rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

on the nature of magic: flash fictions, the albino killings and conjuric interventions

FRIDAY

ran across an account of witch killings in kenya and commentary by local healer"

----------------

"Others are skeptical the slain women were witches. At the top of a hill outside Kisii, Joseph Omache practices his craft. Omache is a shaman, or traditional healer. He throws bones and communes with ancestors to help heal physical and spiritual ailments.

"It is very painful when somebody kills another person in the name of witchcraft," he says. "Why couldn't they come to me so that I can perform my herbal potion to identify the real witch so that I can go ahead now to trap him and then we can see what to do?"

Omache says that in his 10 years of studies and decades of practicing, he has never come across a witch.

"These are vendettas. It is not that people really bewitched somebody," he says, adding he believes that "witch hunts are really about people expressing hatred and coming up with an excuse to hurt someone."

-----------------

these the type of healers highjohn need to recruit for
his worldwide afrospiritual protection society

or is that rickydoc trying to do that
wonder if brother omache got email

all my love

mganga maua




THURSDAY

man i am so deep in the zone, i tell folk if you see me its just
a mirage, just walk on by - still working that last 20 pages or so

what can i say, fixing endgame
entail fixing a lot of preceding text

that albino scene worked out pretty well actually
gon to do a series of hoodoo interventions

in sudan, haiti, brazil, somalia et al
basically enlisting afrospiritual practitioners in his vision of

blackworld destiny (and that of all humanity)

folk unhappy w/fox news referring to michelle obama
as obamas baby mama, fox do step out of line dont it

ran across this alternet review of book
the family:the secret fundamentalism at the heart of american power:

an account of a religious right secret society in the highest levels of american politics et al, the
elite of the rightwing ascendancy, inclu some folk you would not think would be involved in it

founded by some guy who preached that christanity had gone astray with all
this concern with the poor and the downtrodden, that it should concern itself

only with the powerful, and so it has, through an array of
techs like congressional power i meant prayer breakfasts, et al

that have nursed the rightwing ascendancy
book say the threat of the right wing is not what they will do

but what they have done

seem to be viable investigative reporting
instead of just raw conspiracy theory

as wouldbe founder of a hoodoo secret society,
such works fascinate me

must reading for a man who like to think
he know true power from the illusion of it

rdoc

MONDAY

enjoyed doing that last post about the guy in the bus station
that kind of observational characterwork narration

good training for the fiction eye
think im going to do more of those

got this sequence i want to work into rest where he is doing his
fantasyworld storyteller thing and supposed to have these visions

of himself as a classic hoodoo w/mythical powers and how he
would address all these blackworld issues as this mythical dr strange

kind of shaman, what if i was really a magician like in the stories
gandalf the grey and the like

so i been thinking lately have him start off visioning it, but as novel progresses
write them as if they were actually happening, him in his fantasyworld, his novel, something

i will figure it out as i do it, so anyway i see this article in the sunday times about albinos being
killed in tanzania for body parts because its believed albino bodyparts are magical

okay, so one of my missions is to bring african magic into the 21st century
to extract the weaknesses, samesame african religion

so killing albinos for magical body parts i consider to be problematic

the nyt times article here
more information here

make me shame to call myself an afrospiritual magican

so i have this vision of me showing up, when something like that bout to go down
and show those suckers some real dr strange kinda magic, where i not only stop it

but illuminate and transform in the doing

i see myself intervening down in haiti, (if the voodoos were on the case in
haiti it wouldnt be in the shape it is in now)

i see myself intervening in the sudan, in the congo,
in kenya during their recent tribulation, south africa

and all over the united states
put a new definition on

conjureman

so anyway im going to write more flashfiction observations like i did yesterday
just do the raw here but sometimes working them as passages in rest for the weary

let me do a quick raw text of this albino thing
i will clean it up later

--------------------------
samuel mluge works works his way through his rice fields with a quickness that is wasteful and finally stops, that is all he will be able to do today

the rice is stubborn today and he is covered with a carapace of sweat that calms new sores rubbed raw by the long sleeves he must wear to protect his albino skin from the tanzanian sun

he imagines his wife looking down the road wondering, hoping, praying,

it would be cruel to concern her so and her world is cruel enuf without his assistance

and so with reluctance he gathers his tools and starts back to the house. - the sun has begun to drop behind the horizon and barely repressing his fear he hurries through lengthening shadows.  he imagines his wife at the sturdy door looking for him and hurries even beyond his own fears

when he sees his compound she is there in the door as he imagined she would be, her pale skin spectral in the dusk.  what on earth posses him to marry another albino.

but that was before the rumors started, before the killings began, before his albino skin became more precious to others than it ever was for him

now he must protect not only himself but his wife and his 5 fair skinned children.
husband she will say in that voice she knows irritates him, why do you stay out every evening

till the day and the neighbors are gone

the horizon is indeed empty, they have considered moving to the city but this land is all they own and it is only at night that they are left isolated - in the night that used to belong to them

barely sun down they would take the children and visit friends and sometime just walk here there it didnt matter and while the children slept they sit outside and converse about anything and everything , a story shared with the few folk in passing, often friends would gather just because it was known they would be there

samuel is rueful as he pulls thick bars across the 4 windows, they had cost money he could afford but now the windows are barred and the door is sturdy and it was worth it, this peace of mind

pays for itself but still every car that passes they wait and wonder and so they are

instantly alert when one does not pass and instead pulls to a stop outside
and they are two statues staring at each other in the dark

pales skins ghostlike impression, waiting for the voices that have begun to mark their
days, look, albinos, that skin will make one rich, i am told their genitals will bring a man luck

some claim for luck better the eye
both are good, but one will do

I did not know we had some so close by, where do they live i wonder

a tentative knock on the door, much too tentative, they do not answer.
hello in there, we know you are there, we have come for you

the knock becomes insistent, better but still no answer
the children are awake now but as still as quiet as their parents

you will anger us the voice
on the other side says

ive checked said another, the windows are
barred, is there no other way in

no no, i told you, we must go through this door, you in there, we will let you
live if you give us three of your children

from one statue a stifled laugh she cannot hold, it amuses her
that this life this skin could ever be considered lucky

---------------------------

okay, i dont know about this

that ghouls bargaining outside the door i once saw that in an
achebe story - it was kinda chilling

then ima have the hoodooman show up
king of the magicians

like gandalf or dr strange, paul maudib, w/that storybook magic
on the black hand side

not only stop this tragedy but some how transform and illuminate
the moment, the participants, the culture, the tradition

this is a fantasy i sometime have, gon work it is rest
but i dont know about writing it out online

i dont mind giving up nonfiction online, cause ima 21st century literaryman
and i understand you got to give it up if you want to establish an online literary persona

but its too easy to steal online, you just highlight and copy, hell thats how i get a lot of
my online material, its the cost of doing business

as long as you moving forward, growing, working your material into book form
you still ahead of the game and evolving from the give and take

but fiction, i dont think im willing to give up fiction like that - maybe i will
do just enuf to start the passage - refine, enrich and manifest in the text

we will see

what im doing here is using my more prosaic realworld magical tools to address that blood ritual problem
in afrospiritual practice, cause im gon nip that shit, rickydoc do not approve and im gon extract

the bullshit out of afrospiritual traditions, i swear fore god and all thats holy i am
from ritual killings to animal sacrifice its all part of the same continuum and

that shit gon cease
on rickydocs shift

in the conquerors name

rickydoc trickmaster

wouldbe prophet of
the hoodoo way

thats magic
enuf for me

endgame: rest for the weary

hello dear regulators, dug in on rest for the weary
starting my redpen today, novel starting to feel good to me - finally

worked on my endgame this morning and im gon share it with you
dear regulators, hate to give novel away like that but i assume it

will be different by the time im thru with it anyway, revision is forever
and i just feel like sharing it cause im tickled with it, novel finally starting to feel real

as i move into closure i will be sharing more passages with you
i really shouldnt put the endgame out there but hey i dont have that

much readership that i got to worry about giving it away do i
i may take this down later but im feeling good today -

do this redpen and ima have a real draft, 15 years i been working on
this novel, folk been dissing me for the last 10, been treating me like i

aint serious - like i aint a contender,

just for you dear regulators: endgame: rest for the weary
all my love: rickydoc flowers

-----------------------------------------------

9TH MOVEMENT: WHEN YOU NEED ME, YOU CALL ME

The letter find him sitting on the landing of the steps that run up the side of house.  He put he roots down and walk he neighborhood one more time.  He get as far as Parkway and Third before opening it.  Friends it says.  She doesnt think hes ready for a real commitment.  Real life.  Real world.  She isnt a real woman to him it says.  Say she wont be no mans fancy.  You have control issues she say.  Too fond of headgames.  And finally, she say, I am committed to somebody else and am unable to give you what you need.  Can you she say, can you really quit.

He withdraw to the park and behind him the holyground he has so carefully nurtured is transformed, house by house and street by street, into a little beatup urban neighborhood.   Musty and tired and ragged around the edges.  By the time he cross the bridge, Ms Turbees house is gone, the library, Riverside Baptist and the Hole in the Wall.  All gone.  John Henrys workshop silenced, neighborhood bottletrees just jagged glass necks hanging on frayed strings, and he just a bedraggled Viet Vet sitting on a driftwood throne wedged into the fork of a lightning split tree.

Day and night he can be found sitting there, staring out over the river and handling roots in a calloused hand.  Neighborhood kids vie for his attention, challenge each other to disturb the hoodooman, go touch him why dont you, double dare you why dont you, but he ignore them as he does curious adults - those who have heard, those who know, those who see.  It become a neighborhood thing to picnic around him, to bathe in the curious peace to be found there on the bluff of the Mississippi.

But as it sometime do, a hurricane come to the Gulf and Memphis brace itself.  That eerie stillness that proceed a storm, the earth holding its breath.  Folk wait until the last minute but the storm do break and the delta wind come moaning.  Time to go.  The park empty out and through rear view mirrors he can be seen still sitting there as around him trees bow homage.  Windsong whistling in great gusts through the trees shift he roots ever so faintly and lift he dreads in a whipping halo.  Branches brush the wall of he aerie in arboreal symphony, the sky open wide and the rain it come.

Stormbringer raise I man head to the cooling spray.  I man see the stars.

Over time the chair root itself, roots spreading from its base deep into the delta mud, he beard grow twiggy and vines wrap themselves into he limbs, ravenous worms aerate he legs, he foot root deep, a statue carved of smooth and exotic wood that gradually become one with the earth.  A dreamer casting he greatest dream, he greatest spell.  One that remake the world as he would it be.  One in which he dreams come true and he soul be saved.

One that would be rest for the weary.
That say to all the generations

When you need me you call me 
I will come

I am the Conqueror

players, victims and going for the gold: playing to win

WEDNESDAY

 hello world, weak workday yesterday: bummer

while searching for my quickie links i went by chickenbones and black agenda report
old comrades who have basically excommunicated me for not following the party line

that kinda hurt but i was glad to see they still kicking it - chickenbones an unprecedented repository  (it was rudy of chickenbones once told me i should include images with online work)

and glen ford over at black agenda report be dropping serious knowledge - unfortunately glen dont much respect what i do  - both of them kinda rigid

i still think we got to move past the old verities of struggle in the 21st century
and i think transafricas global positioning is reflective of that

it do distress me im so often out of step with old comrades in struggle
but ima artist, spose to be a pathmaker, forge new ways of seeing

and willing to take punches for what i consider the truth of it all, for
consideration of strategic nuance over radical rote -

as a hoodoo and would be tribal shaman, i got 3 warrior clans i have to monitor and guide
got my community activists, my bougie activists, my radical activists

cant afford to dis or dismiss either one of them
all three of them have roles to play and its my job to understand

those roles and coordinate them, harmonize them, and im actually pretty
good at what i do, dont nobody do it like the hoodooman do

but i got to finish my novel, do my holybook, so the generations
understand the destinic nuance of what im trying to say/do

got to make my contribution
build facilitating institutions

otherwise both politics and the literary
i been buked and scorned for naught

in struggle
rickydoc trickmaster

wouldbe prophet of
the hoodoo way

TUESDAY

hello world, working hard, which means rootsblog get time for some quickies

holyground: wooded area back of my sisters house, somebody cut a tree and left a shrine for me
when im home in the delta, i go out there and raise the sun up every morning:

darfur: status quo: not good: tensions between southern sudan and north growing: also not good

somalia: humanitarian crises in wake of fighting between transitional gov/ethiops and islamists/assorted opportunists breeding internal refugees fleeing mogadishu

transitional government must reach out to disaffected if it is to survive: prospects weak

south africa: tension between mbeki and zuma threatening to split anc: neither option appealing, both of them have baggage

the us election: obama pulling even with hillary in iowa:
im ambivalent about possibility of black president

i suppose its a good thing, but its such a morally ambiguous job i just dont know
just to be competitive obama gon have to get down and dirty: jury still out on this one

katrina/neworleans: for the first time in generations, neworleans recently elected white majority city
council, probably majority republican too to go along w/new republican governor, hard to believe bush/fema

policies werent designed first to abandon blackfolk to storm, then disperse them (and democrats) since
thats whats happened, but i wont go there, dont want to be called a conspiracy theorist: bummer

could have used a black president then i guess, but i cant help but think a black president would
be as useful as the black general being used to front africom:

adjuncts: was reading where some universities are up to 70% adjunct, as an ex adjunct
at medger evers (a position me and elizabeth nunez boldly dubbed the killens chair)

i can testify that adjunct labor is slave labor, thats a rough way to make a living, and hard
on students - when you getting paid by classroom hour you just cant justify too much facetime

with students, got to trek to your other institutions, class prep time suffers too, according to
this report so does graduation rates - adjuncts organizing into unions, schools being pressured to

add more tenure tracks - free the adjunct 1000s

us middle east conference joke and a farce, more anti iran conference than pro palestinian: israel
insincere, bush/rice insincere, abbas desperate to even consider it and the saudis et al reluctant

to play the fool even to check iran/hamas/hezbollah 'shiite' axis: this is a joke: a farce

haiti: progress under preval: but we still got so very far to go: crossing our fingers
(btw: kudos to wyclef jean while im at it: boy been doing what he can: warriorkind)

the struggle: while searching for cosby  links, found lot of dialogue on self determination/responsibility for
our own empowerment - glen ford on bar makes some points on not being sidegamed, not a problem when
you working w/both hands -

at least reparations seem to be off the table - thats a blessing
its the great gitting up morning and its: looking good

and on that note, back to work

rest for the weary: been working my futurescenario scene for about a month now
takes place on a university planet far into the future: university de sankore of palmares

finish it today, i can get started on the redpen tomorrow: 1st redpen always the roughest
because so many sections have to be extensively rewritten, subsequent redpens are

easier because all you doing then is cleaning up the text and putting the poetry on it
thats when it becomes fun, when one word/one phrase can add layers of meaning to the text,

that i can do during the spring semester, then a whole summer of polish/refinement and
i will have a moneydraft for sure: im so excited: its all on this 2 month redpen

new plan gives me a new 2 months end of year woodshed instead of customary 1
an indication of just how desperate i am, squeezing noveltime howsomever i can

best i get busy: my love to you all
rickydoc flowers: in it to win it

MONDAY EVENING

hello world, i have recovered from that little manic bout of confidence
still going to go for the draft but no longer consider it a given

spent whole day struggling with the same page, this gon be rough
but i have never missed a deadline, except one time an act of god

and that dont count

and even if i, heaven forbid,  miss it, i will get some serious
production just from the effort - this a win win

pray for me
rdoc

MONDAY AFTERNOON

hello world, threw the shells today, my little homemade
divination chain, the mojo told me go for it

thanksgiving break and i been clocking pages
got another 7 days and im feeling strong

you know what ive decide, im going for the draft
got a week here, then 2 more school weeks, lets say i

get ruthless about those two weeks, which mean
schoolhouse get backburnered, thats gon cost me

but then i hit the ground running 2nd week in december

2 more weeks before i head for the delta, talking crunch city,
im talking zone - im talking 9 & 12 hour days - talking about separating the writers from the dilettantes

then a week or so in the delta and im generally disciplined in the delta
i generally get my work done in the delta, im strong in the delta

another two weeks in january before i simply have to focus on schoolhouse
thats like almost two months of woodshed, on a redpen, with a little

superhuman effort i can do a full redpen in 2 months by god, even a hardcore
redpen, im going for the gold yall, gon do me a end of the year draft

touch it up over the spring semester, full woodshed summer and im good to go
rickydoc on a sungun, 360% - in the line of o killens

rickydoc flowers
babagriot of the hoodoo way

                                          

MONDAY

hello world, i like to think of myself as a fearless artist, when i find myself asking
am i afraid to say that, i say it if for no other reason than i dont play that

and im always whining about no respect and no readership
but thats all the penalty you pay here in the united states,

you dont get no play and have to scuffle some
then i read about really fearless artists,

when the penalty for offense is jail, matters of life and death -
like these two zimbabwean theater brothers

anthony tongani and silvanos mudzvova,
arrested after their mugabe satire, the final push,

ran in zimbabwe - first night takedown, didnt stop no show though, soon as they were released
they back on stage -brother mudzvova say since media been silenced its all on the artists now:

"Artists, like everybody else, fear for their lives". say Mudzvova,  "But the moment you have that fear, you won't
get anywhere. People are saying, 'If you guys have that fear, where are we going to get the correct information?'

i tell my fledglings all the time

want to be a true artist, got to be fearless, willing to speak truth to power
truth to the people, even when they dont want to hear it, truth to yourself

like the lyrics from the artists prayer -  this profession aint no hiding place -
artists like this do me proud, reinforce my own courage, my own determination

to be true voice

a luta continua
rdoc

SATURDAY

going to continue working on last post: or maybe not

maybe start working on the second movement: each movement has to
be broken down into 9 internal movements

but wanted to address comment by bill cosby addressing black educators in nashville

"You're so quiet," he said to them at one point. "I bet I could get all
of you to stand up and clench your fist if I blamed the white man."

i got issues with some of what bill be putting down
but at the same time i got respect for what he trying to do

and that he willing to get out there and take his licks
for his position, he could have just chilled with the dollars like

most of those celebrities doing, but he in the arena, thats all i ask
him and danny glover two sides of the same coin

cause you got to work w/both hands and
there is more than enuf struggle to go around

glovers brand of activism gon speak to some folk, cos to others, only way we gon be a whole race of
activists is w/respect for folks whose programs might be different but still viable

caue we got to be on it, all of us, all classes, on every level of the game, and
everybody aint gon struggle the same -

cos aint figured out yet that the black middleclass been just as complicit as
the black poor, and the black elite aint even in the game

but he dead on about wasting our time crying about how bad folk treat us

that march folk had this weekend at the justice department, walking
around it biblic 7 times, thats so oldschool, thats so tired

trying to get the justice department to prosecute hate crimes

well thats a good cause and all but its pretty much a waste of time and energy w/this
admnistration, we got to get more strategic about our game in the 21st century

marches and protests and all that, those are loser strategies, folk who aint
got no strategic options, all they can do is whine and beg, that aint longgame,

newsflash: the powers that be figured out how to counter/neutralize that move 30 years ago
that tactic aint hardly a nuisance to power, and the justice department is in much worse shape

than that limited agenda address, and also coming at it that way make it
just a black issue, we have to bring more pressure down on folk by broadening

our agenda so that we gain allies in pressure and bring pressure where it will
make a real difference, the politicization of the justice dept would have been

a better agenda, one they more vulnerable to at this strategic/tactical point and time
got to step up our game

got to be serious about getting our work done, about our organizing
about taking care of business, the only way our condition will change

is when we, by our behavior and actions, make the reality of
black inferiority a false one

and i aint talking about no individualism, im saying struggle is both individual
and collective, im saying we got to work with both hands

in the words of this brothers article on it all:   "Never has it been clearer - despite the legitimate social
justice claims blacks continue to have - that black progress going forward will have to be made almost
exclusively through the efforts of black Americans alone."

i say this so much better in rest for the weary
so much got to be said, so much work to be done

the hoodooman do not accept the continuation of this condition
i will train my people to the game if its the last thing i do

swear fore god and on the sweat and blood of our ancestors
by all their hopes and dreams that live on in me i will

on that note let me work on the 2nd movement
i need 9 internal movements for the longgame

the longgame

game and the longgame  (on the nature of game and longgame as destinywork: shaping generations)
game and countergame  (countering game being run on you)
game and sidegame (avoiding being distracted by sidegame and diversionary game)
the hoodoo board of destiny  (on the nature of the hoodoo board of destiny)
mounting the board  (how to become a true player)
playing the board  (strategies and tactics: how to play the board)

okay these categories not working, and im feeling
pressure to get todays novelwork done

you know what im thinking is that i cant spend time on this limited project
i need to give that time to the hoodoo book of flowers, aka the great

black book of generations - need to give whatever discretionary time i can beg borrow or find
to my holybook, maybe make instructions to the cadre one of the movements in it

im outta here

my love to you all
whatever i got i will give to you

my positions aint always correct, or viable, i know that
but ima keep swinging, win or lose, right or wrong ima try

to do my part
god, i love you so

rdoc

clear water & ibeshe tchula, the dream of sekou sundiata and desperate men

TUESDAY

hello world, me and bonnie had dinner w/trebor and deb last night
we had a good time, in spite of my antisocial ways - bob and deb chill me out

bonnie had got me one of his photos that i had fell in love w/for my bday
the lighthouse one that chill me out, (we got a nice bob gates collection on the walls)

trebor is not only a lodge brother of the mystic knights of the sea
trebor is one of the most consistent readers of this blog

will comment occasionally on things ive written
offer kudos and challenges

often when im talking here, im talking expressly to him, or one of
my other few regulars that i know about - my beloved regulators

thinking trebor will like this one, this one will impress him, make him smile, etc (conscious of when he wont approve too)

samesame the other few folk that i know surf this blog w/some regularity
i like to claim i dont write to please anybody but i do have folk that are my

audience, in my head im writing/communicating with them
speaking for them, speaking to them - my beloved regulators

i be thinking of my regulators as guerilla troops, soulwarriors, covert operatives out here playing
the hoodoo board of destiny and conjuring a new reality on the human condition - regulating

look like im the one they be regulating
im feeling fey today, in a strange space with my novel

finally finished the historical section (4 years maybe?) and now im back
in the contemporary section, last 3rd of novel

but i havent systematically focused on this section for 3, 4 years now
and ive got all these unformed ideas of what to do with

- jubilation highjohns struggles as hodooo sorceror and wouldbe prophet
- the human struggle to live a meaningful life
- his/my struggle to empower the african way of god
- to save the race and his/my crippling sense of defeat and perhaps redemption

- the struggles of my characters
making them authentic endgame progressions

critical scenes/dynamics that have to be brought to life
so they speak to folk beyond consciousness, disturb and transform them

make my literary vision manifest

and all these narrative games i want to play, just what is
the relationship between reality art destinywork and conjuration

everything else been setup
the endgame is where the novel dies or becomes luminous

showtime and i look at it and im lost
got to redo my outline, figure out how to take it home

so next couple of days outline and plow thru
no way in hell i can do this in 20 days

but thats not going to stop me from trying, lord
i do my best work under pressure

in the name of o killens - the great griot master of brooklyn
(took my boys to his grave in brooklyn, they helped me tend to his ground)

worked on my holybook last couple of days, which felt good,
birthday present to myself

got to catch up w/projects ive allowed to fall by the woodshed - family, holybook, manuscripts, palf, etc etc

have you checked out the website for the pan african literary forum yet - looking good if i do say so myself

but the forum itself is still up in the air - as you well know, getting
something like this off the ground is a major challenge

and the old gray organizer just aint what he used to be
we got commitments but we aint seen a check yet

and we have made all these commitments and we got large contingents
of students coming from kenya, senegal, southafrica, nigeria, congo - all over africa

gon be an amazing experience
a seminal moment in african world lit and culture

its fa, its destiny

we got commitments from the legends of african world lit - the potential of what can be is breathtaking
and we have decided that no matter what the show will go on, that we have to establish

a reputation for doing whatever we say we gon do
if it comes down to:

jeff allen - novel
mohammed n. ali - shortstory
arthur flowers - nonfiction
some ghanian woman poet - poetry

the show will go on

course if the money come thru we gon have all the folk on the website and more
if the money dont come thru we pay our own way and make it happen

hope you will be part of it
gon be a seminal moment

speaking of shows going on i got to go

i got to get that new outline done today
got to get rootwork.com back online today

so many projects, so little time
my love to you all

rdoc

FRIDAY

hello world, was going to move on and start a new post
but i believe i will stay in this one and set up the 101 talismans

but today a shout out to one of my favorite conjurors in all the land
ibeshe tchula, was googling about when her name came up and

i see she has redone her website, it was always aesthetically pleasing
and now is even more so - until the water is clear is her riff

Tidings:

Welcome to until the water is clear, a website  designed to convey the many facets of my artistic expression. Ibeshe Tchula, a conjurer.   I am also Anna Beatrice Scott, a cultural/performance theorist  I work in various media and modes, with a special emphasis on the kinetic. I enjoy producing investigative works that provoke further inquiry and performance.  My focus is multiple for these pages, but I  have posted this site with the desire to book more performances.lectures, workshops and now, workings.                          
As a conjurer, I am very interested in the old timey ways of wrapping one's mind around a situation to produce a solution or series of possibilities.  Repetition. Cycles. Circles. Tides. Calling. Responding. Coding. Ciphering. Spelling. A lot of my work is influenced by or in discussion with sacred texts from many of my ancestral lines. I am hybrid, though easily recognized as a Black woman. I have come to understand myself as (minimally) Gaelic Afro Indian.  You may laugh. It is a joke.                      

I particularly enjoy pushing the boundaries of race, racialism, racism with radical love.  No one can know what's at the bottom of the sea, so who's to argue with the parameters of our existence?

Please dive in and swim around.  If you know you belong here, in the flow of her darkness as it draws upon the hind leg of clarity, then click here,  for further instructions.  Good tidings, one and all.

THURSDAY
hello world, sorry i been out of the loop

still recovering from my trip to the delta
and sekous death

aint no small thing you know, shifting the world a
little bit, better get a grip
                                    urban music by sekou sundiata

been listening to sekous work, i think
this is my favorite - urban music - i hear you sekou

what up black    you still black? . . .

i know you trying    to be something else    in your dreams
but you just keep coming back didnt you black, and more black and more black

'i understand   trouble   in the mind of blackness     trouble in the mind of blackness
seeking the light of    anything    to explain    the long reign    of the upside down. . .'

went to the funeral saturday, big drama, they tried to keep it tight, so there was

all this dont tell nobody going on but surely they didnt think they could stop sekous
folk from showing up - cathedral st johns divine, folk i havent seen 10 15 20 years

they done him proud
folk was showing a lotta love

i can only hope ive earned that kind of love when its time for me to go
at some point ima do up  what i want my service to be - forget that sad bit

i want a throw down, i want to rock the house
make a joyous noise - rickydoc checked out, gave it my best shot

a luta continua

'i wanna tell you    how much we wanted    to make reovlution
and in our yearning we learned    that suffering aint noble    and to struggle is a blessing'

listening to sekou now, he left a good body of work, but the one i love is that urban music,
i got some lyrics here for you, but reading them aint the same as hearing them

'we dreamed you black    in your madness,
made you up out of poems    and lies   and words to live by

we ourselves was dreamed    most likely by some slaves

whenever they    got a little space   they climbed into their heads   and be free
when they close their eyes    what did they see    they saw you    they saw me

ima miss sekou, gotta work sekou into my mythwork, he deserves some play
and apparently thats my role, determine who of my generation gets mythworked

into the destinical narrative

i got this initiative in rest for the weary, i believe
ive spoken on it before, where i annoint 101 hoodoo haints

historical and contemporary hoodoo destiny players
to be canonized - deified

and im thinking about my contemporaries, folk like sekou and
safiya and imogunla and dorisjean and jokillens, davidearl and more to come

while not all literally literary hoodoo i believe i will canonize them anyway
they are part of this life i have known/recorded and i will include them on a personal

after i list the 101 talismans, i plan to give them attributes
mythwork, a narrative

the 101 talismans of rickydoc

- historical hoodoos
- leaders&destinyplayers
- contemporary hoodoos
- literary hoodoos

work on this during the week sometime, just dont have time right now
got pages to clock, last lap, about 30 days left before i have

to go back to the schoolhouse, go back
to being a civilian - back in the world

bunch of pressure on me to deal with the world now but all i can say is not yet
i got 30 days, world  -   people, obligations, everything got to back up off me

stonewall time - best not to get in the way of a desperate man
next 30 days belong to my novel, my work, my dream

whatever it cost me
i will pay the bill

once again we must seperate the writers
from the dilettantes

i just read over what ive done and got left to do and it
looks suspiciously bad, i fear im just playing with myself

and you dear regulators - doing a juneteenth on you
i fear i just dont have another viable novel in me

15 years is a longtime to have worked on something
that still has not reached threshhold viability - that bothers me

its so strange i cannot judge its viability

all i can do is keep the faith and do what i was born to do -
ive already given my life to this, i dont have options at this point, dont want them

i fear i just might not have the talent, but if determination
counts i got that

i will not accept defeat in this matter
masterpiece or farce, ima do this

if i am not a great novelist i am nothing

i fear that i am not even a decent novelist
a literary footnote whose vision exceed his reach

no matter, ima do this
win or lose ima do this

today, tomorrow, everyday i can beg borrow
or steal ima do this

woodshed you never get all you planned done
life always take its pound of flesh

frustration and despair inevitable

but i can do a lot in 30 desperate days
need to come out of this woodshed with a draft, lord

not getting no draft is
not an option

in struggle
rdoc

mythwork, zoraneale, marieleveau and rickydoc trickmaster

hello world

been reading this book, like i got time for discretionary reading
bonnie was reading it and when she finished said i might be interested

i glance at it, the historical marie laveau
title:  a new orleans voudou priestess

i dont testify for it, ive just started it
but i found the intro chapter fascinating

chronicles the process by which marie laveau was mythologized
and is in process of being transformed into a historical ancestor

a voodoo lakwa

now this is interesting to me on a lot of level
for one mythmaker is one of my primary attribues,

(just thinking it would be nice to engage mythmaking in rest on the
level of literary sophistication wideman engaged prophecy in cattlekilling)

so anyway rest is all about mythwork
as is my life this blog and all my works

the mythworkers best myth is always themselves
which brings me to my girl zora, an unreliable narrator in all her works

zora wasnt looking for truth, zora was mythworking
you got the work she did with that WWII piece on highjohn the conqueror

which made a returning culture hero out of folkloric john tricking master tales
and a hoodoo root named after highjohn the conqueror,

she put the two together and came up with this myth of a returning hero
who helped get blackfolk out of slavery by tricking old massa and
whose soul returns to the root until called again by the cries of the people

this was some sophisticated mythwork, by making him a returning culture hero
who will come whenever the folk in need, the recurrent manifestation of the conqueror

will be shaped to the needs of that generation

(thinking about how to work all this into rest - you know i almost hate teaching that class, mumbojumbo, thehealing, corrigedora, beloved, mamaday, texaco and the cattlekilling - everytime i read/teach them the bar for rest seem to get higher - something in those 7 works i think represents the redemption of the african american soul and the salvation of our generations, i need to add one more, rest will make it 9)

so anyway, aint hardly nothing zora claim actually true
my girl was a serious mythworker and i claim mythwork as a hoodoo legacy

in the name of zora neale

her autobiographies are a joke, and quite a bit of the hoodoo/voudou stuff she account in mules and men etc is questionable or relatively easily traced to other sources

but she worked it, she shaped the nature of hoodoo on the cutting edge and took it to new ground,

highjohn the conqueror was givien afroam folkloric attributes instead of the european/christian john the conqueror attributes which i assume come from john the baptist

but zoras best myth was herself, thats why she will tell you this blend of truth, fiction and folklore cause good mythwork have to be historically possible, not necessarily true

but possible

in the same way im constantly tending the the mythwork of rickydoc trickmasterr
every word i say, every act i make is to build this historical enttity

wouldbe hoodoo prophet and returning culture hero as
horse of the conqueror -  i aspire to tribal ancestorship

thats why it dont really bother me not to get play in my lifetime
im playing for higher stakes

zora as mythworker is probably my closest historical model
hoodoo mythworker and novelist in the literary hoodoo tradition

zora neale Worked the cutting edge

so anyway this book on how the legend of marie leveau was mythologized
how the legends and the nature of her power and life were attributed to her over the years

i find this fascinating reading, this book i will take the time to read
and try to work whatever mythwork understandings i get into this draft of rest
(that justifies me taking the time out to acdtually do discretionary reading, now its research!)

im not going to be able to get into this too deeply right now
too many end of semester obligations, im still under the gun

ill work this one this week
what ive gotten so far, really off the cuff

attempt to find the historical marie leveau

1st lwp (lousiana writers project) part of wpa during depression did a lot of black folkloric work
one project was to find the true story of marie leavau, did bunch of interviews

transcribed civil and ecclesasical records relating to marie her family and associaties
translated french and spanish into english, copies 19th century newsappar aqrtices on voudou

interviewed 70 folk born between 1853 and 1878 who remembered her or her successor
interviewees old and remembering stuff far in the past and of varying % of reliability
and wpa fieldworkers take unrealiable notes - got to work w/what we got

1940 wpa employee catherin dillon uses material to write 700 page "voodoo" manuscript, with chapters
on marie  "marie the great" and "marie the mysterious"

this work (and obits when she dies) become core of legend

(now the question is how to shape the legends of today and into what relationship with afroam and human destiny - who are the players current, what role are they playing, who do i want to exalt and whose influence do i need to diminish destinically speaking)

another based on newspaper and printed sources was done by marcus christian, dir of lwps 'negro unit' at dillard university

this information is housed in various places, cammie henry research center at the watson memorial library at tulane university and other places she mentions in the work - most of this stuff im taking straight from the work, i will digest it later,  im just trying to get the fact straight right now, these are research notes

telling you what she says about the evolution of the marie leveau legend (and pondering its pertenance to my own contemporary mythwork in my attempts to shape the africanamerican soul and destiny (and that of all humanity, okay, enuf pontifcation, back to work)

god this is so fascinating to me, make the old mythmaker drool
this gon put me in a speculative mood about a subject thats dear to me

cause thats what i think of my works as, my attempts to create contemporary myths
that will shape the hoodoo future, shape the afroam future, shape the future of humanity

my Works and the model of my life that i am constructing and mythworking thru my works
i want to be the model of the hoodoo future - guide and guardian of the tribal soul and destiny

i believe indigenous traidtions have that responsiblity for their respective cultures
and the critieria of successful tradition is in the quality of the lives its adherents live

folk in the tradition always want to exol the african way of god but if we were so strong
our people wouldnt be suffering all over the world, no, whatever we doing it aint working

christanity and islam kicking our ass all over the board
all over the world african peoples are suffering, all over the world

this simply will not do and we cant keep on doing what we been doing and call it grace
no, we got to come up with some new licks, got to flip the script

move to higher ground
okay, where was i, i got to get through this little project, i got work to do

so anyway marie was illiiterate so she left behind no records of her voice
and its all thru accounts of others

she dies june 15, 1881, 1st acccounts are the obits, obits and articles in the local papers
most laduatory of her charity work, some sensationalist, basic journalist practices of the era prevail

many ways of spelling laveau
writer shooses to stay w/laveau

obits perpetuate truths, semitruths and fantasys, kinda like perceptions of hoodoo et al today
many of these mythwork by maries daugther marie philomene glapion legendre

mythwork is a basic hoodoo skill, mostly though its practiced on the communal level
you have to establish yourself as a competent worker of magic - establish yourself as a font of good advice

with glibzliation and the web that communal representation can now emcompass the world

i try to do this in my works, i remember the decision to acknowledge and play my hoodoo thing in mojo rising and consequently this blog, this was a major decision for me,

i had always kept my hoodoo thing occult, i work it in fiction but fiction is special, you can always claim its just art, just reserarch, but then i decided to acknowledge myself publicly as a hoodoo

my concern was that i would be perceived as a classic folkmagic hoodoo and that aint me at all, i practice what im calling high hoodoo, highmagic instead of folkmagic

but my brand of hoodoo is not considered valid hoodoo in hoodoo circles, literary hoodoo im asked, whats that, highmagic, you mean you dont do potions - well no, actually i dont, that dont interest me

so ive had to basically define myself into the mix, present my opinions here and in hoodoo forums and forums of traditional african religions knowing ima get buked and scorned, or even worse ignored

but i juust keep swinging, my goal is to leave a papertrail, a record of struggle that lays out my vision of tribal and human destiny, i want to shape the hoodoo future, and i want hoodoo to take responsibilty for human destiny, oh i got big ambitions

im trying to move reality
like a conjure should

and reality dont move easy
but thats what make me a magician

if it was easy everybody would walk down the street and get some

ima do what i can do
ive had some success , i understand the dynamic
i live and breath it

ive had to establish myself culturally as a viable magician and wouldbe prophet
a manifestation of magic and prophecy that make sense to the 21st century sensibility

people think folk like me are only historical, that we dont show up no more i guess
but thats cause destinywork is only recognized in the historical

okay rick, chill w/the huffing and puffing
where was i

this post will cover a lot of ground obviously
believe im going to have to close shop for moment

i will come back to it
finish transcribing raw notes and speculations

clean it up for roostblog
incorporate speuclations into rest

and my mythwork

but for right now ive tired myself out
and i got so much work to do

forgive spelling, typos and all that
aint time time to work that just now

also i got to call papa gede nibo bey
and interview him about how he made this chain

the 1st ever hoodoo divination chain
surely i can mythwork that

in the name of the conqueror

rickydoc trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

in the zone and empty woodsheds: limping, lame and throwing my life away

5 am sun

woodshed over, back in the world

think im going thru and edit this weeks work to the bone
think maybe i was a little obsessive, woodshed you know

546 am sat

hello world, last day - wasnt my best woodshed
but it was okay

this blog has gotten mighty personal lately
getting tired of putting my business in the street

was reading latimes article how talking points memo guy
played  a role in the prosecutors firings

noted an article in local arkansas paper about fired prosecutor
asked his readers to send info about firings in their states

noted the pattern - inquiries picked up by majors
now bush admin ducking and dodging - now thats blogging

im drooling w/envy

just dont have the time to muckrake and write novels too
but i think ima chill the me me me for awhile

if i dont have commentary i will restrain myself
from just talking about any old thing that come to mind

i get to wailing and dont know when to quit
i been telling way too many secrets

later
rdoc

4 am fri

been a weak woodshed, world - didnt do my 4 last night

2 days and its back to the world - did i bring back power
or did i journey for naught

did i find redemption
or didnt i

8pm thurs

weak day, worked sporadically, didnt crunch

still not over, got 4 hours till midnight, that would
make it a strong one - lets at it rick

opening epigram always 1st to hit the screen

and you o mythmaker, o teller of tales
o weaver of lies, o fool of a trickster

is there nothing you hold sacred
is there no boundary you will not cross

in search of a song . . . .

yeah i done wrong, take the money, it
was a helluva opening line

and the novel is my god
what it need it get

looking for a 4 today
my love to you all

8 am thurs

damn - slept 5 hours, thats way too many
probably mugabes fault

boy gone king of scotland mad
a movie i by the way refuse to see

a little too hollywood darkest africa predictable for me

ran across a  darkest america washpost article (subsc) about
a slew of recent books bursting founding of america at jamestown myth

'a genesis birthed in hell' said one
cannibalism, murder et al and slavery too when

the decision was made to make some of the 1st africans
slaves instead of indentured servants - incorporating a mortal

flaw in the earliest vision of what america could be

best i get back to work on my counterspell
4 measely daze left  but im crunching pages - this what i live for

once read a discussion about whether frederick douglas
wrote his own books or if they were ghostwritten by white
abolitionists and one researcher made what he considered

a telling point - there is no paper trail of struggle he said

as to if there is or not i will not testify, i dismissed the argument
because i prefer to believe fred wrote his own accounts - all of them

my apologies for lnflicting my trail of struggle on you dear and loyal surfer
but that whats be on my mind a lot

getting Work done in the face of lifes demands
what separate the writers from the civilians

one of the threads im weaving in is making the narrator as storyteller voice
more conscious of itself, want to play with story and the act of story

probably texacos influence - mama day next ball up
looking forward to consulting w/a master of intertext

im outta here, another 5 hours gone -  like i aint serious up in here
like im just playing at being true force


3 am thurs

clocking pages and in the zone

dizzytired - i hate sleep when im in
the zone but sometime you just gotta . . .

worked a nice little brer rabbit riff in today, brer rabbit pondering the ways of humans and telling stories on them, o i enjoyed that -  tomorrow working in some riffs from gem of the ocean that will influence two major characters, give them more texture - that 285 year old conjurewoman spoke to me

took me 5 days just to get the zone, half my woodshed gone,
ohwell, cant fight the flow - needed the rest i guess, but im in the groove now

in the zone and clocking pages - and its all good in my world
bope its good in yours


12:58 wed

wouldnt exactly call it clocking pages
but i am clocking hours

1OAM wed - hello world

rickydoc limping, rickydoc lame
aint crunching pages - been laying about doing this and that

okay, today is the 1st day of my woodshed, 
now to sun will be 5 days, i will consider that a good woodshed

mean i will be behind the gun that week
playing catchup like rickydoc do

but i got to clock some serious woodshed days or i will feel like a fool
throwing my life away and at 56 i dont have life to just throw away

so anyway some commentary - the Justice 8

whats interesting to me is that the bush admin is so use
to a compliant congress they making silly mistakes now

whats even more interesting is that i had a lot to say about it all but now
that im sitting here all i can think about is my empty woodshed

im gone, maybe later
rickydoc running scared

all my love to everybody
rdoc

in the woodshed: babajohn killens and doris jean austin, clocking pages and the power of narrative

SUNDAY

hello world

ima news junkie, i spend a lot of time netwandering
i enjoy commentary

i note congressional hearings of prosecuters claim they were fired because they wouldnt do political dirtywork- well what about the ones who did - what do it take to be a loyal bushie, thats the story i want to see

i note how walter reed scandal exemplify enduring incompetency of post katrina bush admin -

they too used to getting away w/murder, havent figured out yet
they cant operate like they used to

but calling bush out seem redundant
if he fool you, shame on you::

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."    President G.W.Bush

i dont have time for bush, its springbreak and i plan to zone that novel this week

this weblog takes a godawful amount of my noveltime but
it came along just when i needed it - like it was just made for me

no editors no industry no establishment gatekeepers on rickydoc
i am the master here

any other age i would have had to push a pamphlet on the streetcorner -
or sew them into the lining of old clothes

here im on the cutting edge and i know it
i aint got a lot of readership but i got good readership

and the struggle for literary respect dont really bother me
enuf historical/literary precedent that i can rationalize it

want to say/do something new got to be willing to pay dues
and pathmaker will be one of the attributes i give the conqueror

but feeling a little anxious right along in here
got a week springbreak and anxious to clock some pages

woodshed time
o wouldbe novelist of historical stature and significance

you gon flitch the time off with this and that
or are you gon clock some pages

woodshed is when you got to withdraw from the world and focus, according to
the way i heard it when john coltrane 1st came out to play they blew him off the stage

boy had this woodshed out back and he went into that woodshed and he practiced and practiced until he was the john coltrane and he come back and took the stage and said now play this

in the conquerors name (ida b and davidwalker too)
word by trickmaster - a desperate man

THURSDAY

the hope he aint black syndrome
hello world, so im reading on google news

about this former sailor paul hall who was just arrested for passing info about his ship 2001 to a jihadi website and im thinking i hope hes not black when i read:

"i corresponded with an e-mail site. It wasn't nothin' top secret like these people are saying, you know what I mean? I was just talking about, like the Cole . . . whatever."

might be black, interesting how the reporter dropped the g  - know what im saying - still hoping hes not cause

i am concerned that young black islamics and such like those haitian americans in florida last year will get caught up in this jihadi thing playing at being revolutionaries

like many of the black militants of my day, just caught up in revolutionary romance - make me cringe everytime one get brought up on charges

aint even our war - one of those confusion of allegiance issues
boy call hisself abujihaad

folk need to grow up real quick - apparently he did it before september 11th
- i suspect abujihaad didnt realize just how hot it was gon get

if he is black and i still hope he aint - its unfortunate
the allegiance of black islamics will be an issue eventually

thats gon be a difficult row to hoe

been re reading texaco for my hoodoo lit class
it amaze me how much of my own lick is in these works

everytime i  re read them i am again enlightened
this texaco a work of wonder - of course im taking notes

"in what i tell you, there's the almost-true, the sometimes-true, and the half-true.  That's what telling a life is like, braiding all of that like one plaits the white Indies currant's hair to make a hut.  And the true-true comes out of that braid. . . .you can't be scared of lying if you want to know everything." (pg 122)

damn right im taking notes
i dont steal, i intertext

true that
rdoc

WEDNESDAY

i was just thinking about a comment i made in previous post about
writers belief in the power of narrative and i might play w/that some this week

right now im dragging, got some personals dogging me

squeezing a little work in, strictly defense
do my daily 3 no matter what or i will really feel bad

but that iraq a bummer - 9 americans and 100+ iraqis yesterday - rootdoctor dont see no good options there for nobody - darfur etc still under and its just statusquo all over the world

also i been trying to set up the palf website, its glitched to high heaven and its rickydoc thats slack - again

im tired, im the kind of tired mean shutdown coming
 when the mind and body just quit on me and
i collapse in place

if you fight it you dont get nothing done and no rest either
adequate rest is an critrical component of the high achievement llifestyle

so when shutdown come i accept it:

a lotta sleep, a little tv (nothing heavy), space opera
scifi (dont have to parse it as i read it - escape to the stars)

2, 3 days i be good to go

still more fumes than fuel but beggars cant be
choosy can they

rdoc
hanging in there

and what you might ask does south memphis have to do with this
nothing, i just like the picture, it makes me smile

MONDAY

hello world, rootdoctor a little depressed today

online initiative for new ren writers guild doesnt seem to be working and was wandering about the net when i landed on the harlem writers guild site 

and there is a list of hwg writers there and it never cease to amaze me that i have been excommunicated - in spite of the fact that i was once executive director of the guild - amazing

true i left under pressure, thats when new ren was founded, but still - its actually kinda funny how they have just rewritten guild history to exclude me - writers tend to believe narrative trumps reality any day

interesting they still got doris jean and terry mac, my cronies in crime and co founders of new ren

i really miss doris jean austin, i have her last manuscript, wish i had her papers - need to think about getting that manuscript knocked together and published, maybe hunt down her sister and see if i can get ahold of her papers -but all that just contributed,what really gave me the blues was

i pulled out rest for the weary yesterday and finally got back
in the groove but looking at it was a bummer,

sections i thought were good to go were all of a sudden looking lame

will this damned thing never be done
will i never live up to my responsibility as custodian of john killens legacy

ohwell - all you can do is keep pushing rick, im sure there were times when
babajohn felt weary, buked and scorned, but he kept on pushing and i will too

i remember this dojo sign on nostrand that says:
i will not quit a fight nor die a loser

3 hours a day rick, get you to the promiseland
3 measely hours a day

in the conquerors name (and doris jean and imogunla and safiya too)
rickydoc flowers - hanging in there

.

the conquerors horse and us strategic goals in africa

SUNDAY
israeli apartheid and the imperial presidency

feeling a little overwhelmed
2 days left and so much undone

was reading about the imperial presidency the other day
article in washpost say bush less concerned w/terrorism

than expanding the imperial presidency

didnt say it but his inability to accept the iraq study group
suggestions probably comes out of that impulse also

interesting dustup between carter and israels supporters

almost confirmation of carters position that to criticize
israel is political suicide (and often an act of courage)

the israeli lobby equates criticizing israel with antisemitism
so even sincere folk cant speak

lord knows i understand, blackfolk do it too
at least they try

but that situation w/palestinians does feel like apartheid
looks like apartheid, smells like apartheid

no percentage in getting involved in this, you cant win
but i tend to agree that the onus is on israel is this conflict

lord knows the palestinians have gone dysfunctional under pressure
and are difficult to deal with

but israel is the fulcrum of power here
israel committed the original sin and
israel built the system of oppression now in force

israel the only one can make it right
and the longer it waits the more difficult it will be

israel got to offer the palestinians a real deal
quit crying about what arafat did/did not do back when

cant have all the marbles/land o israel
got to share, children

current hubraic attitude endangers your own survival
and breeds a crises of biblical import on the world

thats how i see it

as sincere a reading as i can make it
shulamit aloni, former education minister of israel, takes it further

"their love of Israel distorts their judgment and blinds them from seeing what's in front of them. Israel is an occupying power that for 40 years has been oppressing an indigenous people. . . ." 

and now condi over there doing her bush diplomatic figleaf bit
one of the palestinian advisors complained that all she brought was slogans
well thats their thing, its criminal how slack this been played

and whats with the rightwing putting themselves out there
as defenders of feminism by attacking boxer

or rather why are folk letting them change the subject
why is this being treated like a real complaint

im going back to work
rdoc

SATURDAY

hello world
been me and that novel last couple of days

working that prophetic thread, ive been
inspired by finding that odu

also going to use it as model to do my griotic report
got to revise my holybook structure to reflect new understanding

was supposed to do all sorts of projects
but i decided to stay in the zone and use my last couple of days for that novel

i will deal with school and everything else when i have to
and im not going to let classes take it all this semester

i got to move to a new stage of ruthlessness

ran across an interesting article about us imperial moves in africa
that provide some context on recent developments in somalia

using the pretext of the war on terrorism, the us has moved
aggressively to set up alliances and capabilities in africa and
in particular in north africa

recent moves according to this article:

theyve trained 20,000  'african peace keepers' with 40,000 scheduled in next 5 years
theyve established a secret gitmo on diego garcia in the indian ocean to replace ones closed in europe
theyve established bases in uganda, djibouti, senegal and saotome & principe
theyve established military pacts w/gabon, mauritania, rwanda, guinea and south africa (of all places)

in fact south africa has just joined ACOTA africa contingency operations training assistance

a us imperial op incorporating african armed forces lead by colonel nestor pino-marina,
a cuban exile and vet of the bay of pigs, reagans latinadventures, etc, etc, you name it  - a rabid rightwing dirty tricks veteran

theyve sset up a school of the america op for africa called the african centre for strategic studies
designed to train african leaders along the same model school of americas did for latin america rightwing thugs

and so forth and so on, i think you get the point
this is pertinent in terms of whats happening in somalia

my concern is the somalian interim government
losing credibility and being perceived as stooges of the west

which would push somalia even further out of the africanist column
and into the islamic column

thats my concern, will somalia identify africanist or islamic
when africans like the sudan chose islamic identification over africanist its a problem

between imperial islam and the imperial west
africanist countries will have to do some fancy dancing

but there is of course opportunity in this mix
tricks to be laid

got my finger on this pulse
gon consult the conqueror

you may have noticed that me and the conqueror
(highjohn the conqueror for the uninformed)

our relationship evolving

ive always claimed to be a horse of the conqueror
but it was a theoretical claim, lately the conqueror been talking to me . . .

one of my ideological/magical/prophetic goals is to give the
conqueror attributes, like legba got attributes, oshun and so forth

gon mythwork the conqueror in rest for the weary

and perhaps because im working the prophetic thread (that just came to me)
lately the conqueror has taken a higher profile in this work

and my life

its interesting even that i call him the conqueror now
calling him highjohn the conqueror didnt have the power vibrations for me

when i refer to this force as the conqueror
it speaks to me

thats one of the reasons im going to be ruthless about my weekends this semester

im 56 now and i fear everything, strokes, death, gradual mental slowdown, family emergencies
you name it and its all possible in a way now it wasnt when i was 30 or even my 40s

i feel my mortality these days
i got to get my novel done

i say things in this novel aint been said before
i speculate things in this novel aint been speculated
i do things aint been done

theoretically its a work of wonder
theoretically its magic

its like this book length poem and every word got to work
every word got to do double duty, got to work on as many
levels as im capable of handling

but if i were to die tomorrow nobody would know
cause what i got aint prime time just yet

too many holes
this got to be a seamless experience

i cant have not one paragraph, not one sentence
that aint an act of wonder

the literary establishment treat me like i dont exist
this Work will be my redemption
this work will put all the doubters and the haters to rest

and i will have finally lived up to my early potential
if i can just get it done

it wont be what i see in my soul
it never is, you never do quite get it

but you know when youve given it your best shot
when its something you can live with

got to have it - and i plan to get it this year
still have to put the poetry on it, polish it up

but this year will be my money draft

im so close i can feel it, 20 year effort and i can feel it
if i can just find me another gear
and make this the most ruthless noveltime year ever

got to be ruthless with myself
got to be ruthless with the world

ive had a good life you know
been interesting and rewarding beyond my wildest dreams

i dreamed of being a writer, ive become one
i dreamed of being a hoodooman, ive become one
i dream of being a prophet, we shall see

ive been blessed with health, strange friends and good family
ive been fortunate in love

but i can feel closure coming
i can feel winter in my bones

well maybe winter is a tad dramatic
lets say autumn

once read somewhere that living writers are judged by their worst
dead writers by their best

this my best, this my big book, this my baby, this my masterpiece
all i want is for it to be the act of wonder i see in my literary soul

all i want is for it to exist
to be real in the world

and my holybook
got to get my holybook done

clock these two projects and all my fantasies my conjurations of myself
as an historical entity, a hero, of my people and all humanity
will prove to have been justified

(hopefully they will prove to have been justified anyway but lets make sure why dont we)

i hear the clock ticking
got to find me some more gears

got to squeeze me some more hours
got to work harder got to work smarter

rest for the weary and
the hoodoo book of flowers: the great black book of generations

in the name of the conqueror
let it be so

laying paths and raising up the sun: the me i see

SUNDAY NIGHT

hello world

i would like to edit down that last post
i was reeling and just talking away -yakkety yakkety

but im too tired to read thru it, another 24 hour shift
and this project is closing down w/a whimper

im just throwing any old thing together now
cause today the last day im doing this

probably have to crash most of tomorrow, still got two criticals
fbs manuscript and rests prophetic thread (and palf)

i think ima do that thread next cause fbs manuscript
will take me out of my head, ima give thread 2 days max

which puts me up to the 9th, 2 days on felixs manuscript
makes it the 11th, (who am i kidding, lets say 3 to do a
good job of it, cannot give it 4)

3 puts me in about the 12th, thats 5 days prep for schoolhouse
thats cutting it thin rick, thats cutting it real thin

best i get back to work, closing down rootwork rebuild tonight
what i got is what i got, what i dont have is time . . .

later
rdoc

NO FOOL, ITS SATURDAY

hello world, its me, braindead flowers, doing his zombie thing
worked full 24 hour shift yesterday, havent done that in years

been bogged down w/rootwork rebuild, have reached point where im rewriting
its major texts, worked STRUGGLE segment all day yesterday

deep how much its my basic political philosophy ive done over and over
a million times, you could probably give it verbatim fearless supporter of rootsblog

and im thinking here i am investing critical time in this thing one more time
that the public has repeatedly ignored as not pertinent

why are you doing this
again

how many times are you going to hammer your head against this wall

it makes such good sense to me i just do not understand why people
keep ignoring it, i keep thinking maybe i just havent quite said it
convincingly enough maybe, this time for sure it will fire up the tribe

and feed the tribal soul, this time for sure

(one thing make it more digestable would be to cut out all that mythwork
all that destinywork you be putting in there flowers - start talking about
the stars and the destiny of the generations and all that and folks eyes
glaze over - would help if you just kept to conventional politics instead of
trying to claim the prophets mantle - but if i got to cut my vision out of the
equation whats the point, thats what makes me me   . .  .)

well this time im not going to just put it out there and hope folk get it
this been the most extensive rewrite to date of my political vision

ive gone into old versions and presentations and im putting it all together
and coming up with the most polished and comprehensive presentation of my vision to date
(not counting rest for the weary of course)

almost 40 pages im trying to whittle down to the bone for web purposes

then ima look at that as the nucleus of a book, a compilation of articles
about 21st century paradigms of struggle, start really pushing folk for those

trying to position rebuild of rootwork as a strategic repository
along the lines of chickenbones to place these works until they book quality

turn this into a dialogue if i can (which mean i got to be open to growing
and not assume i got the answers - keep reminding myself there are many
roads to timbuktu)

other thing ima do is use my oraltrad skilz to learn this as a presentation
and turn this into a stumpwinding sermon of a presentation
then start selling myself cheap on the college circuit - will work for souls

also maybe send it out in one big mailing on my old rootsletter list
i would get a lot of dead addresses and please take me off this list returns

but i would get my presentation out to my market win or lose

and also that would wean that list (5000 or so) down to something manageable (1000?)
of folk who really interested in what i got to say instead of think im little better than spam

im going to put it up on the nationalist lists too
and wherever else i can think of

or what i might do is just send announcement of the link
that would be more neighborly than sending whole thing unasked for
but i wouldnt get as many eyeballs

or do stripped down submissions letter for the mailing, decisions decisions

but its the presentation thats going to make that puppy
once ive learned it and start putting the hoodoo preaching on it it should rock your world

that way i dont feel so bad about the time its taking

ima give it today and whatever i dont get of it by the end of the day
dont get got, got two or three others to do

literary hoodoo, literary blues and contemporary hoodoo segments
i will schedule a day, hopefully not two, for them

got basic graphic work to do, keeping it as simple as possible, timetimetime
keep thinking simple elegance flowers, keep thinking grace

got to do fbs manuscript then and still would like to weave that enhanced prophetic thread
in rest for the weary before i have to switch to schoolhouse focus, i need to get some novelwork
done out of this kind of zombiepush to justify the wear and tear on my body

and i havent done any pan african literary forum work either

jeff caught up w/some weeklong gig in england, he been moving the ball solo, which does
not feel good to the old team player, need to start pulling my freight on that

and the schoolhouse on my trail, tick tock tick tock, 10 days and counting

i got to start shaping that course right now, not a days slack, im already behind

okay, enuf whining, a couple of commentaries and im out of here
spoke to katrina omogun the other day, she always so interesting to talk to

she has more unconventional reads on hoodoo than i do, she sending me an
unpublished manuscript she currently shopping around, ima make time for that too

okay, thats not a real commentary flowers, thats basically still me me me
what about this one, the army recently sent out re enlistment letters

to officers who had either died in iraq or been grievously wounded
i cant even put my customary ironic sneer on that one, i tried

but it felt like a cheap shot, im going back to work
tick tock tick tock

hangtough
rdoc

IS IT FRIDAY ALREADY

hello world, im reeling zonedrunk
but im really pleased w/rootwork rebuild

when i built that site in 98 it was cutting edge
but almost 10 years is a longtime between rebuilds

its coming along well, a couple of days and i
can put paid on that one - for the moment

couple of quick observ