Esther Press

How to Help Hurricane Katrina's Victims

NPR.org, August 30, 2005 · The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American Red Cross and other government and private agencies are scrambling to respond to the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast. Following is a list, provided by FEMA, of groups and their phone numbers set up solely for cash donations and volunteers:


Donate Cash:

American Red Cross
1-800-HELP NOW (435-7669) English,
1-800-257-7575 Spanish

Operation Blessing
1-800-436-6348

America's Second Harvest
1-800-344-8070


Donate Cash and Volunteer:

Adventist Community Services
1-800-381-7171

Catholic Charities, USA
703 549-1390

Christian Disaster Response
941-956-5183 or 941-551-9554

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
1-800-848-5818

Church World Service
1-800-297-1516

Convoy of Hope
417-823-8998

Corporation for National and Community Service Disaster Relief Fund
202-606-6718

Lutheran Disaster Response
800-638-3522

Mennonite Disaster Service
717-859-2210

Nazarene Disaster Response
888-256-5886

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
800-872-3283

Salvation Army
1-800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769)

Southern Baptist Convention -- Disaster Relief
1-800-462-8657, ext. 6440

United Methodist Committee on Relief
1-800-554-8583

Source: FEMA

Read:

Nine Alexandrias by Semezdin Mehmedinovic, City Lights, 2003--This collection is structured via train stops, for the most part. Across the U.S. One gets to experience the narrator's despair and confusion amid various eccentrics and not-so eccentrics. I felt his earlier collection, Sarajevo Blues, was one of the better books to come out that year. Nine Alexandrias is not as viscerally intense or its tone so hollowed, which is to be expected. Still, it is a bit of a letdown, I feel, coming on the heels of Sarajevo Blues.

Read in last two days:

c.c. by Tyrone Williams--mentioned a few days ago.

This Connection of Everyone With Lungs by Juliana Spahr--journal poetics/continuing her interests in connectivity, on a grand scale. politically awake writing. but also the growing sense of Nature in her poetry. a lot of species show up. also thankful that there is a great deal of vulnerability on display. that takes courage.

Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson--will have more to say on this in a bit.

Considering how exaggerated music is by Leslie Scalapino--this is just a wonder of a book. really enjoy the "spoken" feeling of much of this, and all the endless modifying--as one does when speaking--before the sentence comes through and out.

Personae by Ezra Pound--I've never been interested in retellings of fables, or myths, or persona poems. I keep wondering where Ezra is in all of this? Because he isn't an early French troubadour, nor Egyptian. I'm all for ambition as long as one doesn't sound inauthentic in the process--to my ears Pound is skittering along this edge. (I'm still reading this book.)

Was he growing a beard to be thought of as more substantial than he really was? Was he growing a beard to be like the fathers? Was he growing a beard due to dissolute habits and loose change frequently showing up? Was he growing a beard because the economy demanded it? Was he growing a beard for intense divisive inner issues? The car showed up and he spoke so slightly that no one could comprehend and the air came in and out with a little bit of urban feeling and she said that the anti-Milky Way was over there and that even if he was angry it was no reason to grow a beard besides his childhood being not that interesting.

I work with a man who was in a gang and who was once shot in the hip--he tells others when he limps and they ask that it's an old football injury. He was in prison for something he hasn't said and will make fun of Mexicans as he is one who are angry and bald like he is. He has a knife and a wife with two kids and they are buying their first home. Yesterday, there was almost nothing to do but read lighting things and then he began speaking of exfoliating the skin and I said did you say what I think you just said and he said that he did.

c.c. by Tyrone Williams, Krupskaya, 2002--Energetic, casually appalled rhetorically, politically/socially angry (for good reason), and lyrical bends of phrasings, conjunctive amalgams of abrupt acts, places, etc. Much theory and change of scene. Explosive at times, quieter at others. Terse ex-cursions.

*

Frank Rich's NYT's op-ed.

From Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart:


"We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach would be to get to know them, see how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren't all that solid. Then the eight wordly dharmas become the means for growing wiser as well as kinder and more content."


*


Every utterance should come freighted with maybe.

A dream in which it became clear that the languages people were using were all incorrect. The correct words were sometimes just one letter off.


*


Negative sex shadows.


*


Confirmed.

He couldn't be sure if she knew what she was speaking of when she was speaking of men and milder weather.



*


The false warmth of the professional helper?


*


Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism is a beacon toward discomfort, of acceptance, of getting in steplessness with change.

It would seem George Bush is now responsible for the deaths of 25,000 Iraqi civilians. Not soldiers, civilians.


*


Is a well-mannered avant-garde an oxymoron?


*


"He has a complicated antagonism with eateries serving breakfast." (overheard)

I did physically attend the SHAMPOO reading on Thursday, but due to a nasty bout of allergies and perhaps a sinus infection I wasn't really "there" mentally. Still, I enjoyed my time, and I especially liked the poems of Stephen Vincent, Leslie Scalapino, Alli Warren, Cynthia Sailers, and Kit Robinson. The introductory band was great as well--I never got their name, though.

While visiting the area, I stopped in Berkeley (for the first time) to see a friend and overloaded myself with books from Moe's (a very great bookstore) and Cody's (another good one). Here is the list:

c.c. by Tyrone Williams, Krupskaya, 2002

Incarnate: Story Material by Thalia Field, New Directions, 2005

This Connection of Everyone With Lungs by Juliana Spahr, California, 2005

Considering how exaggerated music is by Leslie Scalapino, North Point Press, 1982

Defoe by Leslie Scalapino, Green Integer, 1994

Personae by Ezra Pound, New Directions, Copyright 1926

Nine Alexandrias by Semezdin Mehmedinovic, City Lights, 2003

Call Me Ishmael--A Study of Melville by Charles Olson, Grove Press, 1947 (2nd printing)

Poetical Dictionary by Lohren Green, Atelos, 2003

Verisimilitude by Hung Q. Tu, Atelos, 2000

Bad History by Barrett Watten, Atelos, 1998

The Beginner by Lyn Hejinian, Tuumba Press, 2002

The External Combustion Engine by Michael Ives, Futurepoem Books, 2005

Etym(bi)ology by Liz Waldner, Omnidawn, 2002

Odds and ends:


Rec'd word that Chris Kennedy has had a book accepted at BOA Editions. It's called Encouragement For A Man Falling To His Death.


*


I will be attending the SHAMPOO festivities on Thursday night.


*


Stories and poems of mine are appearing here:

Gary Lutz's 5_Trope has two stories, one here and the other here.

Robert Casper's jubilat has a Trilce piece.

Derek White's SleepingFish has more Trilce pieces.

Del Ray Cross passed this information along:


Dear SHAMPOO Friend,

Here's a quick and friendly reminder that I'll be hosting a 5th Anniversary SHAMPOO Celebration and Reading this Thursday evening in downtown San Francisco. Details follow:

Thursday, August 18 at 6:30pm
at GalleryOne San Francisco
One Embarcadero Center, Mezzanine Level
(same building as Embarcadero Cinema)
on the corner of Battery and Clay Streets

Expect to hear poetry from Brent Cunningham, Bill Berkson, Kit Robinson, Alli Warren, Kevin Killian, Ronald Palmer, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Gluck, Solidad Decosta, Justin Chin, Stephen Vincent, Phil Crippen, Cynthia Sailers, Cedar Sigo, and Stephanie Young.

Please join us if you are in the Bay Area. If you're not able to be here, thanks again for keeping SHAMPOO on the shelves for 5 fantastic years!

Kindly spread the word -- and stay tuned for issue 25 coming in September!

Suave regards,

Del Ray Cross, Editor
SHAMPOO
clean hair / good poetry
www.ShampooPoetry.com

From Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:




When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.






*


We were driving past Sierra Nevada Brewery here in Chico, and we saw a large group of kids outside, maybe twenty, with their parents in tow and ahead. There is a restaurant inside the brewery, I'm told. It struck me, for the first time, how odd it was to bring children to a brewery, how normalized this particular drug has become. And I say this not to condemn people who drink, just because I'm a recovering alcoholic. I wish I could drink. It's just that I began to think, Would we see children smiling and playing outside of a meth lab, a crack house, an opium den? You know? With parents willingly bringing them to them?




*




TTE




Or a ghost. Or a loaded fold.
Or an ambulant maxim.

Or a forgotten sorrow.
Or a medium feeling.

Or a cow. Or a shadow of a.
Or a.


*




"Justice is served" is said when someone gets one's own way, when one's ego is fed, not because any justice was served.

VEL




Debby’s silhouetted head, on album
of Evans, on napkin, on The Wisdom

Of No Escape, Cutting Through
Spiritual Materialism, on Folding

Ruler Star, on my name, upon an
envelope, on an envelope, on a card

of a holistic psychotherapist, on a
birthday card with a boat and a sun,

under which is Often Capital, a drain
to an air conditioner, a pen, notes of

computer space, a bank letter, a disk,
above a paper clip, on paper, and desk.


*


From Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:



Bowing is a very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow, even in your last moment. Even though it is impossible to get rid of our self-centered desires, we have to do it. Our true nature wants us to.

From Thich Nhat Hahn's Teachings on Love:


Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form.






Cherry Eye is also known as Harderian gland prolapse.




PLA




Soot motion. Bush on fence. Love
Among the tierless.

Apple asides. Ligaments and whole
faces replaced.

Mars travel. Signatures. Properly
vented entries.

AITH




Dendrite cave awakenings, shipped
cloudy or flowering faith in

parallel facings of a compacted
desire: snow on the west

side killing a limp mingling
of failures sought to shore.





Reading recently about a Buddhist monk who would put his glass of water just out of his reach on purpose, to break free of the trap of comfort, to feel discomfort, to be awake to it, instead of running from it. The idea being that placing the glass just outside of his reach would inconvenience him enough so he would feel inconvenienced.





There house is over their.

From Pema Chodron's The Wisdom Of No Escape:


You want something to hold on to, you want to say, "Finally I have found it. This it it, and now I feel confirmed and secure and righteous." Buddhism is not free of it either. This is a human thing. But in Buddhism there is a teaching that would seemingly undercut all this, if people would only listen to it. It says, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha." This means that if you can find Buddha and say, "It's this way; Buddha is like this," then you had better kill that "Buddha" that you found, that you can say is like this. Contemplative and mystical Christians, Hindus, Jews, people of all faiths and nonfaiths can also have this perspective: if you meet the Christ that can be named, kill that Christ. If you meet the Muhammad or the Jehovah or whoever that can be named and held on to and believed in, smash it.

Now we get to the interesting part. How do you do that? Although this approach sounds pretty aggressive, when we talk this way, we're actually talking about the ultimate in nonaggression. People find it quite easy to have beliefs and to hold on to them and to let their whole world be a product of their belief system. They also find it quite easy to attack those who disagree. The harder, more courageous thing, which the hero and the heroine, the warrior, and the mystic do, is continually to look one's beliefs straight in the face, honestly and clearly, and then step beyond them. That requires a lot of heart and kindness. It requires being able to touch and know completely, to the core, your own experience, without harshness, without making any judgment.

"When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha" means that when you see that you're grasping or clinging to anything, whether conventionally it's called good or bad, make friends with that. Look into it. Get to know it completely and utterly. In that way it will let go of itself.

The dreams of ego.




Context is a highly debateable assertion meant to mean a few things, one of which is, Please believe me--please.




I wonder if your own nose worries about its status in your eyes, as you're looking down it so often.





Unidentified employees





Posting Bail--Beneath this is the belief that if you have enough money--to get the bail money--then your guiltiness will be suspended briefly in lieu of the money. You are "free". A built-in capitalist game that equates wealth with a different set of justice.

Note--I was working two part-time jobs, one of which became full-time very quickly. I cannot quit the other part-time job because it has an endpoint, and we are not there yet. So, I am currently working a fulltime and a part-time job. I am also writing an introduction to my nonfiction manuscript, and was working on a short piece for Bridge Magazine, out of Chicago. I've also been reading texts by Pema Chodron and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (both names are missing umlauts) and attended my first Shambhala meditation in Paradise, CA. All of these events above explain why I haven't posted recently and why I have also changed my mind with the poem-a-day blog. I may begin posting again in the future, perhaps when the part-time job ends.

From Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche:

The entire Buddhist teachings (dharma) are about lessening one's self-absorption, one's ego clinging. This is what brings happiness to you and all beings.

*

Take care,
James