rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

demoja

WEDNESDAY

between this book and onps im totally burnt out, the deal w/my book is that ive reached
that burn out stage where you on fumes, the Work no longer speaks to you and you cant

imagine it will speak to anybody else either, youve read/rewritten it so many times its just
a collection of words w/o meaning, but i dont know anything else but to keep going, to finish

it because ive put so much time into it i cant just drop it like i want to do, i am so tired of
this thing i dont know what to do, except keep on keeping on, instead of wasting time crying

about it here, get back to work, rick, get back to work . . . .

 

 

 

MONDAY

one more week and im done w/china, it will be good to be back in my own space
and this mojo rising revision is just absolutely killing me, im in that stage of a draft

where the harder you work the deeper you dig yourself into the hole
finished a draft last week, thought this one would be a clean up and

instead im having to break it down and rebuild it - its killing me, specially
teaching 3 classes 12 hour days chinawork, i been under the gun

went to zhanshan temple yesterday, was looking for a prayerbead and they were doing
the chant thing i like so much, i taped it and found a raelly cool bead, came back to

hotel and wrote this passage for mojo rising:

------------------    

 demoja

not sure what demoja mean to me
originally, in my youth, it meant holywar

now, in my maturity, it means something else

my when you come to the crossroads always take the highroad thing
my always strive to be greater than you are thing 

my awkaken the sleeper, protect the weak, guide the strong thing
my guide and guardian of human destiny thing

im not quite sure what it mean

last time i was in china I was going through some changes
struggling with the work, this one actually, and some personals

one day zhanshan temple in qingdao, I sat and listened to buddhist prayer
and had gotten into the music of it, it was some kind of beautiful

had considered adding prayerbeads to my spiritual repertoire
tried many while I was there till I found one that spoke to me 

and used demoja for my mantra

to bring me strength and grace, the ability to be greater than I am
when you in the zone and your mojo is on – master and servant of FA

came back to the hotel and added this passage

I think I will leave it vague what demoja mean to me,

and I hope one day to you

----------   

all my love

rdoc

another man done gone: trayvon and struggle, a luta continua

SUNDAY


 

was reading this wapo article about jimi hendrix playing at the ambassador before he was known
and how he burnt his guitar on stage there, one of the 3 times he did that bit and it was like he was

calling on the gods and ive got these vignettes in rest for the weary, had to do one for jimi -
first draft, ima clean it up but im satisfied with it, knew just where to stick it in the manuscript

got this scene where staggerlee is a bluesman playing redemption blues in delta jooks:

---------------------------------   

Were you there that night, deep down in the black mud of the Delta, that the greatest bluesman ever dropped to his knees and burnt his guitar in a sacrificial offering, calling a gathering of the gods who had survived the middle passage, every note carrying field hollers of newly made slaves and the moans of burnt out sharecroppers, blind beggars with their box guitars, deep blue divas with diva deep blues, clocking long hard miles and standing at the crossroads, waiting for the Southern to cross the Dog; the supplicant on his knees before the flames, calloused hands raised in psychedelic prayer and swaying in the light of a purple haze, were you there, my friend, the night the high priest of the blues spoke in tongues of fire.  Were you there.

 

 

WEDNESDAY

what is it about projects that you think they are going to be a easy kill and instead they hunt you down
i thought this revision of mojo rising would be maybe two weeks of effort, instead im buried in it

its consuming my summer woodshed, what little summer woodshed china has not taken
and now my laptop keyboard has gone blooey, bought a little 5 dollar keyboard and attached

it and its working more or less enuf to function till i get back, but when i think about my challenges
i think of rosario ferre, whose youngest doll is a favorite story of mine, who i taught last week and

i mentioned it to miguel, the puertorican artist teaching arthistory and he said, i know her, she hooked
up my 1st showing for me, and that she has some condition that has left her paralyzed and

only able to communicate by blinking and miguel said you know these artist types, i bet
shes figured out some way to tyoe using those blinking eyes and i had to check myself

and my constant string of complaints, lord knows its a cliche but no matter how hard
it is, somebody dealing with worse, all my blessings on her work and her courage

all my love

 

 

 

SUNDAY

well, the verdict is in, and weve lost another one

but you know teaching us history has reminded me of the longgame
you win some, you lose some, you keep on pushing

if we were to let our losses cripple us we would never be able to walk again
the problem of course is that this will encourage other wouldbe vigilantes

to go out looking for a reason to use their hidden guns and stand their ground, this
gun culture thing is whitefolk of a certain ilk being scared of a changing america

and the barbarian hordes they perceive to be at their gates

but the principal goal here was that there be a trial
that he couldnt just kill the kid and walk away

we lost the trial but at least there was one
and it just goes to show we got a lot of work to do

got to turn that anger into productive premptive action 

got to keep on working against the stand your ground laws & mentality
got to work against this guncrazy culture we living in

got to cripple the rightwing mentality in congress and the courts
and get hillary elected 2016 

and we got to work against that gangsta mentality that
makes our kids targets for fools, both ours and theirs

this is not the only loss that we have taken lately

citizen united, the votingrights act, the filibuster, foodstamps, recently read about
some black teaparty group funded by the right in their fight against immigration

well funded compradors - all these things are connected, more than enuf struggle to go around

what was amazing was how invested the rightwing was in saying it was okay to shoot trayvon
how clear it became that many of them wish they had the guts to go hunting black kids  

the struggle has gotten very complex, we cant lose faith, we cant lose focus
take a moment of silence for trayvon, then we got to get back to work 

as for zimmerman, the new hero of the right, till the end
of his days may he not know rest, nor peace of mind

i curse his days, him and all his kind

a luta continua

 

im done fucking around

SATURDAY 7/13

   

the progressives prayer: lord deliver me from the fundamentalists, please dear lord

so they assigned me this little TA, good people, we had bonded like i rarely do
she hooked me up with a refridgerator even, turns out she got literary ambitions

she didnt even know she had and i had taken her under wing, was working her Craft
and committed to working w/her over the next 5 years or so, get her chops to point

where she could apply for MFA programs in the states, you know the drill
then i made the mistake of telling her i was a hoodooman, the high hoodoo

how was i to know she was a fundamentalist christian, now she thinks im the spawn of satan

we were in a cab one time and the driver had this buddhist amulet that was a book
a magnetic book and he said it was the origiinal magical text, i gotta get one, she

was going to help me find it, he told her where, in chinese, but now she says she
is afraid im going to use it in some nefarious hoodoo ritual and she cant be part of that

i think of it as a inspiration piece, for thos time when the faith falters, those times when you
ready to abandon a work, or the literary life, because cause you getting weary in the soul

open my little magnetic magic book and be renewed in faith, but she think ima cut a chickens
heart out and pour blood on it or something, she say she cant be part of that cause

she read on the internet that hoodoo is the work of the devil, i cant tell you how hurt
i was that after getting to know me she went for whatever she read on the internet

also she is an intense chinese nationalist trying in her work to indict the chinese preoccupation w/america
and learning english as a postcolonial sickness - i explained to her more geopolitical positioning

than postcolonial and that writers have to be ahead the game, not behind it, but the point is
being a christian fundamentalist is so incongrent with that concern, i wanted to ask her

dont you realize the role that christanity and christian missionaries played in colonialism
in the westernization of china and everywhere else they went, but i didnt,

i dont want to mess with her faith, i hope she will grow out of it one day, not christanity
but the fundamentalism, i really dont think fundamentalists make good writers

in fact i had already talked in the international history class how fundamentalism was the scourge of the
planet, christian fundamentalists, islamic fundamentalists, jewish & afrospiritual fundamentalists, all of them

im so used to being part of the literary world, which doesnt really have any fundamentalists
that i forget sometime just how narrowminded they can be, but when i think about it almost

everybody i know back in memphis bible belt christian, which is pretty fundamental but they
got no overt problems w/my claim to be a hoodooman, in fact when im doing my

performance work its them oldtime christian elders that like it, must be that black baptist preacher
thing i do when im rolling, so now my relationship with my chinese TA is strained

to say the least, im just as uncomfortable working with a fundamentalist as she is
working w/the spawn of satan, 1st i fired her, say i cant work w/somebody think im evil

but i didnt really want to, i still like her, i got to take into consideration shes a youngster
& she wanted to stay - so we have agreed to just keep our relationship professional

but i have to say i miss claiming her as a protege, shes got potential
and i believe we will still work on her Craft the 3 weeks im here

but the longterm mentorship is done because part of that is teaching them how to think like writers
and for that you need a level of trust thats no longer there, for either of us 

the other issue that im having, my students in one class ive lost control of them
prodded them a little about thinking out of the political box and now the class

is full of fervent democratic activists, and im like wait just a minute yall, dont let me get
you in trouble, you got to be cool with this  -  next monday we are supposed to discuss

can xue instead of historical text and i plan to point out why surrealism is her stylee
i asked for permission to teach her cause i dont want to get these kids in trouble

they ready to rock and roll and im like wait a minute now, im going home after this, you
got to be cool, i fear ive opened a pandoras box up in there, go to step w/a little more care

been working hard on mojo rising during my downtime, they had a beach bbq for faculty
and students today and folk were like arthur, are you coming, but im working, thats what

writers do, we work while the rest of the world having fun

and truth be told socializing with students is not my idea of a fun way to spend my day off
thats not my idea of a cultural excursion, id rather get some work done thank you please

really want to work on the hoodoo book of flowers, but mojo rising i might actually finish
productionwise its been a rough summer woodshed and i dont play that

on that note im out of here

all my love

 

 

 

SATURDAY

my stars must be out of alignment, the afrofuturism anthology folk just rejected two submissions
guernica folk recently rejected a submission for their race issue, novel been on the market 2 years

and my students here complained that im disorgnized, hurt my professional feelings
im up at 330 am preparing for those classes, but i am flexible, they have no

idea how hard i work at engaging them when they want to just sit there staring at me
when i get a thread of interest going i tend to follow it and see where it goes,

thats where i get my best insights/discussions/dialogues, i thought i
was doing well, now i dont know, not sure what they want of me

feel like they want me to just stand there and drone facts one two three
feel like they want to take away what makes me a good teacher

my stylee may not work in this environment, they will just have to put up w/it
as paula deen would say - i is what i is - at this point i just want to go home

i feel unappreciated

feel the same way about these anthologies, thats why i do books instead of
shorts, i cant stand rejection, now i find myself questioning the value of my work,

perhaps im wrong & the world is right, perhaps im not the writer (or teacher) i think i am,

ohwell, it does not matter, only one response i got to taking the hammer, work harder,
write my books as i write them, and hope one day future generations will appreciate me

my own clearly does not

also im kinda depressed about the supreme court unleashing the south on blackfolk
but in the us history course we were dealing w/plessy vs ferguson, when they did it too

and i was telling my students the pendulum swings - swings left, swings right
you dont let it fuck w/your head, you just keep struggling - just keep struggling

i think in 3 years ima retire, withdraw from the world and just work

ol boy rickydoc has got the blues

ADDENDUM: seems it was one or two complained, most of them like my freewheeling lets dance
stylee, which is a good thing, cause i wasnt going to try to change it at this point in the game

FRIDAY

in china again, different city, different experience, wont be coming back again
tired of burning off my summers for such little pay, the new experience thing

has played out, qingdao is not chengdu, less chinaflavor, more germanic, apparently was
just small fishing village when occupied/built by germans - very mannered city, colorless

went to zhanshan temple today, nothing like whenshu, qingdao got coffehouses instead of teahouses

& teaching three classes from 9 to 730 w/2 hours intervals, its a brutal schedule
one good thng is that im teaching us and international history in addition to literature

and not only do i enjoy history but studying and teaching history has been an education in
historical dynamics in contemporary context which is the way ive been approaching it

at first (1st week) i was basically doing facts and figures but that bored me and them
now im ephasizing how these historical dymamics are playing out in contemporary times

in particular how they affect my students - asian students in the states - i been trying to get
them to think out of the programmed box, which in an authoritarian culture is a little dicey

but hey im not coming back anyway so what the hell

was dreaming this morning, dreamed i was walking down the street in memphis and started
picking up found objects to make artprojects with and the art projects all said the same thing:

IM DONE FUCKING AROUND

supposed to be doing a draft of the HOODOO BOOK OF FLOWERS
they been working me so hard (3 courses and 12 hour days) that i

havent been able to squeeze writing time in much less woodshed crunch it
will take to get a draft of my 700 page holybook done but i woke up this morning

in a radical state of mind: thinking IM DONE FUCKING AROUND
thats why i booted up rootsblog and made this post, this is one dream i

dont want to forget: ima do some foundart projects based on this theme
and hang them up on the wall of inspiration, every morning i need to remind myself:

IM DONE FUCKING AROUND