rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

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

revus grevus: sundiata on a sungun: 360%: obit by louis reyes rivera

hello world
my boy sekou sundiata just graduated

i left memphis trying to make it back but he got away
while i was on the road - aint that somehow fitting

graduating ceremony on 21st and a retro of his life and work
aug 22nd at the brooklyn academy of music

heart attack apparently - man, all my folk checking out
sekou cuts it mighty mighty close though, sekou was my boy

that phrase, sundiata on a sungun: 360%, is only one of the many ive
stolen from sekou over the years, we were a political crew of artists

started doing plays as part of the black new york action committee's cultural wing
the first one was a collabrative called bloodflower, based on a poem by bj ashanti

that was when sekou got into doing his aural performances and i met the
folk who became my politico artist crew - sekou, ashanti, safiya, pat, sandy, etc

writers, dancers, visual artists, etcetc, all meeting in sekous loft over
on 124th street, which was also party central - some serious le bon ton roulet

me and sekou was like brothers till we fell out over a woman didnt
choose either of us  - that didnt stop us from locking horns over her

we made up eventually but never was as close as we once was
both of us alpha leos and tending to hold grudges

me and sekou use to celebrate the whole leo month as our birthday
used to meet at panchitas down in the village for a ritual veggie salad

but with literary companeros, the rituals of respect are important
one misstep and you fueding for years

got a long shitlist now of folk who have dissed me the last 10 years or so
treat me like i dont rate - i will show you what time it is, you gon regret dissing me

when it becomes literary is when poison works flourish, me and louis reyes been
on the outs bout two three years now, and bj ashanti mad at everybody, g p

i took a punch at louis reyes in rest for the weary, gon have to extract that
or even better take it to where i am now - the high ground

i didnt even realize sekou was mad at me but he was acting funny and when i finally
figured out why i said man you have jacked a misdemeanor up to a felony

sekou say he get to decide the charge
looking back bring a smile to my face

during the time me and sekou was fueding
i would think we too old to be fueding like this

cause we at that point in life we could check out anytime
and now he has - and im in denial - not sekou, sekou was indestructible  -

more lives than a cat

cancer survivor (testicular no less)
broke his neck driving that old volvo over a cliff
kidney failure and transplant drama

sekou was larger than life
sekou was legend

and the leader of our literary pack
a story yet to be told

got to work harder rick, got to tell the story before its
time for me to check out too - so many projects, so little time

also need to check current fueds w/my literary companeros of old
what with everybody checking out i cant afford fueds

(wonder how  ashanti doing these days, ive tried contacting him, he off the grid - i miss ashanti and wow, that make me think of akua lezli, she been going thru some fire lately, i need to get in touch with her, see how she doing. . .and on and on. . and on on and on)

speaking of legacies and checking out

had a good time with my nephews, the hoodoo posse flowers indeed
wanted to be calm dali lama unca ricky but i had to pull out the inner drill sgt on them

they wore out the weary

was laying around in memphis trying to get my energy back for the trek up 81
when i heard sekou was in a coma and headed on back to the city

as always when im home i did maintenance on my bottletrees over in riverside park

most of my bottletrees in the park are hidden deep in it but some are public and sometime
neighborhood kids have used my bottles for target practice so i always come prepared to replace

broken ones, but this time none were broken, thank the conqueror, so i had all these extra bottles and instead of starting a new tree as i have done in the past, i started hanging them all thru the park

decided to make the whole park one big bottle tree
one big delta holyground

for those who dont know the story, i consider the delta an afroam holyground
and this wooded area i grew up alongside the mississippi as sacred ground

riverside park its called - working it as sacred ground in my novel
working it as sacred ground in real life -been sanctifying it w/mythwork and bottletrees

protecting memphis, the mississippi and the delta
dont no evil get past rickydocs ring of glass

so i figure making it a parkwide bottletree not only protect memphis and the delta
but the whole wide world and all our generations - gon do that in sekous name

sanctuary

this obit was sent out by louis reyes
w/whom i really need to bury the hammer

maybe when i see him on the 21st
in sekous name

revus grevus  (some nonsensical parting phrase
sekou was partial to)

my love to you all
rdoc

 

 

Obituary:

Gifted Poet Sekou Sundiata

(August 22, 1948 -- July 18, 2007)

by Louis Reyes Rivera

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, July 18, 2007, at 5:47a.m. (ET), poet Sekou Sundiata passed away. A highly esteemed performing poet, Mr. Sundiata wrote for print, performance, music and theater. Born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem, on August 22, 1948, Sundiata came of age as an artist during the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

While attending the City College of New York (CCNY), where he began reciting poetry publicly, Sundiata converged with several other student activists, including once-mayoral candidate of Pittsburgh and longtime friend, Leroy Hodge, to form the basis for what soon became known as the Black and Puerto Rican Student Community of City College (BPRSC). This phalanx of 400 students soon made their own history, closing the 21,000-student campus during the Spring of 1969, to demand, among other things, that CCNY be renamed Harlem University. The net effect of the student takeover culminated in both an Open Admissions Policy that took effect in September 1970, the full legitimization of ethnic studies departments throughout the nation, as well as the requirement that all education majors within the City University take courses in African American History and to have Spanish as a Second Language.

 

Among his acknowledged mentors at City were Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and fellow student Louis Reyes Rivera, with whom Sundiata helped to establish the first Black student newspaper in the City University, CCNY's The Paper. Their association would span close to forty years of mutual respect and admiration.

 

Upon completing his Bachelor's Degree (circa 1974), Sundiata enrolled and completed his Master's in Creative Writing while regularly producing community-based poetry readings that were known to draw SRO crowds. In 1976, his creative sensibilities, his innate organizing skills, and his associations with a convergent generation of excellent poets, musicians and dancers immediately led to a collaborative project he directed that would commemorate 100 years of Black struggle for freedom and Human Rights. Titled The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People (1863-1876/ 1963-1976) , this production, which included upcoming novelist Arthur Flowers and such poets as Safiya Henderson-Holmes, BJ Ashanti, Tom Mitchelson, Louis Reyes Rivera, et al, was staged in Harlem over a period of two days, signaling much of what was to come from Sekou's sense of vision, steadily breaking ground for what was then a new literary genre,

Performance Poetry, fully anticipating elements of both Hip Hop Culture and Spoken Word Art.

 

In 1977, the aforementioned poets, along with Zizwe Ngafua, Rashidah Ismaili, Fatisha (Hutson), Sandra Maria Esteves, Akua Lezli Hope, Mervyn Taylor, and Sekou, among others, formed the Calabash Poets Workshop, which group signaled the arrival of a new literary heat in New York, regularly producing soirees and fori (1977-1983) that included all of the arts and culminated in a three-year attempt (1979-1982) to establish an independent Black Writers Union.

 

Upon the release of his first vinyl album (circa 1980), Are & Be, Sekou Sundiata was dubbed by Amiri Baraka as "the State of the Art." Since then, Mr. Sundiata established a longtime relationship with  CCNY's Aaron Davis Performing Arts Center, through which venue he intermittently produced new material for the stage, consistently collaborating with musicians, dancers and actors. He was eventually selected for a number of earned fellowships, including a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), and as the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University in New York, in which university's Eugene Lang College he remained a professor.

 

He was, as well, among those featured in the Bill Moyers' PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, and in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO.

Among several highly acclaimed performance theater works in which he served as both author and performer are: The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, which toured nationally and received three AUDELCO Awards and a BESSIE Award; The Mystery of Love, commissioned and produced by New Voices/ New Visions at Aaron Davis Hall in New York City and the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia; and Udu, a music theater work produced by 651 ARTS in Brooklyn and presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, the Walker Art Center and Penumbra Theater in Minneapolis, Flynn Center in Burlington, VT, the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Miami-Dade Community College in Florida. Throughout this period and since 1985, he developed a close association with co-collaborator and legendary trombonist Craig S. Harris.

blessing the boats, Sundiata's first solo theater piece, an exploration into his own personal battles with kidney failure, opened in November 2002 at Aaron Davis Hall, NYC. It has since been presented in more than 30 cities and continued to tour nationally. In March 2005, Sundiata produced The Gift of Life Concert, an organ donation public awareness event at the Apollo Theater that kicked off a three-week run of blessing the boats at the Apollo's SoundStage. in partnership with the Apollo Theater Foundation, the National Kidney Foundation and the New York Organ Donor Network with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Since 2006, his the 51st (dream) state has been presented throughout the U.S. and in Australia. Both blessing the boats and the 51st (dream) state were produced in collaboration with MultiArts Projects and Productions (MAPP). In addition to working within community engagement activities at Harlem Stages/Aaron Davis Hall, the University of Michigan and University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI), the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC), the University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX), in Miami Dade College (Miami, FL), and the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Sundiata has appeared as a featured speaker and artist at the Imagining America Conference (Ann Arbor, MI), at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), and at the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference (Minneapolis, MN), among others. Prior to his demise, he was engaged in producing a DVD documenting the America Project for use by universities and presenters as a model for art and civic engagement.

In addition to the 1979 Are & Be album, Sundiata's other releases include a second album, The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People, and two CDs, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, nominated for a Grammy Award, and longstoryshort. Each of these works are rich with the sounds of blues, funk, jazz and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion, with the latter two featuring Craig Harris.

 

He is survived by his mother, Virginia Myrtle Feaster, his wife, Maurine Knighton, daughter Myisha Gomez, stepdaughter Aida Riddle, grandson Aman, brothers William Walter Feaster and Ronald Eugene Feaster, as well as a host of relatives, admirers, students and friends.

 

A private funeral service of family and friends is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, and a commemorative celebration of his life and work is scheduled to take place on August 22, his birthday, at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House. Details to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in the name of Sekou Sundiata to the New York Organ Donor Network or to the National Kidney Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

(l. Craig Harris; r. Sekou Sundiata)

downhome in the delta 2007: nathan bedford forrest and fort pillow: racism and self determination

whats going on, i take a couple of days off
and folk start acting out

terror attack on britain
bush commutes libby sentence
the supreme court shows its rightwing derrière

lord knows what else i dont know about
whatever it is, im sure its bad news

haven’t been posting regular since im on the road
still cant shake the concern that rootsblog is worktime

that could be more constructively used on various projects, rest for the weary, hoodoo book of flowers, book of bones, beale street tales, etc etc -

(knowing the fickle finger of literary fate to be quirky, this will probably be the project (if any) that does become historically significant)

oh well, ours is not to concern ourselves, ours is just to do

okay, i got a bunch of backed up commentary, apologies for long & chaotic quality
1) was reading about scams taking advantage of folks in mortgage trouble

where they sign over their houses with complex offers of being able to get it back
in a year or so of affordable payments - or none whatsoever

but what happens is that the new owner borrows on the equity, next thing you know the poor deluded homeowner is in foreclosure with no equity, this is called equity stripping

now i know my sophisticated readership aint falling for this scam, but if you know of somebody stressed who might be susceptible, pull their collective coats, please

tell them to avoid bootleg mortgage deals so complicated they dont understand them
get legal advice, hook or crook - and if it sounds too good to be true it generally is

dont take chances w/your home - mostly this poor black folk being took advantage of - again
just reminds me of the unique challenges of representing a peasant people

sometimes i despair of it, cause i cant just change conditions, laws and all that
i got to change souldeep behavior, got to work the tribal soul, empower the culture

i got to deepdown transform blackfolk into a powerful and sophisticated peoples,
there are times when i myself cant imagine blackfolk as a powerful and competent race

its so counter to the reality even the conjureman falter
and forcing reality to respond to my will is what i do

then i look at historical examples of once weak and despised peoples being transformed over generations into powerful and sophisticated peoples, the germanic peoples, once slaves of rome for instance, the classic rebuild of the jews, etc etc - it can be done, its just difficult

2) that supreme court judgment on school diversity doesnt surprise me
if anything the surprise is how tenacious diversity et al has hung on

but the american people have turned against it and its a rearguard action at best
we got to finesse this dynamic and get ahead of it instead of holding onto the past

and the truth be told we cant continue to be coddled by society, that dont make for the cultural strength that we will need to get out of this historical trickbag we have found ourselves in

that dont help me in my quest to transform african american people
culture and destiny

the welfare state was good when it was good but its been counterproductive for some time now
it dont breed strength, it breed weakness and dependency

which dont negate the influence of racism, and we still got to fight racism whenever however
we can, but racism is just not my major concern these days,

the true legacy of the civilrights/blackpower era is the understanding that working/begging/cajoling
whitefolk does not constitute a viable strategy – it will not save us

its our own souls we got to work, its our own behavior we got to change
the reparations folk seem to have forgotten that, or never learned it

i claim self determination as the first step in transformation

and yes, yes i agree, got to stay on structural racism but thats just defense,
that wont win no wars, that wont win no prize

feel like i can say this over and over and it just wont take w/the black consciousness, cause its been said many times before and it aint took - im hoping i can say it emphatically and artistically enuf in my novel

that it will make a difference

o flowers, you are such a dreamer
such a believer in the power of art, in the power of the word

my sister and i were talking other day about our first consciousness of racism
how it sap the soul

my sister say her 1st consciousness that she can remember is as a little girl at a dept store and the salesmen didnt want to put his hands on her feet

1st time i was aware of racism that i can recall, we were traveling through north carolina and there was a beach and the beach was full of whitefolk enjoying themselves and i wanted to go to the beach and my parents explained as best they could that blackfolk werent allowed on beaches

ive had much more searing incidents since but that was the one that made me realize that being black was a problem

this came about cause we were talking about recent supreme court decision and elise say they have pushed us back 2 generations and i objected to the supreme court (the rightwing ascendancy) being the arbiter of our lives  - or our destiny

i said if we been pushed back its because we have allowed it, cause we just weak and i am so tired of sitting around crying about it - im so tired of crying about racism i dont know what to do –

surely by now we have factored racism into our strategic posture

we spending too much time/strategic energy defending set asides, affirmative action, etc etc – (for all practical purposes, reparations in action)

one of the imani folk the other day was a teacher in atlanta and she was bemoaning that black kids have fallen behind hispanic immigrant kids in atlanta schools

she was all upset and i was like - that aint news, and i was not surprised, not at all, what are we going to do now, blame the hispanics for that

no, thats cause of weakness in our culture, not americas
you look at the immigrants, hispanic, indian, asians – even caribbean

and they coming in here and they working hard and moving up past blackfolk been here for generations  (and it dont take them long for them to start dissing american blacks like natives)

other day i was having a conversation with an oldschool companera and she was talking about how america is going down and how much she was looking forward to it

and i said i am not
and ima do what i can to forestall that scenario

and that was difficult for me to say cause folk start
looking at you like you a comprador or something

like you dont know what time it is
we were talking about how the rightwing has inflamed the rest of the world

we were talking about the conflict between the west and islam and how precarious
the world has become

blackfolk be talking about letting the evil west fall but the problem with that if they fall they gon fall on us, blackfolk gon be at the bottom of that pile, thats just more suffering

im not with that, im not with nothing that cause blackfolk more suffering
i want to fix america, im not interested in dancing on its grave

the rightwing has learned to push the buttons that froth the american people
and it will take generations to try to get america healthy again,

some folk say its never been healthy that it was born on slavery and injustice
but you can say that about any society, im looking at the potential of what it can be

and our role in it

in this conflict between the open societies of the west, problematic though they be
and the closed societies of political islam i choose the west, its not even a question

theological submission is not i man thing
western or islamic (or african for that matter)

okay, obviously im just wandering, i got to get back to work
and this a ticklish subject matter

i think im going to leave this post inconclusive for the moment
coupla quick commentaries and im outta here:

3) bush and the libby: im not surprised, he had to do it, the folk who hate it are folk who dont like bush anyway and it sooth his restless base – it wont cost him:  no gain

4) israel and palestine: israel still offering little piecemeal gestures that wont change the dynamic:  no gain 

(kinda ironic hamas forcing release of journalist in attempt to show moderation to world by disciplining even more radical Palestinians: gain?)

5) darfur: as long as darfur ‘cooperates’ with bush admin on terror in north africa, americas fuluminations on darfur will remain just that, fulmination:  no gain

okay, im gone, you will be glad to hear that i been working very hard dear regulators
i been clocking strong pages, strong pages i might add, pages that satisfy me

first time ive not spent my memphis time at the librarys memphis room
deeply buried in research of historical black memphis

had planned to do so like always but didnt, its like okay, enough research, its showtime
i did pick up a new novel i saw at the bookstore - fort pillow by turtledove

i dont think anybody not from black memphis will ever understand the antipathy
black memphis has for nathan bedford forrest,

me who always talking about getting over it hates forrest like he still riding and i want to hurt him, i want to hurt his reputation, i want to crush the southern apologists who come up with all these excuses for him - he tried to stop his soldiers, he didnt know they were killing the poor blacks, so forth and so on,

im bringing him down if i can, i want to destroy his mythwork, which mean i got to build a really good character to withstand the inevitable counterattacks of the forrest partisans (i do it by telling a part of his life the historians have left alone, apparently he died on his convict plantation (renting black chaingang “vagrants”, 10 cents a day) after drinking mississippi river water – ie the mississippi river killed him – now thats rich material to work with, you see what im sayin, i got demons hainting him in his last days and a convict survivor of pillow playing a part in poisoning him - im taking you down forrest, ima whup the devil)

so i saw a new novel on fort pillow by harry turtledove but its just a recap of the research thats out there, not very well done, didnt learn anything new, no useful new details

but one interesting variation is that he has the black soldiers fighting hard and getting respect from the southern soldiers before they go down - in my account the blacks panic early and dont put up much of a fight,

needless to say, i prefer turtledoves version, but i dont think its historical, and i cant be ahistorical just cause i like the mythology of it, rickydoc dont play that,

im already what the industy would call a sentimentalist, when folk start breaking rest for the wearys historicals down they will see that whatever i wrote could have happened

and the historical record doesnt seem to support an account of the black soldiers putting up a good fight, the rebs were attacking a fortified position of 600 men and 6 canons,

they killed hundreds of defenders and only lost 20 men, that does not sound like a hardfought fight to me, that sound like a massacre of soldiers that wasnt quite soldiers

the fort itself was indefensible without enuf men to cover the outer lines, it wasn’t a fort, it was a deathtrap

a lot of the historical record, written by southern apologists, claim the blacks were drunken capering clowns incapable of fighting their masters, and forrests men didnt mean to kill them all, just couldnt help themselves in the heat of battle – we shall see

7)  on the more personal side, read an interesting nyt article called the shelf life of bliss, say forget the 7 year itch bit - that with relationships, the initial thrill dies out pretty much 3 to 5 years

and hopefully by that time you buddies, life buddies
which is what maintains longterm relationships when the thrill dies

and the thrill do die, or rather is transformed into a more steady thing
and mature folk dont be out here looking for new thrills, tempting though it be

this dynamic is a big part of what im exploring in rest for the weary
keeping long term relationships viable  (also in personal life)

and its always good to know to know what science has to say
about the dynamics of love and relationships

so that when those dynamics show up in your own life/love/relationship

you are able to finesse them cause you understand them instead of being
tossed around by what you dont understand about men and women

so you got the demon instead of the demon got you

thats one of my magical mantras about understanding forces that work on you
so you can control them – whereas if you dont understand them, they control you

for high magicians, demons are powers that you struggle with and if you win you in control of that power and you are that much more powerful a magician - but if you lose, that power is in control of you and you just a soulslave tossed about by forces beyond your understanding

okay, obviously im wandering, talking about any old thing
thats what happens when you off line for awhile

lets move into closure rick

pan african literary forum just got commitments from kofi awooner and ama ata aidoo
we got commitments from some powerful voices in african world lit

its going to be a phenomenal experience, we got highhopes, but we got no money to speak of
might have to fall back on plan b, maybe even plan c (d, e, or f)

impo thing is to have the conference no matter what
weak, limping, lame, we have to establish a record for doing what we say,

a record of consistency

picking up my boys and getting on the road soon as i post
taking four of them to the city for a week

arthur, cleveland, james, and evan – (fred is in iraq and asa
didnt feel comfortable leaving work for 2 weeks)

4 out of 6 & a week in the city - the hoodoo posse flowers

tires me out just thinking about it
i might take a moment, rest my head on the table

im tired im weary im gone

all my love
rdoc