rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

on facebook and the building of armies

TUESDAY

old boy under the gun, so many hellhounds on my trail i cant keep up -

got the blues so bad dont know that i will ever write again

rough passage rick, endure

MONDAY

hello world, back in syracuse but things still bad in the delta
in a limbo space, kinda burnt out on novel too, dont even want

to look at it much less work on it, gotta focus

that facebook post i referenced earlier, a new friend, sangolana or something of that sort
made a comment i enjoyed responding to about respecting our own culture, and not letting

it be corrupted, to which i responded, enjoying an op to clarify significant aspect of my vision:

o i feel you but at the same time african american culture is an accretive culture that takes on the best of others around it and synthesizes it into a new lick, always been that way, with a little euro/ nativeamerican/ hispanic/ asian so forth in the african mix, both genetically and culturally,

my own afrospiritual tradition, hoodoo, is notoriously greedy for new threads to weave, anymethod anytime hyatt called it,  this also reflects evolving oneworld dynamics,

the thing that we have to do is ensure that afroamerican (or african if you will) culture makes the destinic cut and becomes one of the influential cultures of the future (if not perhaps the dominant one) instead of dying out or becoming a cultural footnote,

which means that we have to make africanamerican culture a strong illuminated culture, a great and wondrous culture, one that other folk aspire to, and want to claim, not matter what their genetics

now fact of the matter is that afroamerican (or african if you will) culture is as much dysfunctional as it is illuminated, anywhere in the world you got blackfolk they are on the bottom of their respective society, we have to transform into strengths the weaknesses that have crippled us in global competition

when transforming a people you got to think in generations, got to give them a vision they can believe in, got to give them a destiny

all my love

rdoc

SUNDAY

was thinking about the black poverty in memphis thing, thinking about how to address it, was reading this article talked about how it was the fault of predatory lenders,

but its still difficult to not look at it as a cultural failing on our part, i need a more sophisticated people to work with and thats a matter of shaping generations

once read a piece say it takes 3 generations minimal to change a social dynamic, what we know in our heads our children will know in their hearts their children in their souls

other day on facebook, made a post about shaping generations, was talking about trying to evolve a culture that blackfolk would be proud to claim, was talking about the role of racial identity in the 21st century,

"the question of racial identity will be a burning question of the 21st century, mixrace is the future and blacks have always been a bastard race, thats to our strategic advantage if we play this right, point is to be an expanding race, not a contracting one"

syracuse mfa alum santee accuse me of eugenics, said wesling already ran that, those of you who know weslings work will recognize this for chastizement, and i replied somewhat testily that argument dont faze me in the least, that the longgame is about shaping generations, that the destiny of africanamerican culture/generations is my abiding concern and im not about to sit on the sidelines watching my people go down

started to write take your little kiddie dismay somewhere else but didnt want it to become a contentious moment, but what ive detected in my years of being in the struggle that almost any move you make other than kumbaya can we all get along, somebody is going to have a pc complaint about it

but they not in the arena and im not going to be crippled by the do nothings -  im not saying this well and dont have time to really sweat it right now, i will refine it later

part of the reason i got testy is because his position made me uncomfortable, i acknowledge some validity there but not enough to cause me not to run my game, when you trying to change social dymamics you got to think in generations, bottomline

i find it so interesting that all the no government republicans are so upset that the gov cant handle that oil leak, if they had it their way the gov couldnt handle anything, inclu two wars and a faltering economy

but there is no sense of irony in their claims that obama should do something, anything

am working on next draft of novel, im so sick of this novel i dont want to look at it ever again, ima forcemarch my way thru this draft then im going to have to work on something else, whats interesting as i work on this more polished draft is whats driving me is not my ego to be acclaimed writer, or wanting the respect of literary world but trying to manifest my vision, there is a part of me at this point doesnt care what the literary world thinks, i just want this novel to convey what i want it to say, to make my vision manifest

nice mural right, on school building prescot arizona, the guy is a hispanic student in the school, mural acclaiming diversity, some fox radio talk show host, steve blair, complained that he was too darkskinned, too much like obama, and folk start driving by yelling racist commentary at artist and students/children painting it so principal instructed artist to lighten his skin tone, it became a big issue there and adminstrators backed down, a luta continua

im out

rdoc

MONDAY

in the delta, doing family and getting my batteries recharged

nytimes article on black poverty in memphis, not like its news, times is hard all over, but it messes w/my head because i consider the black population of memphis my particular charge, as did my father before me, dr arflowers sr

he took care of their bodies, i take care of their souls

strarted redpen draft, redpen you take it offline and sit down w/manuscript and redpen and longhand changes, this 1st redpen you bleed all over manuscript, this is the one that really knocks it into shape, hopefully be about a month at 10 pages a day, then the poetry draft, another redpen but strictly polish, hopefully have time to do 2 of those and im done

i see i got a comment from one of my mentors in the hoodoo game, papa gede nibo bey la kwa, whom i also use as char in this novel, all praises, i got all my companeros of the hoodoo way making cameos thru out

okay, im gone, doing the family thing doesnt leave me w/a lot of discretionary time

all my love

rdoc

SATURDAY  3 am
still in syracuse, getting on the road require preparation, working on it
was reading this wapo article about subpoenas to fb resulting

in folks personal lives being laid out in court and how much info
that social sites like facebook have actually accumulated on you

"one big database of hundreds of millions of people containing the kind of information far beyond what the secret police in 20th-century totalitarian regimes had."

i use fb for promotional activity and social commentary, and for organizing purposes
(and for staying in touch w/folk)

i do not for the life of me understand what people get out of telling the world what they had for breakfast
and once again i said so, following facebook post was me telling folk not to put personal info on facebook:

i use facebook for promotional activity and social commentary, for organizing purposes

every post i make here im very conscious of it as part of my strategic effort as a literary man to build an online literary persona, 21st century stylee, it was jeffparker taught me long time ago that a 21st century literary man has to work with both hands

my online persona supplement my print persona - this part of my legacy, strictly a conversation between me and the generations to come

im using fb, fb using me, we gon see who tricking who

i call myself building an army, what are you doing

of hellhounds and steady rolling

FRIDAY 10:30

well, the hellhounds caught up w/me, headed for the delta

steady rolling

FRIDAY MORN

w/o that novel driving me i dont know what to do w/myself

obama is under the gun,

oil spill will stain him

spent all his strategic energy insisting bp had responsibility

should have been all over that, shoulda been buck stops here and
brothers got no slack - shoulda been thinking katrina katrina katrina

prognosis: bumpy ride

THURSDAY

strange space, finished draft yesterday, already know some cleanup needed
but i am burnt out and dont want to look at it, dont want to think about it

hopefully i will feel better about it next week, ohwell

IS IT STILL WEDNESDAY

the spaceshuttle atlantis last flight, i guess this one is a personal, i believe space is the place
i believe humanity has to get off the planet

accidents happen, novas, rogue asteroids, global warming, nuclear winters, one planet is not enuf
to ensure survival of the species, we got to spread out, increase the odds of survival

i would blackfolk be at the forefront of this, i would you be a star faring peoples

 

WEDNESDAY 11:55 am

done deal, hard to believe, 1 draft down, 2 more to go, spend rest of the week on cleanup, take
memorial weekend off, do a couple of projects, start new draft sometime next week, god is good

WEDNESDAY

i like that image of hellhounds on my trail, ima use that in my novel somewhere

i like riffing off previous posts

i will get insights or a new narratiive lick in a post and next post i will riff off that, which takes me deeper into my game

found this strange little flash fiction site called 6 sentences, havent really looked
at it yet, work is uneven from what i saw, but there was this great quote from tom stoddard:

"words are sacred.  they deserve respect.  if you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little"

this speaks to previous post of mine about shaping reality, he just said it better

this is one of those social sites thru ning, interesting dialogue about one of their number whose every story is about child abuse, got the other writers wondering if they are abetting a real abuser and where is their responsiblity here

this is a question that sometimes comes up in workshops, does this reflect a reality that i consider unacceptable, or is this just a writer doing their particular fantasy thing, which while distasteful does not raise the issue of should i alert the authorities, or censure them

i have had to read works that i find difficult to read even one time, much less read repeatedly to tease out the nuances or help make better - works i didnt want staining my soul or my imagination

its part of the creative writing teacher ethic not to be moralistic, if the work is done well,

to deal with a wide range of literary styles and sensibilities you really do have to be olympian and nonjudgmental, but sometime that pedagogical distance just doesnt hold, sometime real or not, its just more than you can handle

once had a writer one of my workshops whose every work glorified graphic abuse of women, finally told him not to bring any more to my class, had one writer wrote very graphic abuse of children stories, i started to come down hard on him when i realized he was working thru some issues he had himself experienced, doing a good, therapeutic job of it

one of the writing community asks whose side should we be on, a possibly abused child or an innocent writer, working thru

what we are taught is that just
because a writer writing about murdering people dont mean they actually want to go out and do it
then you got folk like brian everson, roughstuff on the page, nice guy off, far as i can see

but its not always cut and dry

most times i am able to step back and do my job, but there are times when i consider alerting the authorities, there are times when i find myself nudging a young writer into higher ground

i guess in truth im always trying to do this, with as light a hand as possible - i apologize, i
feel like its a flaw or something but i believe in the moral dimension of literature, i do

i looked thru the writer in questions posts to see if she had range but its all the same disturbing note, also interesting was how when she 1st came on the scene the other writers gave her benefit of the doubt but as the consistency of her obsession became clear it became an issue, do you just ignore her if you dont like her aesthetic, do you try to censure her, is there an actual child in danger here - the consensus seems to be avoidance of censure, and to stay out of her personal life

ohwell, this quandry a little deeper than i care to go, lets clean the palate w/this video of amiri talking trash:

lets see, anything else, obama sending national guard to the mexican border
i suspect this border focus a gambit for political space to work on immigration

anything else, no, im out, got to clock my 5, had a crises for a moment, starting having lightning flashes in my eye, most disturbing, and im like o god, am i going blind, should i work faster, but the eye doctor told me  no big thing, i can handle it, but what the hell ima work faster anyway

all my love

rdoc

of zombies and drum majors, rest for the weary and hellhounds on my trail

TUESDAY

hello world, im not really posting, trying to stamp paid on this novel, feel like w/a serious push
i could finish this thing today, but you know thats not professional flowers, just keep your steady

roll, im really really ready to be thru with this draft, take a break, start the next one, i mean really

but finish it by friday clean will be better than by today raggedy, im gone, the closer i get to the end the
more emotional friction im running up against, it may not move other folk but its designed to move me

and its fucking with my head now, its got me twisted

and all of a sudden i got both family and health issues trying to distract me, total collapse coming down on me
like a runaway freight train, got to hold it off till im done, its step by step stomp city now, its all in the pacing flowers,

focus and pacing, hold steady

its kinda deep this ongoing account of my process, between this blog, and facebook its like
a communal process of some strange sort, very 21st century, look i really have to go

i got hellhounds on my trail

SUNDAY

hello dear regulators, im afraid, im about 20 pages from the finish line and i am afraid

after all these years its like a crutch is about to be pulled out from under me

i have not shown this novel to anybody since i had to use it to get tenure
god help me that was almost 7 years ago, i sent it to my agent a couple of years ago

so she would know i was actually working on it but both times everybody knew it was in process
every couple of years i give bonnie a copy so she would see im actually working on it but i told her

dont talk to me about it, i dont even want to know youve read it, i know its flawed, you dont have to tell me that
reason i havent shown it to anybody is because it wasnt working, for 10 years now i have been working this novel strictly

on faith

and to have somebody tell me this is an awful piece of trash would have broken my faith
next draft, in about a month, im going to be sending it out to my new reading squad

my old reading squad has died off or we arent close anymore, its been almost 15 years since i had

a manuscript for folk to look at, this is a very surreal moment for me and its frightening me, problem is
mr mackdaddy has raised the bar so high, folk that know me expecting a masterpiece, just 'a good novel' wont get it

and if its a 'bad novel' ima want to just crawl into a hole, mostly its my students i dont want to disappoint
and the folk who have kept the faith over the lean years, and treated me like im sitll a contender, i dont

want to disappoint them, thats you dear regulators

i feel like i could keep faking folk out, live out my life 'working on it'  - folk would be fidgety on me
but the literary world has already written me off - i could coast, got a good job, got tenure

i could coast on out, doing other projects, anything but the novel - but you know i aint going out
like that, win or lose ima keep on stepping, all my life ive wanted to be a great novelist, all my life

20 pages from closure, just as scared as i can be dear regulators - but already ive been dreaming
of all the creative energy thats going to be freed up, projects thats been waiting on me to show some love

so here i am, 20 pages from closure, last 3 weeks been a rough ride, a daily grind of exaltation and despair

but im proud of myself - i work hard last month schoolhouse to get some momentum so i can hit the summer woodshed ground running - still it always amazes me when my little x pages a day schedule/discipline actually works -

i just hope my students clocking pages - summer woodshed a blessing for wouldbe writers and
winning by myself doesnt thrill me, i need them to win too - i told them what to do, x pages a day

works every time

now that i got a little psychological space i might get in touch with them, see how they doing

20 pages from closure at 5 pages a day, i should be thru this week -

pray for me

rdoc

FRIDAY 10:48 am

i have caught up w/yesterdays count, the pressure is off, one day behind is customary, everyday i wake up
one day behind, its two days behind that i cannot abide, i think i will take a break, take care of some errands

or maybe better another hour or two, get a couple of pages into todays count,
that will make me feel good, right now im just relieved, i want to feel good

FRIDAY  9:22 am

slogging, but i was thinking, did a facebook post of my last observation, then im thinking half hour later i should check to see if i got anybody liking it, all anxiously concerned and then im thinking flowers dont you have enuf anxieties

that you got time to worry about your facebook popularity, when i make good observations here i cull them down to fb size and then twitter it and its like an excercise in being able to poet them down to the essence

but i cant be obsessing over who like me, i dont have time for that,  i need to concentrate on this novel, i need to focus, this section im working on is killing me, but i got to stay focused, cant let it buck me off - life trying to defeat me

FRIDAY   8:52 am

mortal cry of a writer who has sat here about 3 hours and done a paragraph maybe:

it takes a special kind of discipline to just sit there when you know that it will take hours to get a paragraph, after awhile you just kind of run out of steam, i want to go lie down, watch tv, do a blogpost or something, but if i dont work today i will be 10 pages behind, i cant have that, i cant have that -  i got to focus, i got to slog thru the narrative mud, i got to win

FRIDAY early am

weak day yesterday, im about 5 pages behind, got to crunch it today - probably spent too much time chuckling over rand paul yesterday, so did michael gearson

in wapo article saying paul example of libertarian tea party folk:

"Paul and other libertarians are not merely advocates of limited government; they are anti-government. Their objective is not the correction of error but the cultivation of contempt for government itself. There is a reason libertarianism has never been -- and probably will never be -- a national political force: because too many would find its utopia a nightmare."

i suspect rachael maddow real pleased w/herself for not letting rand paul wiggle
i bet hes named after ann rand, i bet he is

what tickles me is the blowback from republicans trying all these years to tear the government down starting to realize all these fervent fanatics they been fanning consider them part of the gov too

bout the only chance dems got of surviving the onslaught is if the tea party splits the repub vote
and nominates paulites who are unlikely to be as appealing to the electorate as they are primary voters

the tea party still frightens me but hopefully we can drive a wedge between them and the republicans
for a minute i was calling them teabaggers but everytime i did it i felt soiled, like i had gotten down in

the mud with them

and whats with this attempt to flip the script by saying he does not support efforts to repeal the civil rights act
nobody accused him of wanting to repeal it, he just trying to erect a strawman he can forthrightly deny

some repubs defend him by saying it was a rookie mistake, he told the truth, shoulda known better
reason relatively small political mistakes become bigtime is when they reinforce prevailing concerns

in this case that the tea party are racial troglodytes, let me leave you with a little tea party rap
its the fiddle i like, or maybe news that obama killed michael jackson and knocked up bristol palin

i didnt know that

im out

rdoc

THURSDAY

mr ima work till 3 am, take a nap, get up and work some more
got up after my nap doing my zombie thing, had wore myself out

didnt do a lick of work yesterday, am no longer ahead of the game

im okay cause i had my cushion but i dont feel good

such is life, did get the mockups of my mlking graphic novel coming out w/indian press

its some kind of beautiful work, a couple of cross cultural glitches cause im
working w/this indian tribal artist and when i did the drummajor speech he did a

painting of some guy sitting there playing a drum set - okay, you cant mess up

the drummajor, southern folk wont allow that, not the drummajor

when mlk say he want to be a drummajor for justice he wasnt
talking about sitting there playing a drumset

he was talking about leading the marching band

also some of my vernaculars i dont think worked as well

im supposed to be going thru it w/final tooth so i need me some cushion

guess i best get to work, got to clock my daily bread

reading this fabulous work called spectacular blackness: the cultural politics
of the black power movement and the search for a black aesthetic

the black arts movement is what nurtured me, seeing this insightful breakdown of its dynamic

in the evolution of african american culture is fascinating reading for me, too fascinating

ima burn thru it w/o getting caught up, feel like i need to have read it for rest to fully manifest
still researching it seems, went online to check up on a fact in rest and ended up reading an

reader on the formation of black manhood in the 19th century,
a question of manhood: a reader in us black mens history and masculinity

one article of which: memphis raceriots of 1866 by kevin hardwich was an account of the role of black soldiers as protectors
of the besieged black communities of reconstruction and how they were attacked during memphis

riots of 1866 as symbols of black masculinity, had all this info about life in south memphis and fort pickering
during the civilwar and reconstruction, which is a major part of my novel, they quoted extensively from

the congressional report of that riot, 347 pages of testimony from the exslaves that exploded the
population of early memphis, how they lived, their living conditions, their thoughts fears and dreams

i have a xerox of it but reading all the quotes from it filled me with the hunger and i hunted it down online (its very rare) and ordered the only one available in all the world apparently, rather expensive as you can imagine

found it day before yesterday, it was more than i wanted to pay, i bookmarked it and figured i would buy it later, but yesterday i went just to check on it and it had gone up, what could i co, i ordered it

what can i do, i need to read it again before this novel actually done because i got a lot of my early memphis from it and and you always insecure about your historicals, you know you never get them right

374 page oral history of the earliest colored community of memphis, the seed of black memphis, what can i do

im out, im tired, im weary, yesterday was when your body take some rest whether you agree or not
but its not real rest, you still pushing, only time you get real rest is when you just collapse and just lay

there for a couple of days, ima try to put that off til i finish this draft, end of the month hopefully

not supposed to be doing no research but i guess research is just an ongoing thing, specially historical fiction

historical fiction you always know some of what you depicting is laughingly bogus
you go as far as the research will take you and just kinda make up the rest

research, historicals, familyissues, finances, i feel like im going under, didnt work yesterday

just too wore out tired, now im behind, now im stressed - there is no rest for folk like me

not like that day off gave me enuf rest to really be rested, just enuf to keep going

there is no rest for folk like me, there is no rest for the driven, there is no rest for the weary

rdoc

heroship

  WEDNESDAY

hello world, not only am i on schedule, i got cushion, its 3 am wed and im done w/weds quota - so when i take a nap and wake up in a couple of hours i should be able to do a fulls days work

be ahead of the game 5 pages, the almighty cushion,

whats more dear regulators couple of minutes ago i
did a new lick, i was talking about a mob in 1866 memphis, called them a rampaging beast of resentment

then i said  

bunch of teabaggers.  sorry, that slipped, i couldnt help myself.  where was i

then i slid back into my reconstruction scene w/o missing a beat

dont know if it speak to you, but dropping that contemporary on that historical like that was a new lick, ima try it again
see if i can control it, make it do tricks, i like new licks - and that apologetic narrator, o yeah, new licks new tricks

i love this phase - still a godawful struggle but this is when you get to play with the novel,
when you got the storyline down, you get to play narrative and conceptual games,

get to polish the poetry, this when the novel become fun -

mr fun and games is outta here, about 40 pages from closure now & clocking a steady 5, that means approx 8 days
to liftoff but might have to cut back to a 4 count because  i suspect the last 40 pages will be rougher and more

challenging than whats come before

no problem, rickydoc is on a sungun, i will not let this novel defy me

hook or crook this novel done

all my love

rdoc

MONDAY

okay, by god, im back in the saddle, and still got cushion
man it feels good to have my novel back in my head again

but it also felt good to get thru rions, boy got a helluva novel in play
okay, trying to think if i got anything to comment on and i dont believe so,

i just want to get back into my groove, seems like
all my students are spreading the news, arthur has finished rest

im hearing from folk i havent heard from in years, arthur i hear
youve finished rest for the weary -

the pressure to deliver is on

and i got all these ideas i want to work into it while im hitting it, ive kinda played with the idea of him doing a holybook (sounds familiar?) but just played around

the edges, i think im going to give it more energy this go round

i got to get some drafts done this summer, these are the drafts where i get to play, all the pieces in now i get to play
after all these years in the literary wilderness this thing got to shine, i want the literary world to be dazzled

and if they not, fuck it, i will live with it, all i want now is for this novel to exist
good or bad, masterpiece or farce, what i got is what i got

also i did a lot of internet posting this weekend

i sold a lot of wolftickets, that memphis post turned into a dialogue
with one of the ost strident south will rise again posters in that forum

where we actually engaged in some dialogue, but when it became clear that
i agreed with him and the others that the black community is its own worst enemy

and how my concern was empowering the black community rather than worrying
about racism and what the racists think, he started talking about how well i knew

my community and i told him longbow your approval is suspect,

thats the problem with wanting to speak truth to your community, the dialogue
is public and all concessions are used by our enemies to blame blackfolk for their condition

not racism, we have done all we could to help those people

what can you do, i have to speak truth to black people, i believe if we dont accept responsibility
for our condition we will never be able to finesse it, long as we sit around crying

about how its the fault of other folk we wont ever manifest self determination

and do whatever we got to do to get ouf of this historical trickbag
so once again i just backed out of it,

i suspect blackfolk on the forum were gritting their teeth but they
were the ones i was speaking to, it all started because they were

snarling with the racists, squabbling down in the mud with them, this appalled me
and i will not let struggle demean us as a people, im w/mlking on this

if you gon represent, represent - represent the best that we have to give

o ye warrior kind

i remember a book on the prophet diviners of east africa, talked about how the difference
between the diviner and the prophet diviner was the diviner work in private for self and clients

the prophet diviner also work in public for god and the tribe

also said that the way they manifested power was by becoming spiritual and
strategic advisors to the warrior bands

i got two warrior bands, i got the community activist types and i got the elites
they require different handling because they have different strengths and weaknesses

i remember when i 1st concepted this in an attempt to position myself as the fulcrum of power
to have my game encompass all of theirs by developing a vision that orchestrated all their

games and agendas

this gets really complicated and i dont really have time to tease out the nuances
here or in that forum, 

basically what you got to understand is that i really do consider myself the tribal shaman of the black world
and because of the evolutionary need to universalize your vision if you want to be a 21st century player

the worlds shaman, thats the way i think of myself, and the basic principle of conjuration
is that whatever it is you want to be in life, all you have to do is conduct yourself as if you

actually were it, and then it becomes so, ever so gradually reality adjusts itself to your conjuration

conduct yourself as you would be and you are, this is the essence of conjuration

and i have to on this blog conduct myself as if i actually were the worlds shaman
this has been a process, cause im self conscoius about claiming to be the worlds shaman

wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

thats why i put that wouldbe on there, o im not really claiming this you see
thats why i prefer to handle it in fiction - not really real you see

but to actually manifest it in my lifetime i have to claim it, believe it, conduct myself
as if i actually were it, occassionally on this blog i find myself acting out of that reality

and reality of course denies me, because thats the nature of reality but with all your hoodoo power
you hold the conjuration of that new reality in your mind and eventually, ever so gradually, reality

aligns itself with your vision, thats the fundemental nature of both art and ideological orchestration
and in your lifetime you cant expect reality to move but so far in alignment w/your vision

reality a tough cookie - and generally reality win, whup you all about your head and shoulders

but even the slightest realignment of reallity to your vision, your conjuration
is momentous and destinical, to affect human reality in the slightest is a major lifetime feat

thats why my novel has so many metafictional elements, because im playing w/this reality thing, both
text and context, im deeply invested in that, ima hoodooman, ima conjuror

but like i say its really complicated for me to try to explain the game to you in its entirety
its inevitable that you will have more questions than i can answer this very moment

and i do not have the time to convince you of this

and once again im thinking when you try to convey your vision in anything but
a novel there is just no way you can cover the nuances, thats part of the reason

i love the novel so, aint nothing cosmic like the worldbuilding novel can be

but i got to go, got to get back in my groove, got to climb back into the zone

im two pages down, i need another cushion, got to make a run to the delta, i need some cushion

man, that is so cool, get you some cushion and you can take care of life business

without falling behind, god i love/hate the woodshed

i love being a writer - its just the best life i could have ever chosen

for all its cost me, for all the dues i have paid, god i love the literary life

damn, this post got involved didnt it, surely this has cost me a page

at least a paragraph, im out

all my love

rdoc

SUNDAY

im kinda bummed out, the black graduates on campus have a program every year to celebrate and ive been asked to do the invocation of it a couple of times and it means a lot to me but i

blew it this time, mind like a sieve these days, i forgot about it and blew it, man that bums me out
doing the invocation for the black graduates is the kind of performance that i live for

doing my tribal shaman thing, how could i possibly have missed that, god that hurts

havent been novelworking last couple of days, phone got stolen, family and financial issues gon nuclear - i was stressed out and blew it

they probably wont ask me next year, next year ima have to approach them, beg a chance at redemption

i been following this columnist on nytimes, charles blow, after frank rich he been a favorite of mine
he didn this great piece recently chronicling the rightwing tilt in america and saying dont worry, we

losing the shortgame but we will win the longgame:

"I am convinced that the right may win the day, but the left will win the age. That’s because the right is running an intellectually bereft campaign of desperation and disenchantment, amplified by a recession. Great Recessions don’t last. Great ideas do."

that article reassured me because i have been concerned about that, i needed that article

now the times i actually read print, old habit, i scan it online but actually read it print, ie no pics
but i wanted to post this one so i went to get it online and lo and behold he is a brother

now i have to say that tickled me even more, so i count this as a double feel good
just when i needed a double helping of feel good

i recently did this post on the commercial appeal back in memphis, i guess it speaks for itself

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

im a black memphian that teaches in ny and has traveled extensively
im a writer whose novels are memphis/delta based

i love memphis and the delta, it is my heart, my family is still there, and i am a proud voice of black memphis

for me the delta is holyground

once had an interviewer ask me, how does it feel being part of the mythopoetic tradition of the delta

i told him it feels good, real good

so i keep up w/my hometown by coming home regularly and reading the ca daily

and its so interesting that the most ca comments come behind race based articles

and that the level of commentary is so abysmal

you read them like watching a car wreck, knowing you shouldnt be wasting your time, knowing it speaks to the lessor you

the comments from the hood wearing yahoos, well its interesting seeing you folk crawl out from under your rocks

hard to believe sometime folk like you still exist, but its good to know the truth of things, that you are still here

but its the squabbling in the mud with you from blacks that think on your level that really distress me, i just wish blackfolk wouldnt get down there and crawl in the mud with you

i found myself contending for a minute and fortunately i caught myself and just pulled out of that,

its not only a waste of time i could be using to address real issues, its demeaning, it lessons me

its like a bunch of folk desperate for a platform, even if its a demeaning platform

i find myself often wanting to help the progressive voices, folk that i respect, on this forum but nothing is going to change the yahoos minds, or their souls

and thats time and energy that could be used trying to effect real change

these days when i read these foums im just thankful that i escaped that toxic mentality

i often wonder if i would be as narrowminded if i had not seen more of the world than memphis has to offer

i love memphis with a passion, and i hope w/my works to contribute to memphis being a better place than reflected in these forums

memphis and the delta deserve better than this

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

i hope the black graduate folk forgive me, ask me again next year

i will have to approach them next year, make sure i redeem myself

letting the black students down who trusted me to come thru for them

they ask me to do the invocation, provide the blessing for the next phase of struggle

how could i have left them hanging like that, what kind of heroship is that

three days now i have not worked on my novel - im still on my count because i built a cushion

before i went downtime to do last manuscript - but when i dont work i get nervous and anxious

feel like im losing ground, like life is kicking my butt

now my head full of rions novel instead of mine - and i know it will take a minute to get back into the zone

ohwell, such is the literary life, rion is the future of the tradition and i got to do right by him

just got to climb out this funk, step by step inch by inch

work my way thru the blues

doc

THURSDAY

hello dear regulators, as you know i aspire to heroship
then i read about folk like this dr hawa abdi and i am

humbled in the presence of the real thing 

she has gathered some 10-20 thousand internal refugees
around her bush hospital in somalia

given them land to grow crops, treated them for their illnesses
its kinda amazing - also amazing is that islamic militants have

destroyed much of her hospital and placed her under house arrest
because they say that a woman cannot be in charge of a hospital

or anything apparently, its the thousands of clients that have kept
her safe by surrounding her - now thats what i call a hero

i am now 5 pages ahead of schedule, aint much of a hero
but it will have to do

i just hope i can keep it up, im kinda wore out tired
but if dr abdi can hang in there so can i

a luta continua

rdoc

showtime

WEDNESDAY 8:29 am

woke up this morning w/a 7 page deficit, caught up by 8:30 and now going for cushion, its all good

but ima try to chill on the daily reports, i think those of you who have signed up for rickydocs traveling novel making show

got the point, i dont waste my time thinking of the whole task, that will discourage me, i figure out what i got

to do per day to get to a draft and i do it,  i take lifes likely demands into consideration, ask what can i reasonably

hope for in the time i got available, i determine what i can/need to do daily and i do it - period

i constantly assess process for productivity and sustainability -  i may cut back to 4 a day cause 5 got

me humping, its fucking w/my quality of life, 4 a day basically just adds a week or so to my endgame

but you know on my level of the game if you not pushing yourself a little beyond reasonable

you not in the game, you not on the board

cause you best believe the competition is on it, best you be on it too,

got my copy of keiths jok bio, ima carry it around like some kind of showtime totem

you know where i got that showtime, right, remember all that jazz, no matter how wore out he was
when it was time to do his thing, he throw a little water on his face and go - showtime

im out - its showtime

TUESDAY 11:52 pm

2 pages short but im burnt out, been a rollercoaster day, up down up down,
but i been clocking pages, clocked 8 pgs today, thats what count, i feel good

take a nap rick, get up & knock off that last 2 for todays count, then go for
tomorrows 5, just trying to keep up so the demons dont eat my soul

catch up and i can do manuscripts, shorts, etc - i dont do nothing till i get my daily count
this morning i was 10 pages short and panicking, 2 pages short is nothing, i can handle that,

10 pages i do not allow, cause after 10 come 15, catchup gets brutal then, before this push is over
there will likely be times im up to 20, 25+ pages behind -  god i hope not but its possible

i hope my students are clocking, i hope they meeting the beast, im out

TUESDAY

im running scared, didnt work yesterday, so now im 5 pages behind, 10 if i dont do today,

been sitting at the sacred desk but i cant focus, i do a couple of lines then i look at the internet

or anything other than write - ive been here about 4 hours and done maybe a paragraph

part of the problem is i dont like this passage, but i dont see redoing it, i just got to tough it out

focus rick

are you desperate or aint you

focus

call on the conqueror - i will not be defeated

not by my own slack i wont

one of the distractions today been listening to lena and reading her online tributes

was thinking how lena speak to a conversation i been having w/buffalo soldier about mix folk claiming to be bi racial
cause she a fair skinned woman that could have passed but always identified black

i told buffalo soldier that it ts fundamental in the book of flowers to define black inclusively
rather than exclusively, we dont want to be a dwindling race

cut off from everybody else mixing it up, and getting along

i dont want blacks isolated and defensive, i want them to be

comfortable in the multiculti reality of the world today

in the future mixfolk will become more and more the norm
i want as many of them as possible to uphold the tradition

and define themselves as black, anything else would be cultural
suicide if you looking as far into the future as the strategic vision

will allow

now the only reason they will do that is if african american culture is
a strong and illuminated culture  -  im working on that

if they do decide to identify, as has obama, im going to welcome them with open arms, im not
going to be questioning the nuances and making them feel uncomfortable or unwelcome

the longgame demand it

this is fundamental play on my admonition to cast your vision young hoodoo as far as you can
see, determine the challenges the tribe will face, prepare the tribal soul to meet them

that piece is frank frazetta, another icon of my youth, died yesterday, interesting in light of barack the barbarian post, he provided the visuals for conan and the death dealer, warlord of mars, et al

it embarrass me to tell you some of those visuals still move me - i want to be a hero
i want to save my people, be a force for good in the world

my idea of what a hero does may have evolved, but in my mythic
heart its still me on that mountaintop, storm whipping my dreads

i must admit though i always identified more w/the sorcerors than the warriors
doctor strange, merlin and gandalf the gray - and magister ludi,

i dont know how he got into that pantheon
surely that was from a later phase of heroship

im outta here -  its 8:21 am, and i will not let this morning

go by w/o pages, i will not let myself be 10 pages behind

i will not be defeated

rdoc

MONDAY

lena horne in her 80s: “My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.”

i remember one time me and my mama caught lena on broadway - lena horne: the lady and her music - she must have been in her 60s, and it must have

been because its lena that me and my mama were on broadway in the 1st place because thats amazing in itself and part of why this memory so sweet

right up there w/me and my daddy catching mingus at the down under

so anyway lena was on stage vamping and she had this fur around her shoulders and
at one point the fur dropped to the stage and she kept vamping and some little

white lady in the front row kept trying to get her attention, finally lena leaned down
and said what is it dear, lady say you dropped your fur, and lena say

thats not my fuh, thats mr needlanders fuh, if it was my fuh it
wouldnt be on the floor  -  in that faux southern accent of hers,

she was a classy act to the end, never had that much voice, got by
early years on looks, later years on class and always a hard worker

she was a professional

unlike me who took the weekend off

and got to get busy

rdoc

SUNDAY

picked this list up on lori johnsons blog- for folk who get discouraged by rejection

wimps

1) The author of the Dr. Seuss series had his work rejected more than 15 times before he found an editor interested in working with him.
2) Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach was rejected 140 times before it was eventually published.
3) C.S. Lewis received over 800 rejections before he made his first sale.
4) 20 publishers rejected William Golding’s Lord of the Flies before it was published in 1954. On of the publishers who rejected the Lord of the Flies described it as, "…an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull."
5) Agatha Christie has been called by the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling writer of books of all time and the best-selling writer of any kind, along with William Shakespeare. However, her first mystery novel received over 20 rejections.
6) James Patterson’s first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, was rejected 26 times before finally being accepted.
7) Stephen King received the following rejection for his bestselling novel, Carrie: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell."
8) J.K. Rowling spent six years writing the first installment of her Harry Potter" novels, and was rejected by 9 publishers before landing a deal with London’s Bloomsbury Publishing.
9) Alex Haley, author of Roots, wrote every day, seven days a week for eight years before selling to a small magazine.
10) Ray Bradbury has had about a thousand rejections over his 30 year career and claims his work still gets rejected
11) Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind was rejected 38 times.
12) Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time was rejected by 26 publishers. After being published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, it went onto to win the Newberry Award and it is now in its 69th printing.
13) Louis L’Amour who has 300 million copies of his 123 books in print, had 200 of his stories rejected before he finally made his first sale.

and these arent like deeply literary works, double that rejection rate for more complex works

i had my first novel rejected by every house in newyork before dutton told me yes
and that was when there were a lot more houses than there are now

just cant take a no, cant be thin skinned, cant take a rejection letters personal, just got
to keep pushing it until you find that one editor that falls in love with your work

but 1st you got to have product right

got to clock them pages

rdoc

SUNDAY

what on earth possess me to tell folk i was thru w/this novel i do not know
im still good, i got a working novel, all the holes been filled, so in a sense im thru

but its not yet graceful, what im doing now is im working on the sentence level
im going thru it sentence by sentence, since its lyrical, poetic, its impo that every

word every sentence, work properly, so thats what im doing now, sludge work, step by step inch by inch
but thats why im moving relatively fast (5 a day) because its mostly clean work im just polishing

but every once in awhile i run up on a rough section and i suspect as i get deeper into the text
they will be rougher and more often, thats why i got to get some cushion, right now im winning

but im not fool enuf to think ima keep winning

that photo is john o at bronx community college, w/some of his fledglings, fellow travelers, bj ashanti,
brenda connor miller, dorisjean austin, and me with hair on my head and joan cofer on my lap

long story

okay, im out, today is an off day, i always schedule 2 days a week off because if i dont i will
take them anyway and feel bad, like im not on schedule, got to avoid that, no discouragment

today is a day of rest and housekeeping stuff, been sanding the steps in order to stain them,

thats been more than a notion, between sanding steps and manuscripts im shocked i been

keeping up my pages, in fact today is mothers day, got to spend today

making bonnie feel good, thats what days of rest are for

when i was a young artist i thought being in the presence of greatness was reward enuf
now i know better, now i know to compensate my mate for the hassle greatness entail

all my love

rdoc




SATURDAY

so far so good, clocking pages, on schedule
getting thru the manuscripts too, its all good

soon as last manuscript is down the trick will be to get ahead of the count
to build me some pageage cushion for when life knocks me off my game

its inevitable, it always does, i got to stay in the zone as long as i can, at this
point it will take an act of god to knock me off my game, which generally is

health or family, anything else i will stonewall, anything else i will defy

rdoc

FRIDAY

2 manuscripts down, 1 to go,

saved rion for last cause its a dense literary buggerbear of a novel, in the tradition too - no telling how many days it will cost me

only 1 page behind on pageage schedule, i can live with that,

of course that assumes i get todays 5 done, 3 shorts left - might get discretionaried to the fall, im approaching burnout

basically this 5 pages a day
schedule will give me a finished draft by the end of the month, 5 a day is really kind of pushing it

but jesus christ i got all day to do it, i want 3 drafts this summer

they should become progressively cleaner, easier, quicker, thats the plan

if i fall behind schedule and dont get but 2, well i can live with that too

i just hope my students are clocking pages, every spring i start preaching,
woodshed coming, summers are for novelisting, i expect drafts from all of you

lets clock some pages

last summer kayla and tato threw down, lets see who come thru this summer
lets see who serious about this

this is a picture of my mentor, babajohn killens, the great griot master of brooklyn

keith gilyards magisterial biography on him has just come out, i ordered it

john oliver killens: a life of black literary activism: 30 odd dollars on amazon, keith

say he will send me one when he gets extras but i couldnt wait, right now is when i

need the spirit of john o killens hovering over me, its showtime,

soon as i get it im going to his grave in brooklyn and take a
moment to thank him for getting me this far

for showing me the way

but how im really gon thank him is

clocking pages

thats the kind of worship babajohn appreciate

im out

rdoc

THURSDAY

im caught up - you the man rick, you the man

who the mack, you the mack you the mack

breaking free, one drops and positioning for the 21st century

WEDNESDAY

schoolhouse this schoolhouse that, according to my schedule im about 10 pages behind
last class yesterday, 1 reading yesterday, big dept meeting today,

knocked off 1 manuscript, cherry, 2 to go, tato and rion, both been waiting about a year
for me to get back to them -  i cant feel free until i have gotten those off my plate

2 manuscripts, 4 shorts, 2 more readings and i will be free, but first i got to catch up my pageage count,

10 pages is critical mass, crises mode, im dead in the water, i got no momentum - 

breaking free for woodshed is a process, everyday i get a little more ruthless,
cancel 1 more lunch, say no to more manuscripts, or shorts, or readings

no to any realworld commitments of any sort (except family, unfortunately)

only reason i got thru that manuscript today was i gave the whole day to it, and that dept meeting, so now
im two days behind my pageage schedule, that wont do, these manuscripts will have to get halfdays

my apologies to everybody, rickydoc is in the woodshed, i spend all my time
it seems on opm (other peoples manuscripts) summer belongs to me

by god and all thats holy it belongs to me

if you see me pay no attention, its just a mirage, my

traveling spirit, passing thru

rdoc

TUESDAY

well, apparently this oil spill has made big gov believers out of starve the government republicans
the govs and senators of mississippi alabama and louisiana, all parroting that ridiculous kill off the government

rhetoric have found new respect for what gov can do, have insisted gov save them again
these are all states where their constituents get more in gov money than they pay in taxes

as are most of the republican states, whereas democratic states tend to get less, whats up w/that

im feeling desperate, trying to break woodshed free but folk keep dropping manuscripts on me

ive canceled all lunches, i got about 3 shorts and 3 manuscripts i feel obligated to burn thru

one more week, thats all im going to give it, one more week and im off the grid

my schedule calls for 5 pages a day, but as creditcard folk will tell you

minimal payments wont set you free

rdoc

MONDAY

barack the barbarian: a reaver and a slayer

okay, this another one that go under guilty pleasures, to appreciate this one you had to have been a little 4 eyed comicbook reading black geek kid with the heart of a barbarbian

as was folk who shall remain unnamed

reading conan was said folks 1st stab at actually reading books

that wasnt classics like robin hood, treasure island and such

obama too say devils due comics

lets see if he make these folk cease and desist like he did the folk put that billboard up on time square

i can hear him now, well i might let barack the barbarian slide

cause its got redeeming social values or something

previously unnamed folk will not confess to ordering the wholeset of 4 but you may draw your own conclusions

just to keep it real here is the real barack the barbarian

obamas comments at the correspondents dinner, boy got jokes
there are a lot of excerpts floating around but its worth the 30 minutes

well maybe not but ima put it here anyway, you can just cut it off when
leno comes on, obama cut his head, like a barbarian should

was reading article about british election and some analyst was saying whoever wins
will have to take such unpopular steps to address pressing problems that he will probably

send his party into exile for a generation and i thought about what a profile in courage it is for
a politician to take the long vision and do whats right for the country and the world instead of

whats right for the next election cycle, like lyndon baines johnson did with civilrights legislation

and i guess in that light barack is a barbarian isnt he

i was glad to see he has a good sense of humor about himself and see that he see

the forces that are arrayed against him, got that spiritvision, not only see but got perspective on

thats a good thing

had a good graduation ceremony yesterday, that last round of applause

george say you hear that, thats the sound of summer,

i was talking to dana, she say whats the count, i say about 260, i had 300 but i lost a lot during
the rewrite, had to cut out the fat, she say 260 is good, i say i wanted 300 she say but 260 is tight

she say you want it tight dont you and i said yeah i want it tight i want it tight
she right, i got to be ruthless, i got to cut the fat, anything aint strong got to go

didnt get any work done this weekend, and im feeling self conscious
about the high profile of the last two metaposts so ima chill, ima focus

all my love

SUNDAY

this is a cut from karen savoca, she and pete some of my favorite folk
i mean really, ima devotee, i have hunted down everything she ever did

so anyway finally met them, cause they syracuse folk, they did a set at a local church
and you have to catch them in performance, the bantering the clowning around, its

a wonderful thing, then we did a haitian benefit set together a little while back
i gushed and genuflected, i was so honored to be on the same stage with them

they some of my favorite folk in all the world

WHAT DAY WAS THIS, MUST HAVE BEEN SATURDAY

hello world, did a lot of yakkey yakkety yesterday, when i do those meta posts i always

want to edit them down or remove them, but its good writing, got to stand behind my words

been pulling back from facebook, just dont have the time, but its interesting when i do check it out
found this washpost thread from some woman name chang saying obama shouldnt have checked black

on his census form, say she disappointed in him

she bi racial, (asian/caucasian she say) talking about obama shouldnt have checked black, not quite sure
how she ended up with a dog in this hunt but i did my bit about african americans being a bastard race

aked why would we give up the one drop rule just as its working in our multiculti favor, making us an expanding
race instead of a contracting one - blackness is a state of mind and the onedrop gives us good position

for the multitculti 21st century

i mean i understand, i got buddies thats bi racial and passionate about it
but im not willing to give up positioning, if they want to identify bi racial

thats cool, but dont be dumping on folk that identify black, blackness is a state of mind

clarence thomas for instance is not black by my reckoning, obama is

btw: i clocked pages yesterday, well, a page, but i still feel good

got to meet the beast again today, so i can feel good some more

rdoc