rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

HBOF: 05:37:STEWARDSHIP

each movement has a synoptic, this is the one for 8M:illumination:

in 64)vision we gain 65)wisdom and 66)compassion shaped by 67)meditation in search of
68)illumination and 70)sanctification at the 71)crossroads of 72)faith in 73)one world one cosmos

SUNDAY  9:31AM: redpen done, 8M next

im kinda burnt out on the project
but i know to just ignore that,

feel good feel bad, who cares, what
that got to do w/getting your work done

 
SAT 6:00AM  okay, finished 7M:destinywork movement,

love being a working artist in a research institution
i get paid to teach, research and produce

whats not to love

been fidgety about not working on my novel

also been resentful im getting all this new knowledge and
attendant spiritual growth at such a late date in my life
but i see now why the gods of literature brought me here,
all this is going to inform the next draft of my novel

i got to go,
demojo

(I CUT OUT LONGGAME EXAMPLE)

next up 38:SANCTUARY - 43 TO GO

--------------------    

*37: stewardship

awaken the sleeper protect the weak guide the strong

 ras hui i: my people love i, because I heal their afflictions

stewardship is assuming responsibility for social, cultural
and institutional well being – the well being of others

guide and guardian of human destiny

I would you o firstborn take responsibility not only for your own destiny
but the destiny of all peoples and all jah creature great and small

an expanding a sense of responsibility that evolves
from stewardship of your own affairs to stewardship

for the well being of those you know and love
to the communities and teams of which you are a part
the well being of your culture and your traditions
the well being of strangers and folk who are different
the well being of all humankind
the well being of the planet
the well being of the cosmos
and all the generations

this sense of stewardship expands as you grow and mature your
sense of responsibity and agency expands to encompass all that is

awaken the sleeper
protect the weak
guide the strong

a passionate sense of responsibility that has to be
channeled into dispassionate mojo for game purposes

stewardship of your own affairs just mean
figuring out how to live a good life

defining what the good life mean to you
conjuring it into being

must folk are civilians subject to the whims of the powerful
but you are an ascensionist, a player in the world

you have to forge a life with as much autonomy and agency as possible
in our interconnected world you will always answer to somebody

but you can learn how to effectively manipulate your world/culture
to provide for comfort, security and agency for you and yours

too many blackfolk think poor and street is authentic blackness
I beg to differ, I see an illuminated people, a people of power

this what the conjureman see

I would think a primary goal of black struggle is to make all blackfolk progressive middleclass. 
to help the poor and dispossed achieve a certain proficiency in manipulating contemporary society. 

as long as we are unable to function in an increasingly sophisticated economy we will
be increasingly marginalized in a world that severely penalize the marginalized. 

ideological orchestrations will satisfy folk like me but my regular folk just want to live
good, live a good satisfying life.  that’s cool with me, it is in fact the essence of struggle

once you have gained control over your own affairs

and provided for family and friends

you assume responsibility for your choosen field, your
colleagues, your teammembers, your tribe

beyond that you begin to realize that you cant
just save your own - got to save everybody

in the year 1608 that the portuguese army under bento cardoso expanded congo slaving
operations with declaration that every chief in land was now owned by a portuguese, said
chief was directly responsible for a quota of slaves or would be themselves be enslaved

following year a 100 chiefs were sold into slavery, 100 were murdered, chiefs who
had been cooperating in the slave trade suddenly found their honor in resistance

the true test of grace is when you have to give up your own precious interests
or those of class or tribe – first step is always cleaning your own house

when you identify crossroads moments in your culture, push it towards the
highroad - mostly this entail influencing the influents - guiding the strong

park yourself at the crossroads

if it is a democratic society force it to live up to its ideals
if it is an authoritarian society work for its democratization,
if it is an affluent society work toward the amelioration of inequity,
if it is an backward society bring it into the community of nations

conduct yourself always as a custodian of all that is good in this world
do not hesitate to cross borders in your quest

but remember pilgrim, to work with a light and graceful touch, you
never know all the complications that will arise from any intervention

when attempting to enhance the human condition choose your targets wisely
there will always be poverty. hunger, sickness and suffering, misery is an
inescapable component of the human condition, why I don't know, it just is . . .

one must do what one can to ameliorate this condition, knowing full well you will fail

it is not through the victory but the struggle that we best manifest our humanity

because power encompasses you always trying to broaden
the game board, so when you trying to illuminate and enhance
the human condition you want to think global and eventually

cosmic

the more comprehensive your analysis
the more likely your game

I recall in my lifetime when the black struggle was a model of the struggle for human
dignity around the world, now when the world thinks black they think gangsterism

we must once again equate the black struggle with the struggle for human dignity

a conjure culture is one capable of transforming itself as necessary.

when I claim geas by rickydoc im claiming the prophetic dispensation to forge new
ways, im hoping that thru selfless service, my nommo and the quality of my analysis
that the culture will eventually anoint me as a cultural custodian worth listening to

a prophet of the hoodoo way

it would be nice would it not to forge a people capable of systematically responding
to changes in the political/social environment in both a timely and effective manner. 

one that enables effective responses to social and cultural challenges  - 

adept in cultural conjuration

to fall behind the curve is genocide, to stay ahead of the curve got
to see the hammer before it fall and adjust as necessary to finesse it

when it was realized aids had a special affinity for blackfolk
should have been some way to provide notice to folk w/a mystical
authority capable of instituting immediate cultural correction,

some kind of geas by rickydoc

shortgame being behavioral changes, research, care, access, etc,

longgame to make ital health a cultural trope so as to avoid these kinda
hammers in the future or deal w/them in a timely manner, (see ebola)

then we will have used the hammer to
evolve, otherwise its just a tragedy

in eastern uganda the sabiny tribe fought hard against the governments attempts to halt
female circumcision.  in 1992 the sabiny clan chiefs formed the sabiny elders association
and began reviewing their traditions with the intent, according to chairman g. w. cherborian,
of identifying the traditional values that were worthy of being kept, determining which
needed updating and which should be discarded as not consistent with modern life. 

the elders association, with the help of the un, instituted a successful grassroots campaign
to inform the parents of the medical problems associated w/what they now called
 female genital cutting they also decided to try to write out their language, to systematically
study their medical herb lore, to develop agricultural, welfare and aids awareness programs.

they rode the changes
like rickydoc say do

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   -  

demoja

 

clocking segments - i need a draft in 2 months, so let it be

SUNDAY NIGHT 11:40pm  36: TRANSFORMATION - 45 TO GO
got to catchup schoolhouse, got to force myself out of the zone
my little spring break mini woodshed, got halfway thru, i done good . . .

been told i shoulda had the work in the cloud but i been resisting the cloud
still an oldschool guerilla i guess and dont like putting all my work online
trusting apple not to monetize or otherwise use it at some point, im an
obdurate child of the 60s i guess, i still work on a need to know basis

 

SUNDAY EVENING  34:RESPONSIBILITY - 47 TO GO
i will be glad when i bust 40 and am on the downstroke

SUNDAY NEXT  EARLY MORNING

major disaster over last week, computer crashed, took it into
faculty computing to have it fixed and used computer in office
while it was down, was determined to maintain production so

i clocked pages/segments, did 24:finance, 25:maturity, 26:eldership,
27:death - was ahead of the game and so proud of myself, picked
up computer yesterday, worked yesterday evening, 28:rebirth,
29:mojo 30:healing, 31:journeys, i was in the zone and clocking it

saved it, thinking at this rate i will be thru in couple of weeks

went by office to get last weeks work and incorporate and bam, cant
find it, it had not been saved on harddrive, it was on backup
usb which i had just saved over, i lost a week of work
so much for the zone, now im fighting off despair

and i had to throw down on recovery right away, before
despair overtook me, fortunately i print out every days
work so i can have a hardcopy in case of situations like this

so i sat down with hardcopy and redid them, there will
be segments that are lost forever, cause i move them
to other movements so i dont know what all i have
lost but now im moving forward again, a luta continua . .

32:TIMING - 49 TO GO

 

 

STILL SUNDAY  11:35  on 23:LOVE

was sitting there working and still bemoaning how shallow it looks
and how some segments i only had a couple of paras of material
like for 22:WORK of all things, and but then i think how they were all
separated by hardpage breaks and how if i just ran them together

by movement it might address all that so i did as an experiment
and it makes all the diff in the world, i got a text now and it doesnt
really matter how long each one is and you get a better sense of
narrative flow that was missing and its amazing how one little
change like that changes the whole text and makes what wasnt
working work

was listening to this bluessong, hounds are hunting by steve pierson
and wrote this flash, will use it in novel and in holybook, rough draft,
raw, potential, dont know what movement it will come under yet:

do you hear them coming do you do you hear those hungry slavering grrrowl grrrowl o god grrrowls I can I can hear them I can smell them aint nothing quite like it hellhounds on your trail cause they got the scent and the water aint throwed them and now they running you cross dryland and dear god you bout done but when hellhounds got you you don't quit you just run run run till you drop you run cause aint no 4 legged demon eating your soul if you got any say if you can help it run dont you hear them run fool padding in your tracks go ahead and run snarling the air you breathe you gotta run the hot drip of saliva scarring your neck and hot on your trail but it really dont matter do it cause you got your wind now and by god you flying cross this ground and by god and all that's holy aint none of these fuckers gon outswim me

 

 

SUNDAY

ready for my conference, and just did 21:EDUCATION, im on
game but i am not happy, they are so weak, only reason i have
not abandoned this project is because i would be throwing away
30 years of dream/effort, trust the process/vision rick, maintain

 

 

SATURDAY

20:FAMILY - 61 TO GO

but i got some lean ones now, out of the 20 ive done maybe 4 of them
still notes quality text - well, at least i will know where the holes are

but one hole i fear i wont be able to fill, it does not feel like a holybook - one
i do not have god being responsible for every move, its more a mystic work

and i fear its not going to be a big weighty tome, how can a cosmology
be anything but a big weighty tome is how i feel but its going to be

a tight little book of poetics instead of an extended narrative, ima a creature of
my time and aesthetic, i believe in tight, feel like future generations will too

and i got all these stories, historicals and what i call destinicals that i dont know if they working
but ima leave them in because if i take them out all i got is an ambitious self help book

this is not what i wanted or expected but you got to just drive forward and
accept whatever format allow you to do that, i just got to trust the process

at this point i dont care what it looks like, i just
want to get it done and off my plate

i often begrudge the time i spend on this blog, i dont think i got a lot of readership
so sometimes its like why do you do this, but it doesnt take a lot, i just kind of

think out loud on the keyboard, and it does generate words for my digital persona
and it influences my nonfiction style, my text follows this narrative format instead of a
conventional one and i like what im coming up with, i trust it will be viable one day

im gone, 7:43 am and ive done my 2 for the day, (actually did 3) now
i got to get thru a students novel manuscript  - conference tomorrow 

its reading good, but im behind the ball, instead of having thought
about my critique for a week, which would make it that much stronger

ima have to give her a midnight oil critique, distress me thats
all i got to give, but at least give it strong - focus rick

aint nothing quite as humbling as a mfa conference
for which you are not prepared - focus

 if it comes to that i will have to ask for a days grace
i will not do a conference for which i am not prepared

focus - demoja

FRIDAY

17: REDEMPTION:  64 TO GO
that means im averaging 1 a day
thats fucked, got to get another gear

 

 

THURSDAY

barcelona review put up excerpt from novel
that was in memphis noir - there is no rest

goes w/o saying it embarrass me, if i cant
revise them i dont want to read them

 

 

MONDAY

got my groove on, in the zone, got a routine that gets me thru a segment in about 3 hours
did 3 today, could have done 4, but was trying to spend evening doing obligations, did it

fitfully but did that extra segment instead, which in this case is lack of discipline
but if i do 3 a day i will feel good, should i push for 4 a day, it will be a brutal

month but i will have a draft at the end of it, ive got a good assembly line routine now
so its mostly just sitting there following the steps like a robot, endurance is the call now

02:11:BLUESWORK - 70 TO GO (god awful trash draft, its all process)

 

SUNDAY

clocking segments, developing a routine thats getting me thru
i got almost 8 done now, be thru w/#8 in about a half hour id say
then i need to hit LAW again, the new one, its still raw but ima just
fill in the hole and call it a session, so goal is one segment (i have 9)
a week, and maybe get ahead by one over the spring break
the end of a segment is a good time to focus on my obligations
but mornings must be inviolate, im gone

heading to the city thur the 17th for babajohn centennial
will stop by grave on my way, get my soul tended

demoja

 

 

SATURDAY

i appear to be fucked, serious fullcourt and i have 5 movements done
(and calling them done is being flexible, they are god awful)

5 movements 5 days, thats one a day im averaging, full court press

i need to recalibrate, if its 1 a day then its 1 a day, but 1 a day x 81 movements
means it will take me 4 months to finish this draft, june, and this aint even a

good draft, this a predraft draft, 2 pages a day mean 2 months, i can live w/that
then i can use the summer to get a real draft done, got to get another gear

if next week i cant make the 2 a day count then i will accept that 1 a day it is
which is likely cause schoolhouse and personals howling at the door

right now im still ignoring them w/every ounce of willpower i can dredge
which means at some point im going to have to seriously crunch those

starting today basically im playing catchup, wont know till i get my days segment, if it takes all day
then im that much further behind, im feeling like once i get the groove i can knock off that 1 or 2 a

day then have the rest of the day for schoolhouse and personals, reason its hard now is because this is how it goes
from a dead stop, you start fitful, then hopefully you get the groove and just do it instead of dancing around it

if i get the groove (the mighty zone) i can get the predraft and my obligations done so
that come summer woodshed my decks will be cleared and i can throw down

im gone, got to do 01:06:LAW, this one is rough cause i just came up with it
it was SIGNIFICANCE before, wanted one for Law, the Natural Laws, Justice, et al

so i decided to put SIGNIFICANCE under vision, i keep thinking im good but everyday
i work the structure evolves, then i have to ocme up with new material

im gone, im disheartened, the work is shallow, life is falling apart while
i ignore it all, trying to clock these pages, make this holybook real . .

decided to go ahead and extract the biggie, for me at least - the bible
have not done the bible because i grew up in a bible culture, feel like

the essence of the biblical worldview and modality is ingrained already
but in my studies i keep running across good biblical lines/concepts

and i cant let the bible be better than the hoodoo book of flowers
i want to be the next step in human evolution, i want to be a contender

i dont tell folk this cause its a little ambitious but me and you dear
regulators nothing but the truth, this my space, where i can be me

when i do what i call an extraction im going into a text and incorporating
whatever value it has into my own text/worldview and making that

vision just a part of my own, my understanding of the longgame, ideological orchestration,
is that my vision has to encompass the visions of all the other players so their visions

just become part of my more encompassing vision, and when i think of the accretive
nature of hoodoo incorporating the best of what it interfaces and how many blackfolk are

invested in a biblical worldview i got to do an biblic extraction to go along with all
these other sacred text extractions, the bible is full of trash, ima weed out all that trash

put it all in a mythology compatible with a 21st century sensibility (and beyond)
digest the best and regurgitate, i figure a text as rich as the bible it will put me

on new ground and help make the work feel less shallow, i suspect it will take a couple
of months to get thru it but i would like this draft to incoporate whatever the bible

has to give - im gone, all my love

rdoc - demoja

trump is an existential threat, im relying on hillary clinton to take him down

 

THURS 3/3

I believe the rise of trump is dangerous beyond anything we have experienced, trump I believe will realign American politics even more than he already has, first the repubs will try to stop him by denying him enuf delegates for the nomination and stealing it back during a contested convention, but if he wins we in for a fight, not only will he attack Hillary below the belt and without regard for propriety but he will draw down Reagan democrats and many folk who wont acknowledge voting for him - its going to be a helluva battle that we just might lose - I believe the retros, repub and dem, will go with trump and the progressives and moderates, many of them repub, will go with Hillary just to keep trump out, this might realign American politics for a generation, hopefully there are not enuf retros to take him over the top, hopefully bernies folk wont sit it out pouting, hopefully Hillary is not crippled by emailgate - been hard for me to take it seriously but who the hell knows, so many open factors, my biggest concern w/trump is his authoritarianism, his lack of moral grounding and his authoritarianism tendency, I don't doubt he will ignore the constitution if it suits him, I don't doubt he will use the power of the gov to take out anybody he doesn't like, I don't doubt he will push the button w/o thinking it thru, we are in the battle of our generation, an existential battle for the soul of America and im relying on Hillary to take him down, i believe she the only one can

1:01:consciousness: lord legba, open this gate

so my goal is 2 movements a day, mornings, evenings for schoolhouse and personals
im trey behind, i should have 6 today, i have 2, ima restart the clock, that means im

caught up, hopefully i will get a groove on, its doable, just got to my discipline on
this is my 1st movement, raw and rough, im turning notes into text this draft, will

clean it up and make it sing on the next one, my fear is that its shallowness is
endemic instead of process, but im in it now, all i can do is do it - put the fears

the doubts and anxieties aside and do it - all my love,

rdoc - demoja

----------------------------  

*1:01:   consciousness: awaken the sleeper, function in
the spirit o traveler, and the world is your plaything

blessed be, one who knows, one who see, awake aware worthy of grace

LORD LEGBA, open this gate, in the name of the conqueror, let this work be done

it is lord legba, one of the few gods of Africa who survived the middle passage, lord
of the crossroads, the keeper of the gate, opener of doors between this world and the spirit
world, messenger of the gods and the random factor, who must be petitioned at the beginning
of any spiritwork, of whom the request must be made, lord legba, open this gate

i am - the state before consciousness: listening to the drum, fitfully stirring in a world
of sleepers, the land of nod, tossed about by the winds of circumstance and the whims
of others  it is knowledge of self  the greatest struggle, the greatest power.  who am i? 
why am I here?  what is the point? 

most folk go thru life unaware, unawake, but in this moment you
are of the conscious, truly living - the sleeper has awoken

the spiritual life doesn't just happen, it is an active choice
the nurturance of the soul is the goal of this work

the beginning is always the hardest step
false beginnings no more than true

the first step of illumination is to free yourself
of your own cultural conditioning, step back and see

self analysis must be constant, be aware of your strengths
and weakness compensate for them, manage your strengths,
once you have identified your strengths, cultivate them,
once you have identified your weakness, rechannel them

constantly check yourself, monitor your engagements, your
passions, nobody is on all the times, and often you find you
will have stumbled onto the low road, wandered off that high
path, no blame, focus

fa is upon you

back before time all the monkeyfolk was walking round on 4 feet when one day the monkey doctor say I have been thinking, I believe if we stand on our hind legs that our tribe and all our generations will flourish, I believe we can be more than we are like this, he say, and he stand, and he say o my god, if only you could see what I see, from here I can see forever, from here I can see the stars, at which point the monkeyfolk scoff, why on earth, they say, would we want to do that, what can we possibly do on 2 feet that we cannot do better on 4 why, o fool of a dreamer, would the great monkey god give us 4 feet if not to use them

early in the days of earth all humanity walked on four feet until the firstborn rose and stood upright in the  dawn of the world, before gondwaland divided itself and the 1st people sprung from mother africa, the little dark ones, the kung, the wa, the tcheu-li, the semang, the malay, the sakais, the dravidians, the liu-kiu, the melanesians & the khymer, building civilizatons along the great rivers of antiquity, the ganges, the euphrates, the nile, the people of the bow.

the blacks came first to the nile, birthing the first empire, here they met Fa, destiny standing at the crossroads, from nubia the folk followed the nile to the sea, planting themselves along its banks, building on its rhythms, the holy cities of napata and meroe, forging the first empire of the blacks, kemet, nubia & kush

birthing the first empire in the shadows of jebal barkal, the holy cities of napata and meroe, the black holylands of kemet, nubia, kush and egypt, of wo'se, nowe, and khartoum, of asselar, thebes, meroe, punt, and rozvi, zimbabwe, khol, san,  nok, and darfur, of the tassili mountains planting on the rhythms of the nile - the sahara was bountiful then, lush and rich and fertile, people were plentiful, proud fisherfolk of the sudan. 

open your eyes, young conjure,
a step every soul must take
look around young conjure, and

tell me, what do you see

humanity evolves, walking upright allowed use of hands
and the ability to walk long distances, farming allowed more density

groups begin to spread out, specialize tasks, organize, and so begins
the longmarch, the evolution of humanity is a story without end
no reason to think homo sapien is the end of the line

it is in the beginning of things that paths
are laid, destinies shaped, be careful here

& remember this o traveler, whatever challenges
we face we have faced before, in the great black
book of generations there is always a way