Bill Costley.

@ your ‘presentation’ Best

To my chef carolin

Every time I cook, I think of you, my chef carolin,
of how you’d do everything quickly, differently,
with panache, deft intelligence, style, as a chef would.
You were a chef & everyone knew it, cf. Chef Winston.

I’m just the sous sous prep-chef, peeling the potatoes
& cutting them to your specified sizes, making raw
ingredients ready for you to turn into what people
recognize as real food, actual cuisine. You added
light to cooking, I just boil & eat stuff; granted,
I like it anyway; hardly anybody else ever does.

“I’m not a presentation chef!” I told Dick Bartlett
on your video of Crème Marie Louise. Too true!
But you rose to the occasion & triumphed on tape,
soon on DVD, then on the World Wide Web.

Cruelly, your teeth fused & you were fed by PEG
via a stomach tube, a vicious irony for such a chef
as you were. What crueller punishment for a talent
that gave everyone such joy. I promise you, you’ll
triumph on VHS, DVD, the Web, for ever & ever,

building a spectacular Crème Marie Louise while
moving images exist, as moving as anyone can be.
Ray Kurzweil imagines DigitalRay in a box will
contain all that he ever was & is. Your cake video
displays you working at your ‘presentation’ Best.


(15 JAN 07, Kaiser-Permanente Hospital rm 669, 900 Kieley Blvd, Santa Clara CA 95051)