleys and passions,
draw it large, draw it true,
and let me crawl up inside it.

Draw me a heart
to bury my fears in.
A heart for the future,
a heart for the past.

A heart in so many colours,
where flowers of blossoms past,
rain down on both our pains
and longings.

A heart so truthful,
it has no place in this world.

A heart so pure,
the sun would rival its glow.

Draw me a heart, my love.
Don’t leave me behind.
Let me paint it then,
over all the walls that keep
this darkness in.

A heart so pure, so truthful,
a heart so big, so bright.

It’ll be my world from now on.
We don’t need anything else.

A heart. It’s all it takes after all.

yseult Poetry

It’s funny how sometimes current topics and themes occur either in everyday life, in your lectures or thoughts. It’s like when someone gets a new car and suddenly you see that type of car everywhere because before you simply didn’t pay proper attention.
The same thing works for topics and thoughts. Recurring themes is probably our brain and subconscious’ way of organising our days and realisations to get things done. Or we could just say that it’s karma’s way of telling you that now is the time to finally get that particular lesson.

Whichever way we want to put it or analyse it, my current topic is communication. And in fact it has been for a while. Out of some silly idea of ‘I don’t always want to write about the same thing’ I’ve waited until I would have something more interesting to write about… but again, no such luck. The last four writing ideas on the back burner have been about communication. So instead of putting this one here as well on a list where it can wait, I am dragging it all out now. Because the wait for a new post is way too long and because I need to get back into some sort of stable writing in general.

Ever since I got married, I’ve been on the receiving end of some of the weirdest questions in existence: relationship advice. While certainly my relationship is one of the most amazing things that just works in my life (yes, mentally, psychologically and physically), I’ve never been particularly comfortable with talking about it. As if it was something out of time or I would jinx it by using it as an example. With the years that changed, simply because I saw how people in other relationships really use a system of powers and pressure that is completely absent from my marriage. It goes to show that when you really don’t want to be an example, you end up being one even more so. Or in other words I really had to say something about the usual relationship mistakes. What a shocker. The girl that waited until the age of 28 to get some action, actually had something to say about relationships. Who knows, I might just make a series out of this.

One thing that always seems to be a present bystander of any relationships are annoyances. The small things that the other does that keep upsetting you, that suddenly are the only thing that you see, hear, smell and yourself can think about. Does your spouse love rearranging the towels in your bathroom once you’re just out of the shower and actually have just finished putting them on the rack? Seriously, as if your way of folding them was so wrong and he needs to be cleaning up behind you. How insulting. How infuriating. How utterly useless and what a loss of time…!

Stop.

That’s right. Stop. That’s the right moment to stop the thoughts that start gathering momentum at the first occurrence, at the second have gained the physical force of an avalanche and at the 10th are reason enough to kick the other out of your home, life and future will.

Our minds and worlds are not permeable to everything and our thoughts and motivations aren’t visible to the outside. All the outside sees are actions. And with the wish to understand that should be infusing every relationship (lover or not), we start conjecturing, constructing and analyzing. And since we already are upset, the only explanation is tainted by annoyance. Only in rare occasions could we think that there was a good explanation to these actions. After all what possible GOOD explanation can there be to the fact of my husband rearranging the towels in our bathroom that were already stowed on a rack and thus per definition the bathroom cleaned up?

Asking would help. Talking about it would help. Breaking the cycle of ‘he’s just not happy with the way I do things. Tough.’ would certainly help. Because if you do, you’d be able to realise that there is no mean thought behind it, but that he likes doing it, that he’s not even realising that he’s doing it and that the way he does it, they DO use less space and dry faster.

Just like our motivations are not painted onto our actions, our partner doesn’t have a priviledged way into our mind or suddenly doted with the gift of telepathy to see what upsets us and what doesn’t. The debt of communication lies always on both sides of the couple. It’s the most important step any relationship can take. And one I’ve not lastly understood thanks to living my relationship over Skype for two years.

Not communicating even the upsetting things is not in any possible way something that ’spares’ your partner. (Even though you can wait to spill it all until a difficult moment has passed for instance.) Not stating what goes wrong only suffocates your relationship under the silence and eventually the annoyance will grow so strong, the cover of silence can’t cover it anymore. Because the key to annoyance is: it can’t be evacuated other than by addressing it.

NB. In case you were wondering… yes, my love does rearrange our towels and it took me a while to realise the level of absent thought behind it and that it was just a way of neatly putting things in our apartment. Doesn’t mean hubby doesn’t like the way I clean or the way I hold our house together OR the way I fold the towels. I still love him. He’s a quirk. But so am I.

yseult communication