Bill Costley

Garden Party ( 4th of July)

2008-08-16T01:31:00.000-07:00

Garden Party

looking back in glances
you hover in an orange hue
fading, flickering glimpes
all I have now of you

images float unannounced
on the cut ends of my hair as it
blows across my lips & face

I look across to see you
remembering the lightness
of being close, my arms around you
your arms around me
as we walked so slowly
back to the red car on the
shady street in Santa Clara

Our pairing seems to others
complete. " This is the way it ought to be"
Lightly walking toward the street
from a garden party
weightless burden of history

July 19 2009
Piers Hawthorne, in memory of love

Post-op lament

2008-08-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

A light breeze drifts
in thru the open window
rippling into my mind,
filling it with images
of simple comforts
I yearned for in hospital
& nursing home:

a warm facecloth,
a soapy shave w/a sharp 3-blade,
a queen-sized bed,
bending to buckle my sandals,
climbing onto my 10-speed bike
to cruise down the sidewalks
& go grocery shopping,

Anything immediate & spontaneous
feels remote, now that I'm hosting
a technologically-advanced
left knee built of titanium & rubber,
buried in a stiff, swollen left leg.

What I'd assumed, I can't, yet; what
I'd enjoyed, I can only cherrypick...

(15 AUG 08, 12:41PDT
Santa Clara CA)v3

Lifting vs Competing

2008-08-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

I don't bother to watch the Olympics because of the inherent nationalism it's still framed in; you may imagine that athletes playing for countries in which they live, but were not born in, demonstrate post-nationalistic free-agentry, but even when olympic athletes play on teams against their own nations of origin (e.g., an Afro-American living in China played on the Chinese basketball team against the USA), they're always still on nationally-sponsored & -identified teams. Nationalism still completely packets & defines the Olympics.

William James wrote an essay - in 1906, well before WW1 - that competitive sport was a moral equivalent of war, that is, a rational substitute; http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm But the International Olympic Committee (founded in 1894) revival of the Olympics couldn't & didn't prevent WW1 from happening. Or WW2. Or any war. Suspending the Olympics during an international war only concedes it.

Unsurprisingly, my interest in competitive sports is zero. I'm an habitually non-competitive thinker/personality. & prefer cooperation as a mode/model of progress: I've always been interested in what we can do together vs what can we do contra each other; only what we can lift together interests me.

Footnote: From age 13-17, I caddied at a 'restricted' country club in Marblehead MA, geting a fair sense of what golf is & isn't: in the 'inner' game of golf, you're really your own 'opponent.' Putting is a study in serious self-discipline; it defeats many golfers in frustration. I preferred practicing chip-shots from sand-traps up onto the green (a miniscule form of lifting.)

Post-op recovery

2008-08-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm finally back in my own apt.w/Reggie. Post-op, I spent 2 wks (w/PT & OT) in a nearby skilled-nursing home. Rest assured the total-knee operation appears to be a success; the recovery, however, is proving to be another multi-phased process in itself (incl. more PT) I can obviously write a bit & am willing to talk a bit more (my only phone is 408-247-1943) but both seem to currently tire me out surprisingly, so pls. don't expect a lot out of me for a while.

Many people have helped me out during this process, among them Barbara Rice (as my very necessary patient-advocate)., Cherle Stephenson (my longtime surrogate mother), Lois Overman (my very close friend who is stll 'airing' Reggie while I'm unable to), Rev. Kate Wilson, Ken Contey, Karl Kadie & Carol Korzow, and my fascinating friend & now helper, Ivo Adam - about whom you're read a lot here. Anna Hawthorne in Canada called me daily in the hospital, & then in the nursing home (despite its odd phone arrangement), & we talk daily on the phone. More - as things develop.

Money=Sand, Adequacy; my operation

2008-07-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

Today, Ivo & I biked to the Andersen Bakery, then to Safeway, & finally back to the bench between bldgs 4&5, talking in each place.

Selected Topics:

1) Money = sand. Ivo suggested that when there's a lot of either, the figurative fiscal sand-castle can withstand the tide. I then mentioned my fave concept of adequacy as a coming measure of pragmatic realities, "Is it adequate?" becoming the normative Q in a post-excessive pd., with "just enuf" its demotic tensor. Enuf said.

2) My L-knee operation (tom'w, 23 JULY 10am.) Ivo has had deep brain surgery for Parkinsons, & suggests I not try to worry about my total-knee surgery: "The worst that could happen is that you could lose a leg." Later, he drove me to The Grocery Outlet (in nearby west San Jose) to stock up on my usual basic edibles for a 6+-wk recovery period. For daily updates on my status, call Cherle Stephenson at (408) 246-5286.

Andersen Bakery; Italian films; Mother tongues

2008-07-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

Today Ivo & I biked to the bakery & talked about various things:

1) Andersen Bakery, a chain of 14 S.F. Bay outlets (absorbing 4 Grain d'or) founded in 1981, not the eponymous Japanese chain founded in Hiroshima in 1948.

2) Italian films. After Ivo said that on the current U.S. TV series "Numbers" a stolen DVD of "The Bicycle Thieves" (I ladri bicicletti, 1947, dir. Vittorio da Sica; subtitled in English, "The Bicycle Thief") was cited, I told him that as a lifelong bicyclist, it was my favorite film since 15; I later became a Fellini fan, so we exchanged Fellini-fan trivia (Why was "8 1/2" - "8 1/2" ?, etc.)

3) Mother tongues. In Israel, to satisfy a university 2nd-language requirement, Ivo shrewdly claimed that his father tongue (which he spoke to his father) was Italian, while his mother tongue (which he spoke to his mother) was English, & so was allowed to read Italian rather than Hebrew for the language test.(As members of the international community of Alexandria, Egypt, his family was tri-lingual.) Recently, revisiting Israel, he found his unaccented, sabra-Hebrew (learned in the kibbutz) was spotty, but his vocabulary quickly improved daily.

Lacking Swastika

2008-07-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Today, Ivo & I talked while we sat on one of the 2 green wooden benches between bldgs. 4 & 5 under the multi-storey conifer. We sat watching Reggie do his usual exploration of the gardens there, at the literal end of his tether; as often as Reggie got himself tangled up, Ivo got up to untangle him - because my knees are too painful.

Somehow not having studied Latin in Egypt as a British-system schoolboy, once Ivo was taken to Italy at age 14 +1 day, he entered the Italian jr.high-school system & was streamed into a technical rather than classical high school. (To recoup that Latin would have taken 3 years during which he would have been that many years older than his fellow classmates.) On graduation (circa 1964), he somehow found a job in an Italian radio-TV shop that wanted to make an early computer - DTL technology, with 56K RAM, 1K memory, running a medical application for a French company. Determined to get to England, he deluged English electronics companies with his resume, and was soon hired by PYE Telecommunications Ltd. in Cambridge, England, but later fired - because he had slept with his boss' neice.

He soon split for Greece "to live a bohemian life." Loafing about on the beach, he read Leon Uris' EXODUS, & decided to go to Israel & join a kibbutz. "Because it was in a small village of only 600 people; you got to know too much about everybody - the good, the bad and the ugly." As an Israeli army reservist, he was assigned to guard a formerly British munitions dump inside Mt. Carmel. "Once it was known that Che Guevara had just (1967) been killed in Bolivia with an Uzi, Israel could not produce enough of them to met the demand, nor the 9mm bullets they required, so had to import them from Germany. I looked at the boxes of bullets stacked up on one side of the room - labelled in German - and thought: All they lack is the Swastika." (To be continued...)

Total-knee Replacement

2008-07-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

I will finally be having my postponed total L-knee replacement on 23 JULY, 10am at the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Clara CA. For my status on the day of surgery, call (408) 851-6230. My patient-name is William K. Costley; my DOB is 21 MAY 42. I don't know how many days I'll be in the hospital after it. If I'm sent directly home to recover (rather than to a rehab-facility for PT) I can be reached at home at (408) 247-1943, billcostley@yahoo.com For updates on my status, call Cherle Stephenson at (408) 246-5286.

NON- ZERO

2008-07-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Early mornings, when I air Reggie, I currently read & yellow hi-light a hardbound copy of Robert Wright's NON-ZERO, The Logic of Human Destiny (Pantheon, NYC, 2000, 435pp, no illus.) because I'm interested in its qualifiedly optimistic analysis of the cultural progress of the human species.

I began reading it a month or so ago after I found it here in the lobby of the bldg. I live in, left by William Johnstone (89), a former TV weatherman (in Japan, etc, born in Montana) whose interest in anthropology & archaeology is broad & deep. (He recently moved to a similar retirement community in neighboring Sunnyvale.) For the past year we'd both attended the free weekly adult-ed. class given here at Valley Village for the last 8 years by Dr. Worku Negash, Ph.D (Stanford) the Ethiopian VP of nearby (Community) College. It's currently on hiatus while Dr. Negash visits Ethiopia with his family - it's his children's first trip there.

Back to Wright. Rather than write a book review, I'd rather refer you to his website: www.nonzero.org I may make some observations about NON-ZERO in the coming days & weeks. Currently, I'm at p262, from which I quote: "Non-zero sumness, in addition to being the reason that organic complexity exists, and the reason communication got invented, is the reason there is love." (which may/not entice some of you to read his book.)

a Scoto-Pole?

2008-07-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

Unexpectedly, on Sun.morning, Ivo invited me to bike to the bakery.

This time, I described my extended family's dual ethnicities.

My paternal grandfather emigrated to Boston from Glasgow (Scotland) just before the beginning of WW1 & stayed a British citizen until March 1920. Taking American citizenship made his first two (Glasgow-born) children Americans, but not his wife, who (I believe) remained British until she died.

My maternal grandfather emigrated to Boston from what was then Poland "under Russian administration" effectively White (Byelo) Russia, now Belarus. I don't know when he became an American citizen, or indeed, if he ever did.

Predictably, the Scot thought of himself as a Scot; the Pole, a Pole. Their naturalized & American-born children grew up thinking of themselves as hyphenated-Americans. One of the Polish 2nd-generation once visited Poland briefly; but it took me to return to Scotland to live (for a year as a writer) & visit the demolished block in Glasgow where my father was born. I was well-received in Scotland; any Scottish connection, however distant, is appreciated; next-generation returnees aren't really considered tourists.

I, of course, carry a recently-renewed American passport, but internally, think of myself as a Scoto-Pole. (Flashback: After the Polish Air Force evacuated to Norfolk, England & Fife, Scotland in Sept.1939, they fathered a generation of Brito-Polish children in both places, making my ethnomix more common there than in the USA.)

Yr Passports, Pls!

2008-07-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today, Ivo & I talked (among other things) about passports. Although he's entitled to multiple ones - Egyptian by birth, Italian by longtime residence (from age 14 + 1 day), Israeli by 10 years' residence & the Law of Return, he carries an American one for travel because (he says) "it's the most powerful one to carry if you get in trouble anywhere: it has the most embassies" & far more international clout than either Egypt or Italy.

Nonetheless, when Italy's playing in the International (soccer) Cup, Ivo carries his Italian passport in a sentimentally nationalistic gesture, even tho he's an American citizen by choice: "You are an American by accident, but I am an American by choice," he says, downplaying nationalism based on place of birth:

"The creation of the EEU makes nationalism only relevant to sports. When the Williams sisters play (tennis) at Wimbeldon, they play as individuals, but when they play in the Olympics, they play as representatives of their country. When the Israeli athletes were killed in 1972, someone asked me how many Jewish olympic athletes there were in the word; I answered: one - Mark Spitz." (a swimmer who comes from Santa Clara CA where I'm writing this, who presumably carries an American passport. - BC)

Take the Shame-Train

2008-07-07T20:32:00.001-07:00

This eve. I heard a usage that didn't surprise me in car-based California: Shame-train What is it? The bus; taking it shames one who does. The speaker was alleged to be 38, but her mother says she's mentally 25. If so, that means the Californians under-30 see buses as a socially demeaning mode of transportation.

Well, this may have once been true, but suddenly, as people are being driven to money-saving measures by gas inching towards USD$5/gal., more people are riding their 26-speed muscle-bikes from home to the next transportation mode up in the hierarchy & riding the bus w/out shame to wherever they would have driven only a year ago; they're no longer reckoning shame into the algorithm. Taking the light-rail or the CalTrain are now also shame-free.

So I'm no longer the only 'white' man on the bus, & no longer the only one who rode my bike to it; I also store mine & ride just a few feet away from it in the newly trendy, neo-macho Bike Car on any CalTrain. The acceptable transportation algorithm is changing...to my lifelong-bikey benefit.

Y Italy?

2008-07-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

This tues. a.m. Ivo & I discussed Italy - to which he'd been brought from Egypt in 1952, at age 14 + 1 day, as a result of the revolution led by Gamal Abdul Nasser.

"I would never live in Italy again," said Ivo; Why? Because it demonstrates 20th-century politics: "It tried constitutional monarchy, Fascism, Socialism, Communism, liberal democracy, and they all failed. Why? Because in Italy, no matter what the official political system is, the actual system does not work & everybody knows it" e.g, absurd 15-minute strikes; daily strikes for different causes by the same strikers who act as a paid claque for all strikes; the uncollected garbage in Naples - entirely due to the Mafia, etc. "In Italy. drama rules."

What's most characteristic of Rome?, I asked Ivo. "Grandeur, he replied instantly. "If you look at Michelangelo's "Creation" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, just look to the right & left of it: more grandeur! Compared to Rome, Florence is a jewel, but Rome is unsurpassed in its grandeur."

Y the French?

2008-06-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Early on Tuesday mornings, my once-Alexandrian Italian-Jewish friend Ivo Adam & I ride our bikes to a small bakery in a nearby shopping mall; white-haired men in our mid-60s, we're not bicycling just because it's suddenly meritoriously-green; our actual goal is civilized conversation.

Ivo buys a small coffee & a sliced, fresh raisin bagel, hands me a token slice, & we chat about American vs European cultural habits, American politics, speculative/science-fiction (James P. Hogan, Doris Lessing), etc. American men rarely discuss 'culture' with other men, so it's refreshing to talk with an educated European my own age who usually slips in a relevant Jewish-joke.

Today Ivo talked about the ways & why the French revere/worship their restaurants, a near-religion he attributes to Valois regente Marie di Medici (April 26, 1575 – July 3, 1642) importing 100 Italian cooks & deploying them over 50 castles, effectively reforming French cuisine, which (like the Italian) he says is based on the use of seasonal vegetables; & claims the French specialize in sauces "because their meat is so bad."

[flashback:] My eponymous ancestor Guillaume Costeley (1530-1606) was court composer to one of Marie's sons, dauphin Charles IX Valois (June 27,1550 - May 30 1574.)

Comical & Young-Old?

2008-06-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

After my aerobics class this morning, I spoke for quite a while to a newcomer - a Scotswoman from Glasgow - and by the time I finished recounting the anomalies of my life to her, it occured to me that my life hasn't been tragic at all, but a species of comedy, which my Scottish poet-friend (Dr.) Tom Hubbard (PhD Aberdeen) has been trying to suggest to me since as far back as 1985 (when Carolin & I lived about a year in Markinch, Fife.)

But comical...for/to whom? Only to an external observer, not to an internal participant. Maybe this isn't yet the moment to recount & apologize in excruciating detail for all my sins of commission & omission (towards women, inisists my intimate painter & poet Anna Hawthore in British Columbia), but perhaps it's time to see my life for what it has been & what it may still become; re-evaluate it, & re-learn by living the rest of it - at 66, the age my therapist says is now being called 'The Young-Old' now that many more people are living into their 90s (especially here, where I'm living.)

poetry book review: And the WEARY Are at REST

2008-06-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

Andrew Taylor: And the WEARY Are at REST [21 poems, 32 5x8 pages]
(2008 sunnyoutside, PO.Box 911, Buffalo NY  14207, USD$8;
www.sunnyoutside.com)

When a small book of poems is designed to look funereal,
the poems had better be, too. In 21 poems over 32 pages,
Andrew Taylor’s survivor-grief absorbs anything & everything
into itself as it cycles & recycles everything he knows, knew,
sees, saw as his mind gradually regenerates itself while it
“focuses on one of life’s major considerations – mortality. “
(back-cover copy.) Was the woman who died Clare Greenhalgh
for whom "Elegiac Stanzas" is dedicated? Was she his wife?

Its light-grey cover art of black birds on stark leafless trees,
& black string-binding (visible between pp 16-17) add to this,
as does its body-text’s antique delicately ornate ironwork-
detailed typeface (Lanston’s Village No. 2, designed by
F.W Goudy in 1932.)

Here’s Taylor's agonizingly accurate,
quasi-sonnetic 4th-last poem (p.26)

For the Dead

Time is no healer. I think of you,
your enjoyment at early evening light.
Views to the mountain, or into the garden
cultivated like a picture, you directing.
Padded envelopes after visits by rail.
Difficult walks to country pubs, curry runs
in northern towns. No resting place. I’d like
somewhere to visit, place flowers.  Perhaps
blossom landing is memorial enough. In mind
at the oddest of times: a timetable scattered
ia rain-soaked gutter, a view of fully-laden
fields or feeling like an afterthought.
Will there ever be an end to this?

------------------------------------------------------
Taylor lives & works in Liverpool, England
where he co-edits erbacce magazine and press.
His blog is:http://www.andrewtaylorpoetry.blogspot.com/
Some of the book’s poems have appeared in small mags,
the anthology “Poetry and Skin Cream” (erbacce, 2004),
& have been broadcast over BBC Merseyside.

He thanks Alan Corkish, William Fallows, Ursula Hurley,
David McNamara, Nichola Marr, James and Clare Scott,
Robert Sheppard, Edna and William Taylor, Ben Holton,
and Rob Clover (Epic45) Antony Harding (July skies),
Scott Sinfield (Portal) and Edge Hill University
(http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/about/history/)
Poetry & Poetics Research Group.

Afterword: I want to thank Doug Holder, editor & publisher
of IbbetsonStreetPressUpdate for patiently waiting for me
to return to reviewing, sending me this book to review
a year & a half after the death of my wife Carolin Combs
(26 JAN 07)

On the southbound Sex Local

2008-06-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in early June, 
dozing on a Caltrain local heading south
from San Francisco, sex surrounds me:

Standing in the bike-car of the 4:05,
a young woman thrusts her damp inner rose
towards her young man as they talk,
& after gentle-writhing & prolonged kissing,
gets off at one of the stops in Palo Alto.
.
A young arabic-speaking woman hotly clutches
her man’s hand, her eyes large with sexual thirst
as she stares intently at me from across the aisle.

(02-27 JUN 08, Santa Clara) rev12

my daughter Maya, singing...

2008-05-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

My daughter Maya (44) is on the board of a Pacifica-affiliate radio station in Bellows Falls VT: WOOL-FM "Black Sheep Radio" http://www.wool.fm (100.1 FM) where she co-hosts the "Sometimes Live" program featuring singer-songwriters.

She's a singer-songwriter, too, & has just sent me the link to her MySpace Music website http://www.myspace.com/mayacostley where she's just posted 4 blues songs she sang at an a cappella women's concert in early June 2007 ("Women Divine: Live at Boccelli's" Boccelli's On The Canal, Bellows Falls, VT)

I sing a cappella with the San Jose Peace Chorale; Renaisance madrigals, Romantic & contemporary art songs in the now annual "Poetry in Song:" concert at Saint Mark's Episcopal church here in Santa Clara CA, but I don't dare sing a cappella solo, so Maya's daring to go solo really impresses me. I'm deeply moved by her a cappella voice & wrote her that it's "pure, still, strong, & overwhelming." Go listen to it.

2008-05-25T17:16:00.000-07:00

The Making of a Soprano: Amanda Mendon Jas

Distracted from trying to set up my VCR by a phonecall from Anna Hawthorne in British Columbia telling me to get on my bike on a Sunday aft., I rode 2 short blocks to St. Mark’s Episcopal in Santa Clara to visit my wife’s grave & found a vocal recital underway. At intermission, I was invited in to hear Amanda Mendon Jas (soprano, just turned 32) give a fund-raising “Bon Voyage Recital” before she leaves for L.A. & Graz, Austria. From the program:

“The last few months have been quite exciting for me. After performing as Countess Ceprano in Opera San Jose’s Rigoletto, I sang in the preliminary round fo the NATS Artist Award Competition. Since this was my first year to compete, I was very surprised to be named a finalist. In April, I travelled to Ogden, Utah where I competed in the regional round. I received a great deal of positive feedback from the judges and felt very proud to be competing against some of the best singers in the Western Region, some of whom were university faculty. And now I prepare to travel to Los Angeles and Graz, Austria, to participate in two of the best-known training programs in the opera world...which will instrumental in propelling me to the next stage of my career.OperaWorks Accelerated Program for Advanced in L.A. is a 2-wk program (tuition, housing, and meals at $2235). I plan to drive to L.A. to offset airfare costs. AIMS in Graz is a 6-wk program (tuition & airfare will total $7200.) Whew!”

Which says a lot, (if not all), about the making of an American soprano. What you don’t usually get to see, let alone grasp is the pitching in by all hands at each stage, booking her recitals, etc. Today’s at St. Mark’s was produced by St. Mark’s parishoner Sharon Martin for Amanda’s teacher Kathleen Nitz Kasdorf; & will be followed by another recital on 29 MAY at 8pm at Calvary Episcopal Church in Santa Cruz, Amanda's home-city. (By the way, her dad was once an oboist in Pittsburgh.)

Accompanied by pianist Jeremy Weissmann, Amanda sang Mozart (“Temerari.scoglio”from Cosi fan Tutte), Debussy (“Air de Lia” from L’enfant Prodigue), Mahler (“Rheinlegendchen”, “Das iridsche Leben,”, “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?” from Das Knaben Wunderhorn), Duparc (“:La Vie anterieure” “Le Manoir de Rosamonde”. “Phydile”); Barber (The [10] Hermit Songs), and Bolcom (“Amor”, “Lady Luck”, “George”) I know a few of the Hermit Songs, so I saw what she can do with them. Tall, striking, dressed in a pale orange gown, Amanda carried off what I heard wonderfully, showing herself to be prime operatic talent. Since I missed the first half of the recital, I suggest anyone who can, hear all of it in Santa Cruz on the evening of the 29th.

Vasks-immersion

2008-05-11T08:25:00.001-07:00

Currently, I'm listening to the orchestral music of Peteris Vasks (1946-) a contemporary Latvian composer, "raised in the house of a Baptist pastor, musically-educated in neighboring Lithuania where the was no prohibition against Baptists." (Wikipedia)

I'm constantly re-listening to:

WERGO WER-6220-2 Peteris Vasks

Cantable per archi (1979),
Botschaft/Vestijums/Message (1982)

played by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra under Pauls Megi;

Musica Dolorosa (1983) for string orchestra
Symphony for Strings "Voices" (1991)

played by the Latvian Philharmonic chamber-orchestra under Tovijs Lifsics.

CONIFER 7605 51236 2 PETERIS VASKS Message

Cantabile (1979) for string orchestra
Cor anglais Concerto (1989) Normunds Schnee, cor anglais
Message/Vestijums (1982) for string orchestra, percusssion, 2 pianos - Nora Novik & Raffi Kharajanyan
Musica Dolorosa (1983) for string orchestra, Ligita Zemberga, solo cello
Lauda (1986)

played by the Riga Philharmonic Orchestra under Kriss Rusmanis

allowing me to hear Cantabile, Message, & Musica Dolorosa played by both orchestras, immersing myself in Vasks' music out of personal need as I grieve Carolin Combs (who was raised as a Northern Regular Baptist in Ypsilanti MI, but in adulthood, became an Episcopalian in Wellesley MA.)

Looking back to 1968

2008-05-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

They say everyone has a 1968 story to tell. For the last few days I’ve been looking at 2 B&W photographs of myself & Joan (Budyk), my 1st wife, taken in March of 1968 in our livingroom at 108 Amory St (2nd), Cambridge MA 02139 – a block from Inman Sq. - by Henry A. Weiner who sent them to me last week from Dayton NV where he now lives. He's sending similarly old photos to 9 other people.

He’s been saving them for 40 yrs., recently found me via the internet, called me up & offered them to me, sayig he didn't just want them trashed when he dies ; I, of course, instantly accepted, saying I’ll store them at the Univ. of CT’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center in Storrs where my papers are archived. When they arrived, I rode my black 10-speed Shogun over to the nearest Long’s Drugs where I had the photos scanned & printed in 5x7 format, then I mailed the CD & prints to my son Alex (45) in Manhattan. The next day, I mailed the originals to Melissa Watterworth, special collections curator at the Dodd Ctr.

Then I sat out on the 4th floor balcony here in Santa Clara, musing on 41 yrs past, the perennial war returned & I, still an anti-war poet. In the 1968 photos I look 'lantern-jawed' (as my father often disparagingly said) & very young (for 25); Joan (26) looks wonderfully beautiful. Alex will now see that at 25, I looked exactly like he would – something people often remark on, so I reply: "He’s the Improved Version" & he is – e.g., he owns a co-op apt in upper Manhattan & has a PhD (Anthropology/gerontology) from Columbia, etc.

It’s saddening & depressing (at 66) to now see myself in very early adulthood (at 25), unaware of what the coming 41 yrs will be filled with (what, where, with whom, why) - deeply saddening, if not inexpressible; the preceding words don’t express it, they merely set it up. It's not just me - the other 9 people Henry is sending photos of their distant past are reporting similarly profound effects on themselves...

Cultivating Jade (Crassula ovata)

2008-05-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

For the past year, I’ve been busily cultivating jade plants (Crassula ovata; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_plant) to help me try to recover from Carolin’s decline & death (26 JAN 07) as an exercise in certain hope - it's certain that if you water them, they'll grow.

I grow mine from clippings that the gardener here has nipped off larger jade plants; the clippings soon sprout fine filamental roots & root easily; so easily, that as chubby, rubbery succulents, they're too plentiful for some people’s comfort - some occidentals scorn them as ‘rubber plants', but most orientals/asians - a growing, incoming population here in the senior-citizen retirement community I live in on the border of West San Jose & Santa Clara - value jade plants highly as 'money trees', symbols of prosperity.

I drench mine daily as they grow in terra cotta, ceramic & plastic pots - in the ground-level garden, on the 4th-floor balcony, inside my 4th-floor apt. (in my bedroom, hall, living-room, kitchenette, bathroom); at night, in the dark. I think of them quietly producing oxygen...

A Day-lit Couple

2008-04-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

(to Carolin Combs)

We were always a fully day-lit couple.
We came to California for the sunshine.
Our backyard was full of flowers & fruit trees.
Our cat slept in the shade of a tree of tiny plums.

My heart breaks to no longer be in that house
with you who made it all make sense to me:
“There you go again, Bill, looking for meaning”
you often chided me about seeking explanations

where none applied, especially here in California
where people say anything & quickly forget it,
as I fear they will all forget you; but I still have
much more to do for you for the rest of my life .

You’re buried a few blocks from where I write this,
your rosevine flourishing on a green metal trellis,
your name on a small brass plate on the church wall.
I can’t believe I’m writing this to you about you,

my dearest, & weep as I write this to you, Carolin,
w/out you here in daylight in northern California
where nothing anyone says sounds real to me. We
were always a day-lit couple, wherever we were.

(30 APR 08, Santa Clara CA) v3
.

T@x D@y (2008)

2008-04-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

(Valley Village, bldg 4, apt 4-D; 390 N. Winchester Blvd., Santa Clara CA 95050-6541)

It's 6:06pm PDT. I'm writing this, full of pasta bow-ties, sliced celery & carrots, w/aromatic spices, stove-top baked in my tiny kitchenette here at Valley Village retirement community (not a nursing home.)

People here at Valley Village who have bought into the meals plan are in the dining hall right now. I've just 'aired' my (neutered) male coon-cat Reggie for the 2nd time today. While airing him between bldgs 4 & 5, a chilling wind suddenly arose, so chilling that I've now taken him back up with me because I just couldn't stand the chill, bright CA sunlight notwithstanding

Paying my own tiny Fed taxes today was a significant step in my learning to become self-sufficient because Carolin always did ours using TurboTax. Today, I did mine by hand, in pencil, inked them over, made copies at the resident-run on-site library & mailed the tax-forms from the USPS sub-station here, all quite convenient for a bike-rider like me, esp with a sneezing & coughing early-Spring allergy. One quasi-consolation is the $316.44 check I wrote the Feds, $300 of which is coming back this year via Dubya's delusional economic-stimulus refund..

Now I can warmly write about it all, full of warm food, glad it's over for another solo-filing tax-year.

2008-03-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Coloni@lists

(for Dr. Worku Negash, Ph.D.*)

They came up our rivers with gunboats,
renaming everything in our country after
their gods, heroes, generals, politicians,
adding those names to their new titles.

We were a pretext for their new glory.

We still called ourselves what we had,
but never within their hearing, never
in our own languages, because they
made us learn theirs. Who are we now?

We are still who we are, but renamed,
re-languaged, reinvented as their pupils.

What are we actually learning? Them!

(23 JUN 07 2:50pm PDT, Santa Clara CA)

* Dr. Negash is Ethiopian; his multiple degrees are from Stanford University, Palo Alto CA; he is presently VP of Mission (community) College, Santa Clara CA. He is also busily establishing Dynamic University College in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia.

-Bill Costley

Valley Village 4-4D
390 N. Winchester Blvd.
Santa Clara CA 95050
(408) 247-1943
billcostley@yahoo.com

2006-01-16T04:02:00.000-08:00

enDuring
W@r & Pe@ce

Born during a war,
frightened by another war,
frightened by a cold peace,
distracted by a warry peace,
frightened by a cold peace.

Faced with a war,
I beat a wartime draft,
fought against a hot war,
fought for a peace.

Distracted by peace,
distracted by small wars,
I wrote against an oil war;
distracted by another war,
I wrote against another oil-war.

Written during that war.

30 DEC 05 06:14 DTM
on the tarmac before take-off
on AA flight 2015 DTM-DFW

2004-06-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

Chimery IS a-Coming

by Bill Costley
billcostley.@yahoo.com

There’s a 2nd American Revolution coming. I hope you know that. When it comes is a matter of who you are, I hope you know that.

Why it comes - is a matter of who you think you are. If you don’t know that, you’re an idiot – in the purely intellectual sense, that is. An idiot avant: avant la deluge, before the deluge, the deluge of presumptive inventive hope. I hope you know that, too.

Simply put, it’s only a matter of time before there is everything to hope for, but nothing to hope about. If this sounds like a Mystery of Faith, be thou not deceived. It’s no mystery that the economic future of the American Nation is purely chimerical. You probably don’t yet realize that Chimery is the Next Big Thing.

Really big! Bigger than simple Chemistry, Chimery is the artsy science of the projection of fantastic monsters: the original (Greek) Chimera was a mythical fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, &a serpent’s tail. Astrologically: Lion (Leo), Goat (Capricorn), Serpent (Rove.)

I can see that you’re already beginning to awaken to the fantastic possibilities that await those of us who are fully awake in the present, will be awake in the future, & will have been awake in the Chimerical Era that is soon to be coming upon us.

You can begin to prepare for this Chimerical Era of Wonders by asking yourself this: Where is G W Bush 43, and where does he think he is? He’s (probably) in D.C., but he thinks he’s Capt. ShruB on the bridge of the Starship Republican, entering the Chimera Galaxy, calling on Mr. Rove to explain its constituent phantasmagoria:

'Mr. Rove,' Capt, shruB drawls, "Whut’s thet Gloomy Beast ah see ovur thar?"

"It’s the Greenspun, Sir!" Rove explains. "It’s spun our Fiscal Future out as far as it can go just now. It looks awfully tired, but that’s just an illusion, Sir. It’s got lots of spin left somewhere in it, I can assure you."

"Mr. Rove," Capt. ShruB drawls again, "Whut’s thet Grinning Beast ah see ovur thar?"

"It’s the Grinspin, Sir!" Rove explains, "It’s the totally upbeat twin of the Greenspun. It’s spinning out our Fiscal Future as we speak. It looks pretty rested & rosy, I can assure you."

“Mr. Rove,” Capt. ShruB drawls again, full of GroWing Wonder, ““Whut’s thet Twisted Beast ah see ovur thar?”

"Its the Twispun, Sir!" Rove explains, "It’s got twice the spin of the Greenspun, and none of the spin of the Grinspin. I don’t really know what it’s doing out here. Shall we get closer to it, Sir?"

No fiscal coward, Capt. Shrub says: "Make it so!" & he does. Wake up A-mericans, you’re in for the twist of your fantastic lives! Fiscally Fantastic!

(Scenario) Presidential campaign: the Starship Republican is hurtling towards the logically finite recesses of Chimerical Space with all the fantasy generating fury of a soon to be scorned chief executive, screaming: "I AM the POTUS!! I AM the President! Mr. Rove, make it so!"

Vertiginous Raga: Montreal

2004-05-13T05:42:00.000-07:00

Vermont Lines’ VT-green-express bus
rolls thru Montreal’s rive sud,
once its driver stops on the freeway
to make a personal toll-both call
from a green bus in a green scene,
speeding over flat-lands, cornfields-all-ears,

homeward bound,
dropping $33 Can. for an RT-ticket
to do a day’s work nonstop
thru the coming nite, riding this bus all day,
past cows, some bulls, horses, small roads, large cornfields,

the farm machinery store of the Cooperative Society of Granby
ou 2 Indiennes essaient a compter a 5 en Anglais, rirent betement en Francais.

Last nite you bowled resinated quoits
on the hiway halfway from Quebec,
flashing on the traffic-jam in Godard’s "Weekend"

[newsflash!]

Versions differ in small details:
3 men firebombed molotov-cocktailed Montreal Ouest niteclub Blue Bird
@ 2:30 Friday nite, 2 died, 26 died, 34 died, 64 died.

All-nite radio tells all of the partial story once each half-hour,
never the address, so you call Montreal information
& find it’s on Rivier, not Sherbrooke,

so you don’t call your wife there until almost 8 a.m.
The Boston papers frontpage the (UPI) story.
Night interrupts day; fog drifts.
You’re heading right back towards it again…

[1973]

Bill Costley
Valley Village 4-4D
390 N. Winchester Blvd.
Santa Clara CA 95050-6541
billcostley@yahoo.com