Friday, December 24, 2010

EPHRON RE=REVEALS...

Sample of typical paratext:

2nite! Xmas Eve! 8pm~ Save that time!


FM-radio pre-review

Norah Ephron 2speak2
The Commonwealth Club of California:

"About Things I Haven't...Yet Forgotten!"


KQED-FM, 88.5FM, S.F CA

[CLASSIFIED]: May re-reveal who "Deep Throat" (My Friend = Mark Felt) really was.
afterword
: Never mentions MF, but does mention JFK.


Sip cooling decaf-tea on Xmas Eve while Santa's 'plumbers' break in2 the Watergate (D.C. apt. complex) in the annual re-enactment staged by the Loyal Friends of RMN.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

East- VS West-Coasters OR "It's over there..."

It's I've just written this coastal observation for Ruth Emmett, a friend in Belfast ME (on Maine's central coast)

East- vs West-Coasters: We East-Coasters (as I was until 5 years ago) live within a simpler logical layout so that our relatively smaller towns, cities, & counties are logically-discrete by name. Here, in Norcal, a tiny piece of Santa Clara county can occupy the middle of any Santa Clara city block. Typical result. I look directly across the st. at San Jose city whose st. numbers do not match/track exactly with the numbers on my Santa Clara city side. I live at 930 N. Winchester Blvd. Santa Clara city & county which is directly opposite 888 N. Winchester Blvd San Jose (city, in Santa Clara county.) Little wonder the Norcal locals wave their hands vaguely & say when they give strangers & newcomers directions, (pointing vaguely, then appearing to be more definite) "It's over there..." (When often it's not.)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

BREATHE or DIE

{BRE@THE} or [DIE]

{thanks to Ruth Emmett}

I'll put it to ya this away:
Either ya breathe, or ya die:

breathe deep, live long,
breathe shallow, live short
breathe choppily, die soon.

Even Red China gets it's
running out of clean air,
so why, oh why, don't you?

Breathe. Breathe again,
breathe, feel alive again.

Breathe as you fall asleep,
breathe as you wake up;

Breathe! Wake up!

(14 DEC 10, Santa Clara CA)v1

POETRY & SONG 2010

The annual Poetry & Song concert at St. Mark's Episcopal (USD$10) nearby in Santa Clara was quite good - Karl Kadie, Ginny, & I sat together to hear the Symphony Sliicon Valley Singers (SSVS) supplementing the annual reading by Silicon Valley(Santa Clara County) [1st] Poet Laureate - Nils Peterson, a retired San Jose State University (SJSU) Prof, who sniffled & almost wept as he read a Gene Shepherd Xmas story, his own collected & published annual Xmas poems, the beginning of Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales", & some seasonal Garrison Keillor (which Nils does each year.) Seeing that SVSS were evidently short a bass, after the concert I spoke to SSVS conductor Prof. Elena Sharkova (a young Russian emigree) about it (ans.: they've lost one bass to illness, so Nils, like me, a bass-bar., filled in for the concert) & I was instantly offered an audition. We shall see..I told her that I presently sing with .the S J Peace Chorale (SJPC) - which is probably about as much as I can handle @ the moment; btw, our Xmas party is this Thurs. eve. at the Chai ("life", Hebrew) House retirement community in S J's Sherman Oaks neighborhood..

Sunday, December 12, 2010

BREATHING

"Think of it as oxygen in,
toxins out on the out breath."
-Ruth Emmett


Breathing profoundly affects

our genomic-code;

how we breathe

turns on & then changes

who we are.

Understand intuitively;

practice consistently.

(12 DEC 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

Thursday, December 9, 2010

[CLASSIFIED]

Cl@ssific@tionism


While you’re reading this
Somebody’s deciding whether
it’s filling empty minds with
stuff of the classifiable category

that oughtn’t be open to just
anybody reading this. Trilemma:

Open, Closed, Classified.

Classified’s a transient value
of sometimes no value @ all.
[Ex. Air is getting sorta scarce.]
Classified /not-quite classified?

Classified; lest panic ensue.
You can all breathe now. Closed.

(08 DEC 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Friday, November 19, 2010

FR. JOSEPH GRASSI PICKED

Fr. JOSEPH GRASSI PICKED


Fr. Joseph Grassi (S.J.) is being
picked up & carried away by EMTS
as I type this. Tonite, his Film Series
now named after him, continues what

he did for the people he cared for
where he lived. Here, as its its DVD-
projector operator, I’m writing his name
everywhere I can think of in his honor.

The Jesuit community will remember
him, as will as his wife & children,
& everyone who ever met him. He
was caring & helpful, astute in whom

he picked to do what he thought needed
to be done for others. (He picked me.)


(19 NOV 10, Santa Clara CA)

UPDATE: (ex. Fr.) Joseph Grassi (S.J.)
died @ Valley Village in Santa Clara CA
on Thurs. 09 DEC 2010

CHENEY WOULD WOOD

CHENEY dreams of publishing
a sold-wood edition of his memoirs
suitable for cold WYoming evenings
before the blazing stone fireplace:

“Hell, they don’t have to read them;
they can just be warmed to the heart
as they feel the paper burn to ash:
The First Book you burn, not read!”

A deathly smile spreads across
CHENEY’s chilly jaws prefiguring
his long-desired DC-monument.
“They will come & kneel before me!”

(he thinks), “Kneel their gratitude!”
(dreaming of grateful generations.)


(19 NOV 10, Santa Clara CA)

Friday, November 12, 2010

JEWISH RELATIONS

from my "AUTOBIOGRAPH" (4th-installment) on the TypePad blog cakecakecake edited by Ann Wainwright in Leven, nr Beverley, nr Hull, Humberside, GB.

Intermarriage with Jews was a contentious matter in my life. But it had earlier origins: in the 1920s, the popular New York stage-play “Abie’s Irish Rose” (May 1922- Oct.1927), film (1946) dramatized the intermarriage of Abie (Jewish) & Rose (Irish). In my extended family, my father’s uncle Eddie (Scottish) married Kathy (Jewish), and lived in Winthrop MA, two cities closer to Boston. A toll-collector on the Mystic River (now Tobin) bridge into Boston, Billy Whitebone (Weissbein) was openly acknowledged as the illegitimate son of a Boston cousin of ours

My mother’s virulent Polish anti-semitism was prohibitive. Ex. When I was going to Harvard Summer School (1962), I met Jane Falk, niece of New York actor Peter Falk (The Police Chief in Genet’s “The Balcony”, the rumpled L.A. police detective in the USA TV-series ‘Columbo’) & invited her to come up from Cambridge to Lynn to see where I lived. When I telephoned home & said who was coming with me I had no idea what would happen – when we arrived by bus, the house was locked,, nobody was home. So we quickly went back to Boston by bus. Later that night, when I came home, my parents were there, and warned me to never bring a Jewish girl home because it was an admission of her acceptability for marriage. I just wanted to go to bed with her: we tumbled half-dressed on her apt. bed , which she later said was ‘making love’.

In 1963, when Ann Gorman introduced me to her friend Ellen Kriegsman (Jewish), I lusted after her; so when Ann was not in her apt., Ellen & I were. After Ann & I broke up, disastrously, Ellen & I got together again a few times.

The first time my mother saw Joan Helen Budyk (Budianski, daughter of a Russian Jewish landowner’s socialist son who fled Russia to escape the Bolsheviks), she instantly eyeballed her as a Jew. Technically, she wasn’t – her Michigan U.P. mother was Nettie Adriensen, a Belgian-American R.C. To my mother, the Jews had (ironically) penetrated her family with Joan, & our 2 children were 'half'-Jewish (Jewishly speaking, they aren’t Jewish at all, nor is Joan, whose mother was an R.C., as was Joan when I met her.)

[update, 2010]: A Polish-speaking woman, here where I live, recently woke me up from a sound nap on a park-bench here, saying (in Polish) “You look like a dead Jew.” I’m not Jewish! but I must look like a dead Jew only when I’m asleep, because of the Jewish women I’ve slept with. That explains a lot, Polishly!


~ Bill [Kulik] Costley

Thursday, November 11, 2010

JOSEPH GRASSI FILM SERIES

JOSEPH GRASSI FILM SERIES


Ex-Fr. Joseph Grassi (S.J.) is dying.
We’ve renamed his film series after him.
Most recently he showed my & Woody
Allen’s favorite film: “Bicycle Thieves”
(1948, Italy), directed by.Vittorio De Sica.

We’ve just showed “Bite the Bullet” (1975),
next up is “The Professionals” (1966) both
written & directed by Richard Brooks
who directed “Elmer Gantry” (1960), Sinclair
Lewis' satire on freewheeling '20s evangelism.

We’re doing what we can to continue Joe’s
service to the senior citizens who live here
at Valley Village in Santa Clara. We may
choose less famous films, but we’ve added
a commentator who was on the set & met

the director, a gesture of authentication,
something rare in these times of rabidly
projected partiginous economics intent
on dismantling this country quickly while
we’re trying to keep this country in frame.


(10 NOV 10, Santa Clara CA)v9
UPDATE: (ex. Fr.) Joseph Grassi (S.J.)
died @ Valley Village in Santa Clara CA
on Thurs. 09 DEC 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

In a Boston Tea-shop...

"A Hard Day's TEA"

[A secret meeting prior to an 'action' of The Sons of Liberty]

Location: A dark cellar tea-shop somewhere in Boston Harbor.

Date: Dec. 16, 1773

Tea (not a) Party members discuss how to stop what they think is too much having been done by doing too much too fast in return, not knowing how to do it safely other than by dumping wooden English tea-crates into the Harbor.

Mr Chainey practices disciplining the tea-ship boarding (not a) party by whipping its porters with dull brass chains.

Porters: “Ow, ow, Mister Chainey! Why must we be whip’t so?” (Repeat ad lib., pitifully.)

Master Ropey pounds the back-up boarding-crew with salty rope-knots:

Crew: “Bow, wow, Master Ropey! Be not so hard on us!” (Repeat ad lib., pitifully.)

{flash-ahead:} "The "Architect" of stolen election 2010 was Karl Rove (who) raised & spent hundreds of millions in secret money, sat at FOX spinning lies, & ran smear attack ads to defeat Democrats & elect a new generation of rightwing Republicans who are loyal to him." -Bob Fertik, www.Democrats.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The original Boston Tea (not a) Party ) [an 'action' of The Sons of Liberty] was probably much more pragmatical; they must have salvaged that tea, brewed it, drunk it, & burnt the boxes. I've never seen any of the originals in the Boston National Historical Park museum/store, only miniature white-pine souvenir boxes filled with contemporary English Breakfast tea. -Bill Costley 03 NOV 10
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Today’s TEA!"

Time: The present. A tea-tourist enters the same tea-shop in 2010:

Tea-tourist: Do you have any of those wooden tea-boxes the Tea Party dumped in Boston Harbor?”

Tea-shop master: “Only miniatures.” [He shows the tea-tourist a stack of them.]

Tea-Tourist: “Are they still full of tea?”

Tea-shop Master: “Yes, even better, they’re all quite dry now.”

Tea-Tourist: “What brand of tea?”

Tea-shop Master: “English Breakfast.”

Tea-Tourist: “That sounds right. I’ll take a crate full.”

Tea-Master: “That’ll be USD$500.00”

Tea-Tourist: “That sounds pretty steep!”

Tea-shop Master: “One bag steeps a pot. We sell genuine English Tea-Pots, too.”

[Voices of a rowdy crowd are heard outside the tea-shop.]

Tea-Tourist: "Is there some special tea anti-tax?"

Tea-shop Master: (Silently nods: No.}

Tea-tourist: "Well, why can't you hurry it up?" (Spins around) "I'd better get out of here...fast!" (Anxiously, conspiratorially) "Is there a secret back way out?"

(03 NOV 10, Santa Clara CA)v8

Tea-shop Master: "It will cost you (mumbles: "Benjamins") to go out thru the secret back way."

Tea-Tourist: "Anything, anything, here are a stack of Benjamins." (Fans & hands them over as the Tea-shop Master points to the secret exit. )

Tea-shopMaster: "Come back again." (Stiltedly:) "We're pleased to have had your custom."

Tea-tourist: (fretting:) "I'm not accustomed to buying my tea under seige."

Tea-shop Master: "Well, then, welcome to today's Tea-Party Boston!"

Tea-tourist: "You can't be serious! The Tea-Party runs Boston now?"

Tea-shop Master: "Who do you think has the tea-franchise now?" (Breaks into a broad grin)

Tea-shop Tourist: "Tell me this is all just a renactment, a dramatization!"

Tea-shop Master: "Where money's concerned, business is business in Boston."

Tea-Tourist: "Why...that's a commercial tautology!"

Tea-Master:" And you are being taught to watch your step; you're evidently unfamiliar with Boston's historical cobblestones." (Smirks, knowingly.)

Tea-tourist: "What do cobblestones have to do with tea?"

Tea-Master" "Cobblestones replaced tea-boxes, one-for-one, on the return trips to England. They weighed the same."

Tea-toursist: "No - they couldn't have!" (Angry now.)

Tea-Master: "Right then, I've just cobbled-together an answer to confuse you." (Smirks smartly.)

Tea-tourist: "Who the hell are you, really?" (Bewildered.)

Tea-Master: "I'm the lineal-descendant of Mr. Ropey, Tea Party Master, who originally owned this shop; now I own it. (Conspiratorially:) The Tea Party still meets here, so I suggest you leave quickly." (Fans the Benjamins:) "Thank you for your kind custom. Leave by the door below."

[A crusty half-door opens onto a small dock where a rickety ladder runs up to to today's street-level. The Tea-Tourist barely squeezes through the half-door and onto the dock as the half-door quickly closes automatically.]

[Alone on the small dock he's unsure where to go but up; so he climbs up the rickety ladder to a solid railing and scales it. Traffic whizzes by inches away.]

A Boston traffic cop notices him, strides over, and speaks: "Whatwasya doin' down theah? Donchya know that's private propatea?"

The Tea-Tourist answers without thinking: "It's owned by The Tea Party now."

Boston Cop: "And what Tea Pahty would that be?"

Tea-Tourist: "You know, THE Boston Tea Party!"

Boston Cop: "That was a few yeahs ago, y'kno. Ah you frum...wayback in Time?"

Tea-Tourist: "No." (looks bewildered. "Yes...maybe I am."

Boston Cop: "You bin drinkin?"

Tea-Tourist" "Yes, of course, Tea. This is Boston."

Boston Cop: " I don' think you bin drinkin' tea. How many Sams ya had?"

Tea-Tourist: "What's a Sam?"

Boston-Cop: "That's it. That proves it. Come along."

Tea-Tourist: (now under arrest) "Boston isn't what I expected."

Boston Cop: "You didn' expect Bahstin? So why ya heah then?" (viciously:) "We don' needya kind heah!" (throws him into the traffic whizzing by)

Tea-tourist: (spinning around dangerously) "Help! I could get killed here!"

Boston Cop: "Maybe you will. Serve ya right! This is Bahstin!"

Boston Cop: "Maybe you will. Serve ya right! This is Bahstin!"

Tea-Tourist: (falls into a passing Sam Adams beer truck that stops abruptly across the street at an alleyway, dumping him onto the cobblestone sidewalk.)

Tea-tourist: "That was close!" (bewildered) "I thought traffic cops were supposed to help pedestrians, but.. maybe not in Boston."

Tea-Tourist: "What's this? Another Tea-Shop? Above ground?" (Reaches for the door-knob as he looks at its sign: TEA CHINESE CHAI) "Chinese? but I thought...what kind of tea was in The Boston Tea Party shop? English? Indian? Assam?" (Steps inside.)

Tea-shop Owner: "Herro. Wercome to owl tea-shop." (It's Master Rovey's lineal heir again, pretending to be Chinese.)

Tea-Tourist: "Can this be real? What are you doing here?"

Tea-shop Owner: "I own this shop, too. (Historically) Some people prefer Chinese oolong chai to Indian assam tea. So we work both sides of the street, underground & above, crossing by a bridge hidden underneath. "Just as we did for the original Tea Party. Where do you thing that wet tea went?"

Tea-Tourist "I don't know. Nobody seems to know anymore."

Tea-shop Owner: "Nonsense, (conspiratorially) It's a secret. I keep the original records. We were not against private propertea, just tea-taxes."

Tea-Tourist: "without representation."

Tea-shop Owner: "Bosh! We were against taxes then and we still are now."

Tea-Tourist: (Bemused) "Then the word tax means something else in this tea-shop?

Tea-shop Owner: " Of course! (Explains) If the Tea (not a) Party still owns this shop, doing business at the same location, it's hereditary. If we call it chinese now, we can call anything anything. This is Boston, after all, Sam Adams' town, then and now. Taxing means tiring, exhausting. How tired are you?"

Tea-Tourist: "Very tired." (Sits on the nearest chinese chair.)

Tea-shop Owner: "Then you don't want to be overtaxed anymore, do you?"

Tea-tourist: (Convinced) "Of course not! I can't take much more of this. It's cost me a wad of Benjamins and I'm scared half-to-death. I've had it!"

Tea-shop Owner: "Hardly! (with enthusiasm) "You've only begun exploring Boston! What have you learnt?

Tea-Tourist: "Things aren't what they appear to be in Boston!"

Tea-shop Owner" "Exactly! Nor should they be! If they were, Time would have stopped."

Tea-Tourist: "But it has...in Boston!" (Stands; Sits. Stands; Sits.)

Tea-shop Owner: "Are you a mimicking a chinese water-clock?"

Tea-Tourist: "No! I've never heard of one!"

Tea-shop Owner: "Now you have and you're also acting like one. See what coming to Boston has done for you? Imagine what might have happened if you came to Salem instead?"

Tea Tourist: (wide-eyed) "I'd have turned into a witch?"

Tea-shop Owner: "Well, there really were no witches in 1692, but there is an official Salem City Witch now...Laurie Cabot. Anyone can become a witch without risk or shame in Salem now, but you have to want to be one."

Tea-Tourist: "I don't want to be a witch..."

Tea-shop Owner: "So you aren't! That's Salem now. But here in Boston, it's not the same. As you see, I appear to be chinese, (smiles) for commercial purposes. In Salem, the original home of the China-clipper trade, nobody was chinese, nor did they wish to be. The city museum held all manner of chinoiserie for careful examination, inspection, but never for sale. Chinese tea, however, was shipped to Boston for warehousing and distribution."

Tea-touriust: "Do you mean that the Boston Tea (not a) Party dumped Salem's chinese tea into Boston's harbor?"

Tea-shop Owner: "Exactly. That was the perfectly accepted system. Nathaniel Hawthorne worked it: as the Essex county customs agent in Salem, his city of birth, and later in Boston, at the federal Custom House."

Tea-tourist: "Was Hawthorne for or against taxes?"

Tea-shop Owner: (amused) "For them, obviously, they paid his salary! He is not one of our heroes. Have you read his books?"

Tea-Tourist: "Well....No."

"Tea-shop Owner: "DON'T!"

(They stop. Thirsty now, they seek the appropriate means to slake it: tea.)

Tea-shop Owner: (cordially) "Would you like warm tea to rest your mouth?"

Tea-Tourist: "(surprised) "Why, yes, I would! What..."

Tea-shop Owner: (interrupting him) "We have a simple plan. For the price of one Benjamin-note annually, you will be registered with our major tea-shops in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, (pauses), as well as our minor shops in Salem (Massachusetts), Newburyport (Massachusetts) , Bridgeport (Connecticut) , Portland [Maine], and Westerly, (Rhode Island) where your first cup of tea shall be free after you are welcomed as a Boston Tea Party regular. Your most relevant remarks will be recorded and reported to our corresponding secretary (webmaster) and society (website) for other regulars to read and appreciate.

Tea-shop Tourist: "(uncertainly) "Is that safe? I, mean, really, is that...?"

Tea-shop Owner: "(laughing) "Safe? Haven't you read the Constitution? It's protected by the First Amendment to the Original Constitution!"

Tea-shop tourist: "(determined) "No, I mean, is that safe for me to say and for you to transcribe and transmit?"

Tea-shop Owner: (confidently) "Oh, yes, it's also pre-paid. What could be more secure? Commercial membership has its perquisites...as the Supreme Court has now determined."

Tea-Tourist: (amazed) "Well I'll be damned! You are really up-to-the-minute!"

Tea-shop Owner: "Up to the commercial minute, I can assure you."

Tea-Tourist: "Commercial, yes, of course, commercial."

Tea-shop Owner: "And you will NOT be damned. We abolished that! This is not Salem, 1692!"

Tea-Tourist: (relieved) "What a relief!"

[TBC]


Sunday, October 24, 2010

PORTL& ORegon: Powell's, Milagro/Miracle Theater

Portl& ORegon: Powell’s; Milagro/Miracle Theater
[revised from The Well’s “Bookstores You Love”]
Dr. Ginny & I just went to Portland OR for the 1st-time,
staying at the Mark Spencer Hotel (409 SW 11th) 2 blocks
from Powells 'City of Books' whole-block (SW 10th-11th
at Burnside)
www.powells.com reminding me a lot of
New England Mobile Book Fair (off-Rt. 9 in Boston's
western-suburb Newton MA.) Powell's is Portland's
lit.nexus, w/even a children's books-full branch inside
the PDX airport.
Powell's full-windowed coffee-shop (cor. Burnside/11th;
run by World Cup Roasters) acts as a hangout for literati
in downtown Portland, on the edge of the trendy theater
(Center Stage), art-gallery, brew-pub Pearl district.
& so, we met Portland writer-stand-up Mark Saltveit
at Powell's coffee-shop twice; he took us to a packed Thurs
eve. run-thru perf. of !VIVA DON JUAN! at the bilingual
Milagro/Miracle theatre, SE 6th & Stark, www.milagro.org
art-directed by his wife Olga Sanchez, [29 Oct-14 Nov.]
Unable to find the book I wanted (a used trade-paperback
of the 50th anniv.ed. of Auerbach's MIMESIS w/Said pref.)
on the shelf in Powell's Lit.Crit section (14), I ordered it at
the customer service desk; shipped
w/in 9 biz.-days.
[
It arv'd in Santa Clara on Tues. 26 OCT 10]

Sunday, October 17, 2010

AUTOBIOGRAPH

1. SON OF A FAILED R.C. NUN

My mother was a very bright (top of her Salem MA public high-school class) 1st-generation American Polish-speaking girl who, 2 years after graduation, was told by her Polish-speaking convent in Enfield CT to go back home instead of 'professing' final-vows.

Why? Because she had exposed another postulant (=would-be, aka novice) for her leaving dust on a shelf by writing the word DUST on it with her finger, cinematically, as tho from a script drawn from a novel written by Francois Mauriac.

She was suddenly out: a hopeful, lifetime-career as a Roman Catholic nun terminated (perfectly cinematically) in that one dusty word: DUST. She came back to pre-WW2 Salem a young Polish-convent wash-out, a would-be prestigious (to Poles) career failure.

But..it made my own life possible & my own life (as you will read in these brief installments) has often turned on trivial, but definitive deeds (actes gratuits), often causing what prove to be irreversible changes...

2. BEATEN IN R.C. SCHOOLS

My (bilingual) Polish-speaking mother decided to send me to a Polish-language kindergarten run by nuns of the local Polish parish school, St. Michael’s in West Lynn MA.

At first, everything appeared to be going well: I already spoke some Polish at home with my mother, answering to Billy as well as to Bolesh, so why not enroll in a Polish-language school? The nuns liked me. The other children liked me – but one, Dorothy Zuk (=sugar) soon liked me altogether too much. Once, while we were bending over to play with a wooden chest full of toys, Dorothy took out a gold-painted cast-lead eagle (that had once been the pole-cap of an American flag) & rapturously began to beat me over the head with it. I fell into the chest head-first, not quite unconscious, but rendered hors de combat d’amour enuf to have to have my mother called to come over (we only lived 2 short streets away) to take me out of that kinder-class for my own safety. I never returned to that Polish-language nun’s school again.

My mother quickly & unsentimentally decided that instead, I would just have to go to the nearby Lynn public school first-grade class (there was no kindergarten class as such, yet) where I was again received well by my teacher (Mrs. Reynolds) & the other children in the class. I happily recall our planting little seeds in potting-soil filled wooden cheese boxes and placing them high up on the windowsill nearest our seats to collect the sun. Mine was filled with seeds that soon sprouted (unsurprisingly) ‘Sweet William’ flowers.

So I was saved from the legendarily brutal horrors of Roman Catholic nun’s grammar-school by an erotically-deranged fellow kindergarten student. My subsequent grammar-school education would be both secular & public. But then, my prep-school was Xaverian (C.F.X.) where we were irrationally beaten with cut-off pool-cues. My undergraduate college was Jesuit (S.J.) where we were subtly intellectually (& otherwise) seduced. Roman Catholocism’s allegedly 'superior' education came with parentally-accepted perils; we were its often rights-waived victims.

3, @ 8 HOOD STREET

Getting chillier as I sat in the bathtub awaiting my mother’s return from shopping nearby, I got up, put on my bathrobe, picked up my Classic comic-books, and went downstairs to sat on the sidewalk outside the funeral home across the street & read them.

Soon, semi-retarded Carol Patten appeared in front of the funeral home & asked me what I was doing outside in a bathrobe, so I told her. Along came the long, straight, black-haired black-Irish daughter of the undertaker who asked, too. Soon they were performing a writhing sister-act before me, pulling each other’s panties down & off so that I could see their hairless pubes. Eventually, my mother came home from her shopping, & shockedly put an end to our erotic children’s sidewalk theater directly across from where we lived.

Jack Casey, whose aged parents rented the 2nd floor of their inner-city cottage to my parents, must have felt something because of (if not for) me. He invited me downstairs one afternoon & sitting on his living-room couch, asked me to kneel before him with my mouth open, with my eyes closed; I did, but after a while, wondered what happened next. Opening my eyes, I saw he was holding his erect penis & slowly beginning to enter it into my mouth, so I jerked back & stood up. He grunted; I ran back upstairs & told my parents what had just happened Result: we soon moved out ASAP.

Years later, I’d be assigned to his clean-up crew as a City of Lynn summer job (because I was politically connected thru my aunt who ran the local state rep’s office; Jack was the son of the Public Works superintendent.) On my 1st-day, Jack’s threatening black-Irish eyes said: Never tell anyone what happened back then! I understood & didn’t. Also on the crew was Fred Shepler, the gay son of a Methodist minister from the other (wealthier) east side of Lynn, a student at Tufts University. We became friends; after we graduated college, while living on Beacon Hill, Boston, I visited his apt on Charles St. that he shared with his lover.

Years later I told this Jack Casey story to George, a gay, black ex-priest who was a Harvard Community Health Plan (HMO) couples group psychotherapist, at his private practice in Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Hallowe'en, Variously

Hallow e'en (All Hallows Eve) varies from culture to culture, region, city, neighborhood, house, in poly-celebratory USA.

Here in what was once Spanish Colonial upper-Mexico (now California) the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) is still publicly and privately obsrved with the inclusion of indigenous Mexican practices - family altars, costumes, edible sugar-candy skeleton dolls, etc. Family altars display photos of their dead, their favorite belongings, offerings of their favorite foods, etc. as tho they were due back shortly after a trip. Professional artists even make art-altars to demonstrate their degree of congruity with or respect for the tradition.

For the second year now, in San Francisco's notably gay Castro neighborhood, civil and commercial authorites are urging people to celebrate Hallowe'en together, entirely at home, rather than outdoors in the streets (Mardi Gras-style), in the hopes of decreasing one-on-one violence and general public disorder.

For the third year now, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (SFSO) www.sfso.com marks El Dia with a Dia De Los Muertos family concert (this year, Nov. 6, 2010, 2pm) celebrating the music of Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world; discount tickets for under 17s. Displays, refreshments and children's activities fill Davies Hall's lobbies. Resident Conductor Donato Cabrera concucts a suite from Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas's ballet La Coronella - with dancers. Supported by S.F. Arts Commission, Univision, Telefutura, SFMuni, El Mensajero.

666 miles north of San Francisco, in Portland, Oregon, bilingual theater group Milagro/Miracle puts on its annual Dia De Los Muertos verse and musical play, this year (28 Oct.-14 Nov.) !Viva Don Juan! by Martin Milagro (the collaborative group's pseudonym), art-directed by Olga Sanchez; the dead Don returns on El Dia to earn an annual altar for both himself and his lost love from their convent-sequestered daughter; living and dead redeem and celebrate each other

[Back East] In chilly New England (I was born in Salem, raised next to it in Lynn, Massachusetts), commercially-made death-image paraphenalia offer no guarantee that the dead are happily coming back.

But - instead - that malicious (demented) evil spirts are and must be defended against, coppered/warded-off by young children's dressing up in traditional Hallowe'en costumes and trick-or-treating from door-to-door in one's own neighborhood which has now become a defensive perimeter, the fear of child abuse having grown in the past few decades, so that only commercially-wrapped candies are acceptable as ghost-gelt; unadulterated apples seem to be OK, too.

[Back West] Presbyterians in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale, California) are offering a safe church parking-lot located "Trunk-or-Treat" one day earlier, on October 30th, at 7pm.
Roman Catholics (I was, until 20), probably maintain a relatively benevolent relationship with deadery, with maybe even some tolerance for teenagers "Trick or Treating" dressed up as vampires, hoping that "That, too, will soon pass - tomorrow!" Tolerance does have limits.

Prohibitively devout neo-conservative Baptist Christians (in 7-sisters collegiate Wellesley, Massachusetts) insist on dressing their children up as 'little saints' for Hallowe'en-replacing Little Saints Nights held at their churches to which No (real or imaginary) Witches Need Apply. For them, a now unacceptable All Hallows Eve has brightened before an already glorious All Saints Day, traditionally the next day.

Not far away, fabled Salem, Massachusetts (where I was born), the location of the Great Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692 (over which an ancestor of Salem fictioneer Nathaniel Hawthorne presided, to his lifelong shame) has (incredibly) now become a wicca-tolerating tourist-bus venue, presided over by Salem's principal witch Laurie Cabot (whom I've never seen or met.) Contemporary wicca is proving itself to be a perennially beneficial draw to Salem's year-round tourist biz. So go there!

My wife Carolin Combs (who died on Jan. 26th, 2007) delighted in dressing up in a white owl-like commercial artfully-pinked cloth costume to greet children coming to our door in Wellesley Massachusets and again in Santa Clara California. Her costume scared (at most) a few small children. (I have color-photos of her in that winsomely owly white costume before the spider-image decorated front-door of a friend's house in San Jose California.)
Originally written, at her request, for Ann Wainwright's TypePad cakecakecake blog edited from Leven nr Beverley, nr Hull, Humberside, England GB; also in The [S.F.] Bay Citizen www.baycitizen.org Citizen Blog section.

Friday, October 15, 2010

WHUF abt U?

Listening to Australian novelist Peter Carey being interviewed on BBC overnite, responding to whether he’s an optimist/pessimist, I’ve begun to think of this myself. Whuf abt me?

I’m neither; as a writer, I just let what my mind makes come out. Some (certain) people have surprised me by saying they think I’m cynical; if so, I think I’d better adopt a different definition of cynicism than I have so far.

Generally, (I think) people work with what they’ve got until circumstances force/enable them to do otherwise: i.e., I’m the kinda guy who habitually picks up paperclips & saves them, if not actually uses them, a lifelong habit learned from my parsimonius, pragmatic Glaswegian-born dad, for most of his major working life a parts inspector of naval gears for a large GE plant in West Lynn MA.

And so, what I’m writing here will be soon be -clipped under the title of an as-yet untitled 'piece' of writing, formed by years of writing op-ed ‘pieces' for newspapers (just anutha writing skill to master.) Have I hit 350 wds yet? I’m sure I will once I get rolling, having learned length matters in newspapers, but not on-line; so being online, I’ll continue this, if I may...

Cynicism? No. Anxiety, Yes. Always anxiety, at least in writing prose, compared to my deploying increasingly incisive rage in poetry. You see, as I write this, I’m gradually realizing that I don’t ‘celebrate’ much/enuf. I’m usually too anxious to.

So now I do want to celebrate my daughter Maya’s birthday today: 15 OCT 64 & have sent her 3 b’day greets: an e-mail reply, an animated musical e-card, & a traditionally-stamped paper card, thinking: She’s far away (3K mi.) in Putney VT. As for anything else about her, you'd best google/facebook her. Her life is hers to reveal as she will; (no doubt) she thinks I’ve long over-revealed mine - even tho I have yet to write an autobiography, as such.

But enuf about me, whuf abt U?


15 OCT 2010 (Santa Clara CA 95050)v2



.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

"Ladri di biciclette" (1948)

"Bicycle Thieves" (Italy, B&W, 1948, dir. Vittorio De Sica)

Desperately needing a bike defines one excruciatingly-thin Giacomettic walking-man, the visual icon of post-WW2 European existentialism.

I 1st saw a English-dubbed clip from "Bicycle Thieves" on the B&W -TV "Ed Sullivan Show" about a desperate Roman guy just after WW2 who gets a rare chance at a job - putting up film posters on walls all over Rome, but he must have a bicycle to do it.

Suddenly 2 brothers steal his wobbly bike & he pursues them on foot across Rome along with his little son (who pauses to pee into an outdoor wall-urinal & suddenly spins around to show us his little wobbly penis.) Things have gotten so bad for their family that the wife has had to sell their bed-sheets. I quickly saw that things were worse for them than us in war-winning West Lynn MA: my Glasgow-born dad had a secure job in the Lynn MA GE River Works plant as a naval-gear parts-inspector; my mom wasn't reduced to selling her bed-sheets (or herself.) As for me: my first bike, an American-made second-hand Colson, was stolen in Lynn, but was retrieved by the Lynn police. My second, a new English Dunelt, lasted until it was stolen after I'd moved to Beacon Hill, Boston, after graduating Boston College.

I've never successfully learned to drive a car, so the desperation & anguish over an absolutely necessary bike that filled "Bicycle Thieves" was & is still intertwined with mine at age 68, over fifty years later.

Others still feel as acutely about the film, too. In a recent interview, Woody Allen called it "The greatest film ever made." (Its actors were all non-professionals; none ever worked in any other films again after it, even though the lead actor looked like a truly-starved Humphrey Bogart in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre".)

[Q] Does the desperate guy ever get his bike back?

[A] No, not even after confronting the thief in a brothel, who's since sold it. An attempt to steal a replacement bike fails and the desperate guy's arrested, but out of pity, the owner refuses to charge him with the crime. He & his small son walk away, hand-in-hand, finally defeated.

An earlier draft of this ongoing recollection was 1st-written, at her request, for Ann Wainwright's TypePad cakecakecake blog that she edits in Leven nr Beverley, Humberside, England GB. In the USA, it also appears in The [S.F.] Bay Citizen www.baycitizen.org Citizen Blog section.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

mit SCHLAGOBERS

SCHLAGOBERS THEOLOGIE

“When supporting God:
do we need 2B consistent?
Such a high calling should
B granted some slack.” ?;-)

About as much sl@ck
as sweetened whipped-cream
(brightly-lit, fluffy knowing)
floating on top of dark coffee
(deep, brooding unknowing)

"Herr Oberst, bitte, bei mich
mit schlagobers, bitte! bitte!
"


(06 OCT 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Monday, October 4, 2010

Spellbindingly,

{Anita:} Lift your finger up to the window

(Bill:)

...beginning...the earliest visionary sequence
of my early childhood (in chilly West Lynn MA)
as I pressed my index-fingertip onto the ice
that formed overnite inside my bedroom window
(there was no storm-window on my bedroom) &
slowly melted it with my stinging skin's warmth,
again & again, to be able to peek out
thru the small openings I'd made...
that eventually melted & melded.

(02 OCT 10m Santa Clara CA)v4

Saturday, October 2, 2010

My air-adventurer

"My air-adventurer"

to Carolin, my air-adventurer


A few hours ago,
I thrashed in the night,
thinking of us waking in dark
for a dark van to the airport,

or riding in your purple Saturn
to catch a suburban daytime bus
to BOS/Logan for SJC/Norcal;
now I can only ride w/out you.

We did what everybody else did,
but monocoastal's all I can do.
You brought so much to my life;
what we did was way beyond me,

adventuring bicoastally, yours:
I helped, packed, carried bags,
but you were my air-adventurer.

(2:34-5:24 a.m.. 02 OCT 10, Santa Clara CA)v5


to Carolin, my air-adventurer

A few hours ago,
I thrashed in the night,
thinking of us waking in dark
for a dark van to the airport,

or riding in your purple Saturn
to catch a suburban daytime bus,
to fly out to northern California
where I'm writing this, alone now.

We did what everybody else did, but
I no longer do, now that I’m alone here.

You brought so much to my life;
what we did was way beyond me,
the adventure of bicoastiality, yours;
I helped, I packed, I carried bags,
but you were my air-adventurer.

(2:34-5:24 a.m.. 02 OCT 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Friday, October 1, 2010

USE {this} POEM

This poem is character- & case-sensitive.

USEthisPOEM

Use this poem as a key; no, not
a metal one, but a logical one:

Type: Th1sKeyPoem

into your KeyProgram
& watch it character recognize
it all the way to the [EOF]

K@-pop! It’s Open!

(01 OCT 10, Santa Clara CA)

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Party's Over

"The Party’s Over…"

Whistle-blowing picketers
blow: “The Party’s Over,
& then” they blow it again;
100K people march against
austerity in Europe, making
their governments fear them.
How much more austerity
eurovoters will withstand
depends on who’s standing
when all of this blows over,
& which party’s over then:
“The Party’s over, & then…”

(29 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Norcalical micro-climates

The following ongoing version was 1st written esp. for Ann Wainwright's GB audience:

Northern CA (Norcal) weather is predictable, if implausible. Mark Twain, as a transplanted AZ-newspaper reporter/editor here (for the S.F. CALL, et al.), once wrote: "The coldest day I ever spent was a June day in San Francisco."

[Q] Could he have been serious? (He was, after all, a world-class humorist.)

[A] Well, yes, he could, relatively speaking, because where it's situated on the chilly northern Pacific Ocean, the Golden-Gate[d]-Bridge city of S.F. is always chilly, windy, foggy, naturally movie-set thrilling.

But only 50 mi south of S.F. (in the South Bay, in Santa Clara, where I'm writing this) it's usually warm, only foggy upon rising, burning off by noon, rarely ever windy. Not at all movie-thrilling, even tho bordering San Jose's competitive tourism bureau wishes it were, now that San Jose, (that I can see out the window as I write this), finally more populous than S.F., is extending further southwards, building more neighborhoods (right up to the borders of garlic-festival town Gilroy & horsey-pricey Morgan Hill.) Proud, nonetheless, San Jose calls itself the Capital of Silicon Valley, bordering Sunnyvale, its Heart; Yahoo & E-Bay, among cyberothers, are HQ'd here.

A relatively-cold Summer has just ended here in Norcal's Silicon Valley, & a relatively-hot Fall is beginning. Today's predicted to be 97oF; while just a few miles south of here (in garlicky Gilroy) it's already been over 100oF for days, as it has been 100 mi. north of here, inland, in Santa Rosa, in what's called the far North Bay.

Every day S.F. Bay TV-weather reports on 3 microclimates: Coast, Bay, & Inland, as well as even smaller microclimates: North-Bay, The Peninsula, and South-Bay. So a day can be hot at the top (Santa Rosa) & bottom (Gilroy), but cold in the middle (S.F.) People always take along a warm (often lined-leather) jacket when heading off to The City (=S.F.) = S.F. Bay living.

For a general explanation on microclimates (including S.F.'s) go to: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate
28 Sep 2010 18:23:44

This appears on Anne Wainwright's TypePad blog: cakecakecake, as well as The [S.F.] Bay Citizen http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blog section as "Mark Twain froze in San Francisco"

Monday, September 27, 2010

[{MOVIES COME 2U}]

Thanks to (historically) broadcast-TV, videotape, cable TV, DVD, & now the internet, movies conveniently come to you – as you sit before your well-lit computer at home, or in the darkened Social Hall of a senior citizens residence where nobody’s paying anything to see them.

[Ex.] The senior citizens’ residential complex where I live in Santa Clara CA, where on almost every Friday night, free films have been shown using an Epson DVD-projector, by ex-Jesuit (Santa Clara University’s) [Fr.] Joseph Grassi.

His choice of films have ranged from the new HD DVD of Rogers & Hammerstein’s 1945 “Carousel” (film, Hollywood USA, 1956 / 129 minutes / DeLuxe Color / CinemaScope 55) that finally piqued my curiosity to see whether it was only schlock or just goulash , made from the 1908 Hungarian stage-play “Lillom” [lillies, meaning hoodlums] by Ferenc Molnar.) Goulash it was – beginning with the early-on accidental suicide of Gordon Macrea (as traveling-circus roustabout Bill), who then becomes an other-worldy singing-narrator.) The currently elderly audience, some even in their 90s, was pleased. So was I; the musical, called ‘dark’ by critics; was much better than I’d recalled.

Most recently, in this series, I’ve seen the John Ford film “The Quiet Man” (Hollywood USA/Eire, 1952) in which John (Marion) Wayne, as the Quiet Man, John Thornton, a retired (having killed an opponent in the ring) heavyweight prize-fighter from “Pittsburgh MA,” (so announces Barry Fitzgerald) “in Americky”, returns home to Inishfree to pummell Victor Mclagan as the local Squire (principal landowner), across various locations of rural Inishfree (minus any bee-loud glade, as in Yeats’ poem "The Lake Isle of Inishfree" ) over the Squire’s spinster sister [Maureen O’Sullivan, who sings one winsome song while playing a spinet], for her hand in marriage and dowry. All’s well when that ends quite publicly by resolving payment of that withheld dowry, which pleased the audience - minus Dereck Jeffers, actually raised Irish, who tells me that Eire Irish dislike the film as stage-irishism, its boozing., batterin’ & beatin’ bein’ the rude traits treasured by most Irish-Americans & others who freely-associate them, but not the actual Irish in Eire.

Fr. Joseph will soon be handing over the production of the Friday-night film series to a volunteer-team of our facility’s residents who will include Jeffers (an ex ed.-in-chief, at McGraw-Hill, NYC), David B. Ogle (Stanford ‘60, an ex-bookstore-owner, now collectables ‘bookman’) and me (Boston College, ‘63) David’s Netflix subscription will get us our films on DVD, while imdb.com will provide any authenticating research. But how will we choose our films? My ingoing idea’s to further authenticate them, whenever possible.

Example. Ogle was once the president of a small ‘recreational’ railroad in NM that was used as the location of the western-railroad film “Bite the Bullet” (Hollywood USA, 1975) starring Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Sally Kirkland, James Coburn, Dabney Coleman, Ben Johnson, Jan-Michael Vincent (!), etc. David was often on-set during its principal filming; so having him preface the DVD’s showing by telling all about that should add authenticity. Of course, we’ll have to see whether the audience actually appreciates that degree of authentication, or even the film itself; I certainly hope so. Fr. Joseph intends to try to show this film on 29 OCT.

Further into the upcoming series, as a lifelong bicyclist, I’d like to adress the audience before we show the (subtitled) “Bicycle Thieves” (Ladri di biciclette, Italia, 1948) directed by Vittorio De Sica, long my (& Woody Allen's "The greatest film ever made." ) To my astonishment, Fr. Joseph tells me he'd already intended to show this film on 22 OCT; unfortunately, I'll be in Portland OR when/if he does.

Sensibly, we intend to start by showing only one Friday-night film per month while we get our novice team’s act together, wondering just how Fr. Joseph has managed to do it so well all by himself on so many Friday nights.

UPDATE:

The JOSEPH GRASSI FILM SERIES

Ex-Fr. Joseph Grassi (S.J.) is dying of cancer. We've renamed his film series after him, with his permission. We’ve just shown “Bite the Bullet” (1975) & will next show“The Professionals” (1966) both written & directed by Richard Brooks who directed “Elmer Gantry” [from the novel by Nobelist Sinclair Lewis.] We’re doing what we can to continue Joe’s service to the senior citizens who live here at Valley Village in Santa Clara, California.

note: this constantly updates an earlier draft that appears on http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blogs

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Ice-cream Dinner

Dr. Ginny's inspiration for dinner
last nite was to fill up large bowls
w/vanilla ice-cream & canned-fruits
(incl. sliced yellow cling-peaches);
add toasted rice-flakes as crusty
topping stirred into the chilly mix;

w/3 sm. cans of mandarin oranges,
bags of frozen raspberries, frozen
blueberries, we're already ready
for next year's ice-cream dinner
celebrating Summer's end, here
in lower Silicon Valley.

Does some ice-cream shop
somewhere-hot* already do
something like this?

*I've just been told that in Japan, a dessert they call a "Parfait" is made with ice-cream, fruit & corn-flakes
.
(25 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Work=Work

for: Work

When is work still work?
When it's paid? Hardly.
Ask any retiree who says
they're busier now than
when they worked for pay.
Whenever someone says:
"Are we having Fun yet?"
I say: "I call it: Work;
work=work=work=work."

(Sat. 25 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)

Friday, September 24, 2010

IFNAI

IFNAI

[in the Lynn MA usa dialect]

Ifnai wuzta tellya
this Receshun’s
fah a'purpost, like a
lessonta insytruckya,
whaduddya say? “NO!
Not me, not fah me, I
diddn’do it! Them,
they didit! All we
gaddadu istah
make’m standuP
n'say: “Yes, we didit!
n'didn’ giv’a sweet shit.
Y’can wipeit all-up
by ya fuckin’ selfts.”

(24 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

TEA-PARTY WAILS

from my CHENI@D: Book CXXVI:

TE@ P@RTY W@ILS

Mad as a whumping Walrus
re-baited by a whacky-Hatter,
CHENEY wails: “NO tea!, NO
coffee! NO caffeine! Can’t you see,
hear, heart, audiate my heart? NO,
NO caffeine! NO caffeine! NO!”

“No caff, you fiend,” quips
the googly-eyed Hatter, his
whacked-grin absorbing
his unnaturalized smile, as

The Dormouse burbles, as
The Tea-Pot bub-bubbles, &
The Tea-Party wails w/out, &
CHENEY clutches his metal heart.

(22 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Monday, September 20, 2010

AS IT'S SPOKE(N)

AS IT’S SPOKE(N)

Name a famously ‘tony’ poet who you’re sure never wrote in dialect. Nope, Alfred Lord Tennyson did once (in his “Northern Farmer” written in broad-Yorks. dialect.) But dialect can sometimes be very fashionable, cf. American regional – Yahnky (James Russell Lowell, Robert Frost) , Suthrun (Faulkner), Westurrn (Cormac McCarthy) , or city-specific – Boston (Bahs'tin) , Brooklyn (Brukl'n), Bronx (Bronucks), etc., or be very un-fashionable: e.g., Southerners Thomas & later Tom Wolfe [no relation] never use it.

Tennyson's single Yorkshire-dialect poem "Northern Farmer" is a telling example in itself. Most poets choose to write dialect/mainstream, unless to them, poetry's always/only written in dialect (cf. Aberdeen's regional poets.) Few aspiring poets seem to want 2B forever sidelined as just regional dialecticists, while some (it appears) can't help writing otherwise. It may depend on whether one feels safe/legit. in retaining one's regional dialect even as/once a formally-schooled & published writer. If so, equally perfectly valid poetry can easily be written in both speeches, but can it be widely published anywhere in deep dialect? It won't be very widely read, unless it's somewhere on the internet, fully accessible from anywhere on the planet.

I’m now realizing that my own vestigial 'greater'-Boston dialect is occasionally noticed by people here in Norcal, but what counts here (as I write this), is whether you can somehow read it when I write this, even when I’m not deliberately using it; Rule: 'greater'-Bostonians (micro-regionally, & northern New Englanders, generally) noticeably apocopate: they eliminate words or letters (infamously the letter r), w/out even knowing (it or) why (they do it.) Have I just proven it – or have I overdone it? You tell me, according to your own internal parser-meter.

[flashback:] When I was an undergraduate at Jesuit-run Boston College, (1959-63) I recall a Lyons-cafeteria conversation with Boston novelist George V.Higgins in which he denounced dialect-writing; ironically, later, after a Stanford MFA in Creative Writing, he came back East to Prov RI to become a court reporter for the PROVIDENCE Journal (at the courts in Worcester MA), while on the side, finally (after a few false starts, one of which was a novel I was in byname as a grad-student at Boston College) got around to writing THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, THE DIGGER’S GAME, COGAN’S TRADE and other Boston-dialect novels that made him famous (COYLE became a film starring Robert Mitchum, who depricated George’s behavior on the set.) West Coast academia and Hollywood apparently didn’t suit George, but East Coast (Boston) crime did, so he wrote it as it’s spoke. (He died on Nov., 6, 1999 of a heart-attack.)

I write as best (as) I can (write), but I also talk as I do (talk), & sometimes they’re (a spurious apocopation) indistinguishable. If so, (what) does it matter (to you)? If you can read it, you can read it; I’m not going to put anything over on you.

[flashback] Standing in (Dr.) Tom Hubbard (PhD)’s kitchen in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, his local-hotelier father suddenly turned to me & said “D’ye ken the braid Scots?” I instantly answered, “I ought to, after all, my dad was a Glaswegian!” He never bothered not to speak braid-(broad) Scots when I was in the room thereafter. Later, Tom showed me a letter from a woman in Aberdeen written in the curious (even to Scots!) Aberdonian-dialect, insisting “This is not an act. She really writes & speaks like this” to which I replied: “I believe you.” (He’d already edited an anthology of northeastern-Scottish poetry published by Aberdeen University, where he’d gotten his doctorate.)

Have I made my [obvious] point (yet)? Applying some mental-grease can lubricate most fractured-looking demi-dialects. Or would you like to read obviously fabricated sentences (like the preceding) endlessly? a'Courst not! (as we say in MA Bay-coastal Lynn MA, where I grew up.)

Way Booked-uP

I was one of the staff of the last small B&Ns (in Boston's western suburbs: Wellesley Square MA), closed in '86 so that the B&N superstore (in Framingham MA, 2 towns west) could be the micro-regional magnet while competing with a Borders directly across the street from it in a much bigger mall in a battle of booky riches. I wonder which of them has survived? .

People in Wellesley MA (a famous college-town) really loved what we did with that small B&N in Wellesley Sq, but to no corporate avail.

My next B&N store was an even smaller one in dead-center Copley Sq. Boston, also closed down in favor of the surviving downtown superstore just a few long city-blocks away, just beyond Boston Common.

My next store was a B. Dalton (Borders subsidiary, since renamed Borders Express) in Needham Heights MA, as beloved by their almost upscale suburban community as we were in posh nearby Wellesley Square MA;

It so-happened that I then moved cross-country to Santa Clara CA, & found myself working in a Borders in San Jose's ultra-posh Santana Row mall that absorbed the staff of the B. Dalton in the nearby Valley Fair Westfield Mall when it closed. (I live only a short bike-ride away.)

Same fatal phenom (on either coast): favor super as a strategy to survive, but (eventually) have to close anyway. Why? Amazon.com; if even I buy some obscure 2ndary-supplier books from them w/out guilt, why shouldn't you buy best-sellers? Besides, who can stop you?

If Amazon's hollowing-out the retail-staffed bookstore biz., imagine what e-books sold on the web can/will do! Nontheless, general used-book stores will still out-survive best-seller superstores: 'homey'-feeling stores have a unique appeal, esp.if they have a resident-cat & well-tended plant. cf. San Jose's Recycle Books west suburban branch in downtown Campbell CA, that I recently gave a large, healthy jade-plant to after shopping there for the (3) current South Beach Diet books (because my interventional-cardiologist says I should try it; I am.) Recycle Books got my very-specific diet-book biz., but they also may even buy some of your own used books to re-stock specific topical shelves, an habitual parsimony well-suited to a Recession.

Currently, I try to make the 2nd-Fri. 9am-9pm half-price sale at the large Salvation Army store in nearby West San Jose on S. Winchester Blvd. almost opp. EL TITANIC carneceria y groceria (I live on N. Winchester in bordering Santa Clara); because on that day only, $4 hardbound books sell for $2; I've gotten amazing (unusual, rare) cookbooks for myself & my friend Dr. Ginny, & I also U.S.P.S.-mail them to ex-speciality cake-baker Anne Buchanan up in Cole Valley S.F. I'm now way-cookbooked-up, so feel free to go look & buy at the Salvation Army in West San Jose. You won't often run into me there in the book-section on Half-price 2nd Fri.: I have too many books now, thanks to The Salvation Army...all my life.
HOSPIT@LS

in grief

Valley-med Hospital.
What could sound simpler?
Perfect Valley? Pure Valley?
Deep? Hope? Hospitals of
Deepest Hope, Inc. “Have
Hope, Ye who enter Here. “
But we had to abandon it.

(20 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Anya gets a Wolf

Recently, Anne Buchanan [ex-Idaho], the ex-caterer-baker who made lemon bundt cakes sold in 1970 as "Aunt Rachel's* Lemon Poundcake" by Lucien Simon's Deli on California Street, S.F.CA (next to where Eliza's chinese rest. is now) finally replaced her big home-kitchen 6-burner Tappan gas range with a nifty little 4-burner Wolf. She got the hot little Wolf off Craig's List for USD$350, delivery incl.

My son Alex, (visiting S.F. from upper Manhattan) & I were there to watch it being corkscrewed up 3-floors from the garage via an internal stairwell by her son Dave & her ex-, Stan, & connected to the gas-line (it's a 1914 house) by Stan, a master-plumber at nearby Cole Hardware, just down the hill into Cole Valley.

*Anne recollects: Lucien Simon didn't believe "Anne of Carmel" (St., Cole Valley) was quite Jewish enough for his clientele, so he chose: "Aunt Rachel*", even after I'd suggested "Raquel", which didn't work for Lucien - who ran a very old-school deli.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

POP. n~

POP. {n~}

It really comes down to this:
How large a world population
will particular politics support?
Will all politics feed? Or will
some politics slyly eliminate some
under false pretenses, by famine,
tribal, or regional wars? Admit it:
this is the most pressing problem
on this fast-degrading 3rd-planet.
This degradation is yours, ours.

(18 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA) v3

FREEDUMB

FREEDUMB

One, after another,
they’re following each other,
into a duplicitous future of No

government or common solutions
for what ails us. Call them fools,
& they'll rise up against you.
Call them anarchists & they'll

call you a communist, a fascist,
an obaman, a muslim, a killer
of The American Dream. Freedom

for them is not having to say: Sorry,
but some things're better done together,
convinced they can all B done alone

privately, personally, w/out any help,
thinking they're no public solutions,
denying they’re re-members of society.

Everything just written means nothing
to them, statistics're only lying numbers.
They’ve been convinced they’re Free

& willn’t give up !llusions of Freedumb,
spelt howlefer they wil: T /Tea, Pardy.

(18 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Friday, September 17, 2010

Dime-Store Memories

Dime-store memories:

Can corporate names last after dime-store mergers?

Ginny & I reminisce about J.J. Newbury's dime-store chain
that her uncle bought-out, merging it with their family's
H(arold) L(eavenworth) Green competitor. Before he died,
he couldn't interest Junior Leavenworth in running it because
Yalie Junior was academically-inclined, rather becoming
instead a small-college president, then CEO of Sylvania.

Praising J.J. Newbury's. I tell her how on Friday evenings,
walking home from the West Lynn MA River Works GE plant
where he was a naval-parts QC-inspector, my father got me
a tiny toy to stimulate my mind when I held it in my hands.

In Santa Clara's Mariposa Gardens mall, a Dollar Store,
its marquee price $1.39 & UP, recently closed, soon after
the Vietnamese manager/owner replaced my watch battery
with a cheaper Swiss one; I'd warmly commended him,
but now he's gone. Santa Clara's surviving competitor is
99c BAY; its price-points from 99c to $1.99 & UP....

(17 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA) v7

Bill Costley
Valley Village Bldg.4 apt.4-D
390 N. Winchester Blvd. Santa Clara CA
95050-6541
(408) 247-1943
http://www.costleybill7.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Bush...BUSTED!

BUSH...BUSTED!

(For Karl Kadie)

Our Recession scrip's as fake
as paper ivy on the Ivy League.
Where’s The Most Criminal?
What‘s the name of its Man?
Amazed, you see thru Him;
even thru seeing thru Him,
but what does that reveal?
Insight only reveals what
it can't really fix in real-time.
Basel Standards slam drawers,
Bush’s tax-cuts dead-end
bankerupting millionaires.

(13 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v3

Sunday, September 12, 2010

POESIS number four (2010)

POESIS number four, Sept. 2010, (Propaganda Press of Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, CA 94302, usa, USD$4, 4"x5" unpaginated; alt-current.com, http://alt-current.com/

I recently wrote a ‘think-piece’ (“On Paper- [vs] e- Viability") publishing it here on my blog & The S.F Bay Citizen http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blog section. In it, I said that for the last few years, I’ve concentrated almost exclusively on e-publication, but now that 2 of my principal CA-based e-outlets are closing down (The Well, now 25, owned by Salon.com, also failing, & Vox.com where, in its TypePad subformat, Ann Wainwright Maltby, a northern English 'Geordie' friend in Leven, Hull, Humberside maintains 2 blogs.) 2B safe, I’d better now only seek combined paper & e- poetry outlets. I now see I already had:

On The Well, a writers’-discussion topic asks adly: What else did you find in your mailbox today? Ans. POESIS number 4, 4"x5" poetry pocket-magazine that (serendipitously) also appears online.

Among its 51 poets (incl. me), there are (3): Hugh Fox, Doug Holder, Arthur Winfield Knight, Herschel Silverman, who’ve all published me, (1) Ed Galing, who I’ve reviewed,

(1) normal [schiffman] who I only knew briefly back in mid-‘60s Boston MA who then claimed to have written “Blowin’in the Wind” & sold it to the young Bob Dylan in The (Greenwich) Village; I still believe normal [his real birth-name, spontaneously given to him by his still-sedated mom on his 1st being shown to her in a NJ hospital],

esp.after seeing "A Great Wind" on PBS last nite for the 2nd-time, this time w/out steadily rising anger. Pretty much the score for my (approx.) small-press generation (b. 1942.) How about U? .

Tho I usually quote poets' poems in full/part (Herschel's is long), this time, I'll just quote my own, entirely. Think of it as a neoNast-y editorial cartoon (I can't draw), with a 2 handfuls of skinny floating quote-balloons:

Statutorily Speaking

A weary, stony Abe Lincoln
slumps as he reads a newspaper,
slowly speaking over his shoulder
towards the Statue of Liberty.

Abe: “Libby, will you please
wash those boys' mouths out
with some good American soap?”

Fatboys in shorts crowd around her,
spewing truly deranged slogans:

Fatboys: “Don’t listen to Father Abe!”
“Obama’s a Communist! Obama’s Hitler!”;
“Gov’mint wants to kill the soldiers”;
“Gov’mint wants to kill the old”;
“Abortion leads to euthanasia."

Liberty quickly fills up an enormous tin-tub
with boiling water & foaming pink liquid soap.
Raving Fatboys scatter fast.

[on this blog in play-format: 09 SEP 09]

Forget my egotism; here's Hugh Fox's Orpheus & Euridyce poem, meaning much more to me since Carolin Combs, my 2nd-wife, died (26 JAN 07):

Orfeo ed Eurydice

Starting (8:05) late, all the younger
opera students in the talk-laugh-
it-out audience, as Eurydice dies
and Orfeo descends into and brings
her back from Hell, completely
gauzing-out Gaza and all the other
contemporary hells for a couple of
sacred hours.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

On Corporate Purgatories

Sometimes we actually do get to outlive our corporate
work-purgatories.

I've now outlived DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)
& even get to draw a modest HP-pension because DEC
was eaten by COMPAQ which was later eaten by HP.

I often characterize DEC an an all eyes-upward
Swedish (via Ken Olson, Pres.) 'head-fake' culture
(=Trust KO to Do the Right Thing); vs its 2ndary
major-competitor, DG (Data General) w/a
pain-inflicting Italian (via Edson DeCastro, Pres.)
1-on-1-conflict-driven 'body-fake' culture
(=You can trust Ed; but never trust Anybody.)

Both now no longer exist & I still get to write this,
no longer bound by any non-disclosure agreements.

(just after Labor Day 2010 weekend, Santa Clara CA)v4

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Poetic immaterials/seemlessly

[Q:] What are the so-called 'materials' that poets 'manipulate'?

[A:] As poets, we begin where&when we begin; & go whence&wherefore we go. We aren't carpenters, but people read our poems as tho they were fine joinery, which they are when word/image/stanza seemlessly join word/image/stanza. If we write in pictographs (hieroglyphs, ideograms) this is instantly obvious. Deconstruction can be both visual & aural.

But we purely-phonetic writers often let all this poetic joinery slip by insufficiently commented upon. But we shouldn't, so I'm not...

(09 SEP 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Monday, September 6, 2010

[{TransAtlantic}] LABOR DAY

[{TransAtlantic}] L@BOR D@Y

{Dialog, Catechism, Diary}

“What exactly do americans celebrate
on labour day and how do they do it?”
- Ann Wainwright, Leven, nr Hull, GB

BC: The laboring class, all weekend,
[Sat.-Mon,] traditionally parades
in marching bands, interspaced
by flat-bed trucks carrying actors
en maquette, drawn by art-cars/trucks.

AW:
The laboring class? Isn't that
most americans then? Could you put
a short piece together for my blog
about it as it is pertinent?

BC: Labor Day USA boggles the mind
of a Brit/European because, literally,
most (if not all) Americans may labor
at something/other (if only part-time),
but few will admit they're members
of the working class, saying instead
they're middle-class, wanting to be
accepted as such even as their claim
to middle-class perks & endeavors
(home-ownership, entrepreneurism)
is visibly dissolving before their own
increasingly terrified eyes. What class
is someone who’s now hopelessly un-
employed? Out-of-class. GB’s been
thru this for Thatcheritic decades
under its blue & then its red, too.

BC: The American-begun Recession
began with extreme over-evaluation
of the price of homes sold to people
who couldn't really afford them
at going mortgage rates, made to look
as tho they could by greedy realtors
& dishonest mortgage brokers, hot
for increasing percentage-fees who
poached upon a little-unionized (13%)
American working-class who thot house-
value inflation = class/status/fiscal upgrade.

BC: Their houses quickly appreciated in value,
'turned/flipped over' (resold) at increasingly
implausible prices: a house sold for USD$30K
in 1978 soon sold for USD$300K ~ 1M! but
where would they move to next? An island?
Some actully did, gaggling all the way to their
summer cottages on cooly distant lakes/shores,
retiring early on spectacularly superheated profits.

BC: Greedily delusional people didn’t listen to any
objectivity about "MONEY, Whence it Came,
Where it Went" (John Kenneth Galbraith, Ph.D,
Canadian-born American economist of the 'liberal'
pro-government-intervention Keynesian school)
which Obama has followed with his governmental
bailing almost everyone out, within temporal limits,
while ragingly destructive oppositional Republicans
shouted: "Too much Tax! Too much Tax!

BC: Can Americans celebrate this Labor Day?
w/a double-digit avg. national unemployment rate,
few jobs created, despite Obama's governmental
bail-outs? watching musical fantasies of past
Labor Days w/the USA making distracting
old-'Hollywood' movies vs George Clooney's
latest neoFrench drysnuff-film "The American"

BC:[{diary}] On TV, this weekend, I looked for
recovering American car-industry ads in patriotic
red, white & blue - that don't signify the same
as in GB. The trad. patriotic tricolor now drapes
rightwing anti-government Tea-Party movement
rallies, Conservatives paint themselves red, leaving
middling blue to Liberals, white to anti-Obaman
racists, yellow to fascistic right-Libertarians.

(Labor Day Weekend 2010 Santa Clara CA)v7

Sunday, September 5, 2010

BECKONING

BECKONING

Waking to the voices of angels
Beck shudders in image-horror:

“No! Not yet! I’m not ready! I
haven’t worn this image out yet”

His grey brush-cut turns white,
His sneer turns purely smiley,
His fake goodness turns good.

People kneel to him & he prays
“Don’t let this happen to me yet!”

His bars of gold turn platinum.
His earnings go sempiternal,
but the IRS can’t audit them.

(Labor Day Weekend, 2010, Santa Clara CA)v3

[note] A multi-panel altarpiece of Beck's purification
despite his basest aspirations: praying, like Augustine
of Hippo, "God, make me (whatever)...but not yet!"
(Jabez = Beck's gold-idol, not Jesus.) Going platinum
disturbs his arrangement with the gold bullion dealers
he presently does internet ads for; platinum only comes
in 1 oz bars, & is traded by a higher echelon of clients
(cf. Swiss banks), not gold-ingot ziggurati. (-BC)


Saturday, September 4, 2010

On hard- vs e- viability

In the last few days I've gotten e-word about 2 large web-portals that will be closing down:

1. The Well (@ age 25), now owned by Salon, which is failing, too
2. VOX.com (offering xfr of existing posts to its TypePad subformat)

For the last few years I've been using both as 2nd & 3rd-publication back-ups for much of what I write here.

Hereby, I rescind my 68yr-old semitecchie assertion that being e-published has become a better viability strategy than being published in hardcopy...now that e- shows itself 2B suicidal by its wiping-out whole constellations of people's writings of all sorts, beginning with conversational ephemera aka chats. The WWWorld may B able 2read those living ephemera archivally, etc., but...for how much longer? Server maintenance cost seems 2B the actual cyberlimiter.

Unless some e-sites become archival & so can be read as archives by Those in the know. But who are They?

Ex. My posts to Digital Equipment Corporation's internal Engineering Net (later re-named E-net, then EasyNet) from 1975~88 can still be read IF you know where 2find them out there in vast cyberspace. But who would you have2B 2know they'd ever existed@all? [Ans.] a DECcie. (DEC was eaten by COMPAQ which was then eaten by HP...that now inherits/holds all those years of internal e-posts.)

Blog portals closing down makes me realize my recently going 99% e-pubs subject to e-v@pora@tion has been all too e-trusting, so I'm once again seeking paper publication (begun @ 18/1961 w/my early poems published in Boston College's STYLUS qtly.) Paper (obviously) lasts: Ex.: my little 4-line shape-poem ("Wine-glass Elm" written in Camb MA in 1966, soon pub. in small-press magapaper Brown Sweater), was much-later republished as 'a toast' in GRACES (HarperSF, 1989) - now reprinted 27X. [QED]

3 of my (4) ~20pg small-press chapbooks are (I assume) now collector's items as are all of Hugh Fox's Ghost Dance Mag/Press issues&books. I've been canny/lucky in choosing my principal small-press publishers (Dr. Hugh Fox PhD, @MSU, E. Lansing MI; Dr. Bob Chute DSc, @Bates College, Lewiston ME; NYT-free-lancer, author&editor S. Marshall Brooks, jr., Waban, later Spencer MA, now W. Dover VT) in quite dissimilar small-press orbits (e.g., Alice Rogoff, an ed. of The [annual] Haight-Ashbury Literary Review/SF recently told me she was in a 1971 issue of Chute's The Small Pond mag./Auburn ME with me); likewise, with the commercial antho. GRACES (above.).

Like most writers, I publish what I can where & when I can, so I can now see it's time to head back to lasting paper publication while the blinking WWWeb appears to self-destruct (here & there.) The new hotting e-books are hybrids (non-WWWeb standalone physical e-pubs.) but how long will their present book-sized media-formats last? When will they become chip-based eyeglass-viewed optical-virtual devices? (as an exDECcie [since the mid '70s], I'm an habitually cautious techno-late-adopter.)

Hardbound books&mags still have the material virtue of a [gradually degrading] physical existence: being on public & other libraries' shelves (until DISCARDed), in many university archives (lots of my hardcopy stuff's collected at UCONN's Thomas J. Dodd Research Ctr. in Storrs CT), 'junk'stores (incl. The Salvation Army where I always have & still do buy all sorts of books), people's personal bookshelves, all for (lo!) these many centuries (cf. the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, [328BCE-48BCE] would be nicely evidentiary - if it hadn't been accidentally burnt-down by defending Gen. Julius Caesar.)

But for now, we can still depend upon paper books' long duration & worldwide {migratory} distribution. [QED]

Note: An e-variant of this (ongoing, above) has since appeared in the Citizen Blog section of The Bay Citizen, www.baycitizen.org [San Francisco CA] that supplies S.F. Bay Area copy to the NYT West Coast Ed. S.F. Bay Area pages [in Section A] on Fridays & Sundays.

~ Bill Costley (68ish)

(Santa Clara CA, Labor Day weekend, 2010)v9

Sunday, August 29, 2010

BECK SORCERS, SOURS

BECK SORCERS, SOURS

Glenn Beck soon sours us
by sorcering milk chocolate
into vanilla milk before our eyes
as we watch him appealing on
solid, sobering ground

like a big white-chocolate bar,
melting in D.C’s. noonday sun.
Beck milkily prays ”Be Good”
before God above & Mammon
below, boldly worshipping both

by pitching to anyone milked
of their savings, security, capital
by fronts for good old Mammon,
whispering The Prayer of Jabez
illusing Hebrew biblicality. Beck

plays nice, falsely good, fronting
for Mammon, mammonistically.

(29 AUG 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Saturday, August 28, 2010

ALL-NITE ANIMAL EMERGENCY ROOM

Dr.Ginny drives Dave’s Lucky aka Puss
down the San Tomas Expressway at dusk
to the all-nite animal emergency room

to be whisked away in his grey Pet Taxi
for immediate examination. An hour later,
after a dark dying cat cries out in fear,

we get the e$timate for Lucky’s urinary
blockage: slushy kidney sand, treatable
orally (by a new diet & special meds),
catherization (by dog-length catheter),
& (maybe) an operation. Lucky’ll live.

Leaving, I console a weeping woman &
the dying cat’s weeping owner by telling
how our 14-yr-old litter-brothers died:

Jeeves by quick injection, -ory observed
overnight; Carolin in hospital 4 yrs ago.
Everybody tears up in commiseration.

(28 AUG 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Friday, August 27, 2010

CALL 3-BALLED BECK

C@LL 3-B@LLED BECK

3-balled Beck parodies Dr. King
negatively in studied contempt,
a whiteman in a naturally-grey
near-bald-cut affecting Nazismo,

determined to dramatically
rupture religion’s commitment
to social activism from what
it was in the Hebrew Bible.

No Jew he, Beck prances nazily
proud of the figure he’s cutting
curl by greying curl, leaving
only bald refusal & denial.

Who calls his bluff? I just did.
You can call 888-727-BECK

(27 AUG 10, Santa Clara CA)v4

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Generationally,

{for The Boomers}

MOZART wrote an opera/month,

a symphony/week;

BEETHOVEN wrote 1 opera,

9 symphonies;

SCHUBERT wrote 1 opera,

9 symphonies;

WAGNER wrote 1 symphony,

endless operas;

everybody came, fell asleep,

nobody stayed.


(25 AUG 10, Santa Clara CA)v8

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

BlueBerries

It's fascinating how, with the government's current dietetic emphasis on bright/dark fruit, simple blueberries have become (relatively cheap) little healthballs.

I remember 2 distinct types of blueberries: small, indigo, sour (in coastal eastern MA; homey); large, paleblue, sweet (from coastal eastern ME; commercial), appropriately enuf. [2 flashbacks:]

1. My Glaswegian Scottish father (in West Lynn MA) used to insist we pick high-bush sour indigo blueberries on the cut under the electric power lines in bordering Lynnfield MA, or sometimes up on Bald Pate in distant Georgetown MA (25 mi away). Some were eaten out of hand while picking them; the rest were taken home in large #10 cans to be loaded into pancakes, since we'd be drowning them in sweet maple syrup at breakfast anyway.

2. My Belarusian Polish-speaking grandmother (in bordering Salem MA) always served me the sweet big paleblue blueberries for Summer Sat. breakfasts with Kellog's Corn Soya in the late '40s. How I miss those paleblue, crunchy gold & cold white bowlfuls!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Dick CHENEY's Blog?

Recently, on “30 Rock” (NBC-TV)
Alec Baldwin (as Jack Donaghy)
huskily bitched that he has to get all
of his news from Dick CHENEY’S blog (e.g.)
http://www.newsgroper.com/dick-cheney
because of “those pinko networks."

(20 AUG 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

Friday, August 13, 2010

IN A TRANSITIONAL ERA

We live in a transitional era,

fears dwarfing hopes, doubts, both.

Of child prodigy painters, middle-aged

mid-listers, distressing older novelists,

only musicians make any progress.

Poets (like me) do our damnedest:

if the planet lasts, we’ll ask: Why?


(13 AUG 10, Santa Clara CA)v1

Sunday, July 25, 2010

THE DAY THE WORLD (AS WE KNOW IT) ENDED


It all began with the day the World (as we know it) ended.

The exact date’s irrelevant, other than it was some day in 2010, a year I’d never expected to live to. Having read science fiction avidly, if not exclusively, since an early age (say, 7 perhaps) I, like many others, assumed that 2000 AD/CE would be the epochal year.

When, in fact, it wasn’t, I found myself, like many others, assuming some subsequent 21st-century year would be. Why not a nice, rounded 2010 then, when I became 68, or 2020, which my cardiologist advises me might be my last? But back to the common present: 2010, the year I’ve had my first tiny heart attack, an autoepochal event I’d also never expected.

Presuming a generalized chaos, I began by designing a necessary I.D. badge for myself:

PROJECT

HIGGS BOSON

PROJECT

CERN

CH Geneve Switzerland

052142

BILL COSTLEY USA

There, I thought, who could possibly doubt the number was significant? Of course, it was and is my date of birth, so that it would surely pop up, in one format or another, in any/all of my on-line profiles, enough to validate my now Higgs-altered existence. Once I was alive in the new Higgs-world, everyone’s numbers would be altered somewhat, if not obliterated, I thought. Numerical chaos would have to serve to validate everyone until new numbers were issued.

But...by whom? Any organization that looked reputable. I deliberately chose CERN because it was both quasi-obscure, vaguely known, and obviously relevant. I also assumed that nobody had a working phone number for CERN in their cyberaddress book. And that Googling CERN wouldn‘t bring up CERN's current personnel database.

Now I was ready to appear to have become the post-Higgs me, I thought. How much of the old me would I preserve? Well, all of me! I thought: it'll be easy to validate - if things haven’t changed much. If they have, everyone’s would have, so perhaps sympathetic dubiety would prevail. As a test, I Googled myself and CERN.

[G] [ Bill Costley, CERN]

In the first few listings, I found myself twice:

Bill Costley

Bill Costley: poet, playwright, journalist, editor, blogger (obviously). View my complete profile. Blog Archive. ▼ 2010 (84). ▼ July (8) ...
costleybill7.blogspot.com/ - Cached - Similar

Bill Costley - LinkedIn

San Francisco Bay Area - poet, journalist, blogger

View Bill Costley's professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Bill Costley discover ...
www.linkedin.com/in/billcostley - Cached - Similar

before I found other Bill Costleys:

Bill Costley, Education/Outreach at Traverse Area Association of RealtorsSaginaw, Michigan Area Bill Costley, Senior Paralegal at Arnold & Porter

I already knew of a Scottish hotelier/chef, and a writer specializing in German Army units, both named Bill Costley.

Would they be distracting enough? Probably, in a post-Higgs universe.

None of which associated me with CERN, unfortunately. I could hope that the general post-Higgs chaos might explain that absence to any chaotic questioner now of dubious certification themselves. Or I could hope that no one, under such chaotic circumstances, would even bother to inquire. All this probability was making me anxious while relieving that anxiety.

Was this the post-Higgs universe? How could I tell? So far, it seemed the same as the pre-Higgs one. Perhaps by Googling "post Higgs" I would find some relief.

[G] [post Higgs Boson]

Relief appears in the New Scientist:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/07/is-a-god-particle-announcement.html

where I'm told the announcement of the Higgs Boson is due immanently. I suggest you try to calm down – if all this has discombobulated you as you are now – and just wait for it. It’s really only a matter of days now...

UPDATE: No Boson; am I still the person I was when I wrote this? R U?