speaking truth to the people and bringing down the magic: hoodoo dialogues and rituals of respect

THURSDAY
a million little lies, oprahs on my list too

i been waiting for her to choose another good loving blues

instead she choosing folk like this guy james frey
making him a millionaire instead of more deserving folk like me

turns out that his book is full of lies
that originally it was sold as fiction but nan talese over at doubleday fiddled w/it some
and marketed it as nonfiction  - then oprah fell for the con and did her thing

its now a major best seller
but smoking gun found out most of the juicy parts are still fiction
and bad overwrought fiction at that

i coulda done that if thats what she want
im willing to sell out but nobodys made me an offer

i been ignoring alito

mostly cause i think its a done deal

ever since bork, nominees have known the routine
tell the senators what they want to hear

lazarus in the la times lays out the antibork strategy

"•  Ameliorate past criticisms of popular liberal precedents, especially Roe vs. Wade, by emphasizing respect for precedent;
•  neutralize previous expressions of personal opinion on controversial issues by drawing a bright line between personal beliefs and judicial philosophy;
•  avoid an ideological battle by declining to answer problematic questions on grounds that the issues raised might be the subject of future cases;
•  and mount a public-relations campaign of your own."

the only thing that might cause some bumps in this road
are recent concerns about the presidents claims to be above the law
and alitos history of supporting government authority over everybody

but i dont think thats going to be enuf
i think its a donedeal, but we shall see
folk are really unhappy that weve apparently annointed a king
instead of electing a president

from questionable banana republic elections in florida and ohio
to his belief that he is not subject to americas laws
hes treated americans shabbily, like he some totalitarian wannabe
folk still in a state of denial when it comes to the
imperial presidency of george w. bush

hes arbitrarily stripped them of their rights whenever he could and i still dont
understand what he got against social security in an era when
companies are abandoning pensions plans at will

americans have let this fool get away with murder too many times
now he thinks hes entitled

rdoc

WEDNESDAY

the courage of my convictions &
speaking truth to the people

just when i was thinking about drafting a january rootsletter
and how to position rootsblog for influence on 2006 election

i ran across this article by joe gandleman
on why blogs werent effective in the 2004 election
summary point as follows:

"#1: Blogs in 2004 preached to the choir.
#2 Blogs are polarized.
#3: Blogs are often so partisan that unless you totally agree with them or don’t mind big doses of partisan analysis and demonization (which I actually enjoy reading) it would be hard to get a thoughtful argument that could persuade you and change your mind.

BUT: blogs do help partisans with their world view, organization, campaign information and morale
.
--Blogs are a NEW form of journalism rapidly gaining some respectability — but unless they begin to pay more attention to maintaining their CREDIBILITY by admitting mistakes and searching for even-handed TRUTH versus strictly partisan advantage they will remain marginalized…an exciting, exotic form of citizen journalism with RESTRICTED impact."

the most salient critique of his presentation (i could have done without the caps)
was that bloggers arent necessarily journalists, they are as often advocates

i guess ima advocate
im not interested in a balanced presentation so much

what i like about blogging is that i dont have to pander to nobody
i say what i want to say and how i want to say it - i love that

you have no idea how empowering i find that as a writer
i believe my words are valuable, but the industry/establishment/public
does not seem to value what i have to say - i had no forum

but on my blog i say what i please and i will let fate
and history decide if my words have value

my struggle is having the courage of my convictions
to speak what i really believe to be the truth
instead of what i think folk can handle

guess it all depends on your primary audience
are you preaching to the choir or are you preaching to the world
guess im preaching to the choir

giving my fellow travelers spiritual and strategic advice
is what i call myself doing

but i also want to appeal to sophisticated readers who enjoy the nuances of life
its complexities and its ironies - i want to generate new thought and dialogue and

new paradigms of struggle

dancing on a dime. whose got the time
the eternal search for more gears

received suheirs book, zaatar diva today, schedule it
received doreens book tropical fish today, schedule it

library books:
rethinking the world: great power strategies & international order: schedule it
the slaves rebellion: fiction, history, orature: schedule it
black chicagos first century: finish and return

rest for the weary research:
to awaken my afflicted brethren: david walker and slave resistence: schedule it
the memphis diary of ida be wells: schedule it
nat turner before the bar of judgement schedule it
keep your head to the sky: interpreting african american homeground:  schedule it
wishbone: reference and interpretation in black folk narrative: schedule it
a documentary history of gullah jack pritchard and the denmark vesey slave insurrection: schedule it
working cures: healing health and power on southern slave plantations: schedule it
a treasury of mississippi river folklore: schedule it
granny midwives and black women writers: schedule it
the trouble they seen: the story of reconstruction in the words of african americans: schedule it
the cambridge dictionary of space technology: schedule it
memphis newspapers during civilwar: (many days of microfiche, put it off)

craft:
theory of the novel: new essays: schedule it
analyzing the shortstory: schedule it, may use in class reader?)
why the novel matters: schedule it

discretionary reading:
discretionary reading for the fun of it, who got time for that
actually suheir and doreen come under reading for pleasure of it, at least skim them

manuscripts:
polite emails from bouke and christopher, have i read their manuscripts? schedule it
arrange meetings w/clarence, laura and ling about their thesis manuscripts
newren manuscripts: penda, judy, stacey, rod, sherland, chelsea, felix, mirlande, adanze

projectwork:
january rootsletter: schedule it
move the hoodoo way: schedule it
rootwork.com upgrade: schedule it

got my 1st wave of recs out yesterday, should do schoolhouse paperwork
but im feeling fey today and that energy will flourish or go bad

ima work on rest for the weary today
ima work on the hoodoo book of flowers

may start a draft of january rootsletter, been feeling that lately
gon get to the gym - that will make me feel good

god i hear that clock ticking, semester starts next week, gon be a toughrow to hoe
how can i make it work, put a tentative schedule on it:

mon  schoolhouse
tue    schoolhouse day, sculpture evening
wed   schoolhouse
thur   schoolhouse day,  mediawork evening
fri      rest for the weary
sat    rest for the weary   
sun   alternating projectwork/days off

thats really not enuf schoolhouse time, not nearly enuf class prep time
tues & thurs i teach, i got a day of prep scheduled but one day dont get it
those schoolhouse daze gon be crunch daze - gon have to be a teaching machine
on those daze

cause i got to schedule mytime
i need 2 days for rest for the weary, takes 1 day just to focus

and got to do projectwork cause well i just got to: 
thehoodoobookofflowers, the hoodoo way, rootwork.com, the hoodoo hands, newren workshop, rootsletter, strategic articles, etc etc - my ideological orchestrations are nonnegotiable - i live for the game

and thesis, i forgot about thesis, i got three, thesis work got to take prominence on project daze and everything is subject to disruption during application month  (approx 500 stories to read and assess)

ima try to schedule an hour each morning for webwandering/rootsblog (40) and home exercise (20)
ima try to schedule an hour each morning for novelwork (just enuf to keep the wheels greased)
ima try to schedule a daily hour for gymwork on 5 days im not actually teaching

3 hours a day gone already

be lucky to make this stick on schoolhouse daze, ima be crunching i know
but i tend to spend a couple of  hours webwandering every day anyway,
ima try to be more disciplined with my webwandering and split that time into useable slots

and days off have to be scheduled
otherwise i will take them anyway and feel undisciplined

this schedule doesnt give any of my obligations enuf
but until further notice i can live with it

and as you can see aint no time for socializing
all the little schoolhouse activities can do without flowers

one of the benefits of tenure is not having to shuck and jive
the student reading series is the only one ima make time for
and cursed obligatory committee work

so i will implement this schedule as of tuesday
temptation everyday will be to go off schedule but if i keep to this schedule
i can maintain my responsibilities - just barely but sometime thats the way it is

sometime all you can do is hang on by the skin of your chinny chin chin

as for today and the rest of the week up to mlks birthday - im stonewalling
strictly rest for the weary,  maybe a little hoodoo book of flowers
maybe a little project work (draft jan rootsletter?)

strickly mywork
ignoring the sratching of wolves at the door

today im hanging tough

TUESDAY

cultural dysfunction and ghetto lit

nick chiles seems to have hit a nerve with
this recent nytimes op ed on ghetto lit

ive seen passionate responses by nbwc's brenda greene
from jill nelson and patrick bass of essence and others
all decrying the commercial rise of ghetto lit

interesting

the preponderance of ghetto lit
make folk feel like we losing the cultural wars
the perennial struggle between african american illumination
and dysfunction

the commercialization of afroam literature is problematic
but not a problem

used to be afroam lit had to be serious to exist
now it will support any manner of genres, thats probably progress
a maturation of the genre - and the culture

but for those of us who live and die literature
for those of us who understand the power of culture
to shape our destiny

it hurts

mostly because it so baldly depicts an african american cultural
dysfunction that we are all fighting against

but we cant be sitting around crying about it
time marches on, and what we dont like we got to finesse

as for ghetto lit, as long as a significant part of our culture resides there
its gon be reflected in the mediaverse, literature, film, etc, im not gon let it bother me

doesnt change anything, we still got to transform the culture, empower it
symptoms of dysfunction are just an unfortunate sidegame

and as for the squeeze it puts on literary works
literature has always had to make a way

just the nature of the obstacles that change

in struggle
rdoc

big dreams and magic

i was thinking about magic
how me and sentalein brought the magic down in nairobi

and was thinking about one of my characters, angel
how she gets excited about this holyground mystery because it brings magic
into what she been perceiving as a humdrum life
samesame her attraction to the conjureman and his to her

and i have that being an issue with her, this hunger for magic in her life
and i was thinking this morning im going to play that a little harder
got to complexitize it, try to go deep in terms of character and theme
make it a problem instead of an answer

but it is precisely because its a question without an answer
that gives me room to play

help make this novel speak to everybody in the world
(esp african americans) who want a little magic in their lives

whatever that is

what angel brings into highjohns life and he in hers
how getting involved in this historical/destinical mystery transforms
her into a reality greater than her own & informs her destiny, her fa

or something like thatt

i dont even know what questions to ask at this point
not til i start playing with it

but i do know its something we all hunger for on some level
a little magic in our lives

im gon enjoy playing with this
and in doing so maybe bring a little magic
into my readers lives

cause i want this book to be a mighty spell
that annoints everybody it touches
i want this book to be rest for the weary

MONDAY
a sack full of goodies

found this most interesting site
by following incoming links
africaspeaks.com
it is just full of goodies

a group of commentators, west indian apparently
most of their commentary is west indies and south america
when i get a moment ima dig in, looks like a good meal

will put it on my links when i get that moment
got to update my links, part of 2006 spring cleaning

right now buried in recommendations
my students broke thru the wall

their deadlines coming up next week
and i been putting them off since last year
their emails starting to get a little panicky

im very fond of them, so i try to give good recs
take a couple of days, get that off my plate
havent done some paperwork i owe the dept either

stonewall is crumbling, but its fixable
still good for a the rest of the week, mlks birthday
is generally a good workday

some quickies, flesh them out later

the mighty kong
i assume thats a riff on congo

guess you know about wal mart, i was going to let it slide
cause it was just a computer glitch but still its tantalizing isnt it

apparently when customers bought the flim planet of the apes, wal marts website
asked them if they were interested in other african american themes

big stink as you can well imagine and they took it down

with wal marts rep as the 600 lb gorilla in the room 
they should have linked planet of the apes to their own homepage

would have been even cuter if they had linked afroam w/king kong
white racism dont get no more primal than king kong

the world turns

whoever would have thought we would be regret ariel sharon
leaving the israel/palestine stage

fate can be so perverse

thinking of fate

i think i will focus on fate and fa this year
little while back rudy put that on my mind cause he
had just read the african by courlander and was suddenly deep into Fa

and i remembered that had been my response to reading that book too
all of a sudden my Fa was important to me and i remember thinking
that for a book to be able to do that was deep

i have since questioned ifa folk about it, read about it, tried to live it
but you never feel like you have encompassed such a fundamentally cultural concept
and the ifa folk real twisty about giving up true fa knowledge

but ima develop me an african american interpretation of Fa

as some of you know - i been working on this divination system
and im structuring the hoodoo book of flowers as a companion text

something along the lines of the ifa corpus, the iching - my primary models for this Work
also the craft of power by rgh sui and the sacred tarot by the brotherhood of light

trying to write a hoodoo sacred text, a hoodoo holybook based on a sacred history of the blackworld

i consider this a lifework, just keep working on it until the day i die
over a 20 year period ive tried a biblic format, tried a koranic format, tried an iching format
none of them worked but less approached the luminescent

decided there are no useable models for holybooks, each one is intimately tied to its culture
an african american dvination structure influenced by sui is what im working on now

while i was in lamu i changed the 7 point structure (7 x 7) to a 9 point structure (9 x 9)
one because it gave me more movements to play with (49 vs 81) and i
had found the 7 point structure to be too restrictive 

and also because of something i read on cat yronwoods luckymojo site
she said that hoodoos were fond of the number 9 and i thought
back on my oraltrad knowledge and my hyatt reading and that resonated with me, 9 it was

shes got a lot of good material on that site
i have her book, hardback, and ive found it useful

shes one of the foremost hoodoo historians on the board
and is probably the acknowledged authority in hoodoo today

i got to move her aside

i reached out to her a couple of times, (her and rose bird)
as i identify contemporary hoodoo authorities i reach out to them

i figure the hoodoos w/21st century game should be dialoguing
or at least know each other - perhaps even become friends and colleagues

she dismissed me
treated me like a supplicant

well, thats okay, no problem
im the hoodoo future

but the problem comes if yronwood is considered the reigning authority
and she dont acknowledge me - well then she cant be the authority can she

that seem selfevident
(thats the way i feel about literary and political authorities too)

been a trend in afrospiritual traditions in the west of whitefolk, both sincere and not
coming into our traditions and because of superior organizing skills and/or resources
becoming the acknowledged authorities

then they come up with this stripped down version of the tradition that no longer
serves a cultural purpose, strictly witchery

archival hoodoo

but they become such powers folk scared to speak truth
now i acknowledge cat to be one of the sincere ones
so she can be 'an' authority, but not 'the' authority

if she the authority and she dont acknowledge me
then shes standing in my way
and if you standing in my way, you got to go
or at least move over

any hoodoo authority that dont acknowledge me got to de legitimized
thats how the game work - i will decide which seeds to nourish and which to deny

but you know on the real side if i want to engage folk in dialogue
i dont need to be making no enemies of them

i take back everything i just said
sometimes you just have to restrain
that left hand

rdoc

carrying the load

check out prometheus 6 when you get a chance
i like the quality of that brothers mackeroni

one of the things i like about him is that he
is hard to pin down politically, i admire that
when its done well

one thing we true believers have to do is not
be afraid to go against the grain

this is the 21st century and the old verities
just wont get it no more
we got to come up with brand new game

when you in contention with a stronger force
you got to outtrick em

which means you got to try brand new strategies instead
of  going along with the old strategies
and the folk with vested interest in maintaining them

i havent seen the new strategies of the 21st century yet
million folk marches, black capitalism, political power,
a lot of blackfolk whining to each other about how bad it is
and that all time loser, reparations

theyve all been tried (reparations - think affirmative action, welfare, etc)
they okay and necessary but by themselves they wont get us to the promised land

but the black neocons, some of whose ideas are valid
are clearly just political whores with questionable intent
selling themselves cheap

this brother trying to struggle thru to observations
that factor in evolving conditions of the 21st century

i dont always agree with him but he got integrity
thats all i ask

i feel the same way about debra dickerson too
i know folk gon jump on me for it but i agree with a lot of what she says

i like the issues she raises, her concern with the ethics of struggle
and blackness -she like myself is a destiny player

i dont agree with all her conclusions and some of them
i disagree with emphatically but thats the nature of the game

when you willing to step on new ground sometimes you gon stumble
but she dealing w/issues we got to deal with as we prepare for the 21st century

that said i havent read her book (just went on amazon and ordered it)
im going based on what ive read about it
and some dialogue we had, i reached out to her too
samesame prometheus

i want to dialogue with the true destiny players of my times

specially those who understand that its a new day
with new instruments of empowerment to be figured out

i want to know whats going on
im gon keep my finger on the pulse

i will reach out to anybodyi think can school me - with all due humility
some folk engage, some folk dismiss me

their loss

im outta here
i got to do these recs
got to get them off my plate

later

rdoc

Comments

[fileserveryu]

Rickydoc, just a quick note...been awhile seen I really read your blog...just been away from the computer. Good to hear that you have been struggling to find your place - in this post black world I thought I was the only one. More later, Stay In The Game, FSU

[rdoc]

ec, jj and fsu - appreciate the props
its the occasional pat on the back

the occasional you do good work brother, hang in there
that keeps me going

good looking out