rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

if i dont win ima die surprised

SATURDAY the 7th



caught up on my schoolhouse grind and gone be
on road next week, the delta symposium, im the
literary keynote person, my presentation is: hoodoo
lords of the delta, pedagogy, practice & prophecy

that close to memphis i ask ekpe and cequita to hep me,
we gon brang some memphis soul stew up in there

today all this morning i been working on HBOF text
processed all my notes, now im clocking pages again
and wondering if i go full court i wonder if i can
use being down in the delta to finish a draft and

refocus for my big summer novel push, just the fact
im working HBOF text makes me feel good, finishing

a draft will make me feel better, gotta go, gotta
clock me some pages, play gods instrument

plus in terms of being nervous about this gig
if im deep in my draft i wont care, i will have
perspective, im gone, all my love

rdoc

 

SATURDAY the 31st

i feel so much better, ive moved into a different phase
ive grouped all those sentence or two beats into movement
categories like compassion, fate, etc and am now putting
those groupings into the text, still raw but at least its
working on text, still researching but its a diff phase, no
longer digging myself into a hole, digging out now

moving into closure, all my love

 

WEDNESDAY THE 28TH

this is the way i do research these days
since january i been researching 'grace'

1st i go to wikipedia, see what they got to say
make note of any interesting sources they note

then i download every sample on amazon
remotely affiliated w/the concept grace
this is say 25 books, i go thru those samples
in itself an education, often everything that
book has to say is in the outline and 1st chap

from this i get maybe 10 more books to hunt down
i wean all those down to must reads, say 10 books

if they are academic books i got to syracuse univ library
this puts me in the stacks, another 40 books maybe

i take them to a library table and scan them, lets say
20 i check out and scan more closely, goal being to
get them out of my house,, the ones i can scan thru
and extract what they have i do, the ones that have
nothing i take back almost immediately but there are
about 7 at this point i want to read closely and mark uo

back to amazon, the ones that are cheap enuf i order them
the ones that arent cheap and arent at the library i hustle

of makiing (and researching books) there is no end

i use my research fund to pay for books, just did
my list for research fund reimbursement, these
are the books my search for grace has led me to:

how religion developed
the meaning of grace
divinity and experience: nuer religion       
human development, 9th edition                       
eternal quest, finding god                                   
speaking of gods in narrative and metaphor
liberating grace                                
systematic theology        
earth crammed w/heaven              
minding the spirit                            
2666 by bolano  (was talking about bolano w/a student)                            
remythologizing theology    (so expensive i rented it for $18)
the essence of christanity             
reverence: rewnewing       
the faith instinct                         
how and why god evolved      
the astronomy book                            
the big questions in science & religion  
whats so amazing about grace            
dance of the infidels                        
the art of spiritual direction           
spiritual guidance across religions

these are just the ones i actually bought, add another 25
from library like christanity, islam and the orisha

dept sec who processes all this says you cant possiby be reading them
under relentless time constraints, im always determining whats critical
i got a million books on my phone and by the bed thats critical

i know you like who interested in another book list, arthur
but you got to understand i dont keep this blog for you
i do it for scholars of the future, my trail of breadcrumbs
(well maybe for you a little bit)

right now im reading a book called the secret teachings of the ages
the astronomy book is really digestible astronomy,, id like to finish that one
im thinking the art of spiritual direction and spiritual guidance
across religions are explicitly my interests, both fat fuckers of course
still trying to wade thru quantum physics and the laws of nature

problem is one thread leads to another, grace lead to theology
rinse and repeat whole fucking process, of making etc

picked up a book, the maximalist novel, that i ran across
i think of it and bolano as part of the Rest for the Weary push
that im trying to clear the decks for now, i want a good draft of
THBOF before i settle into that push this summer

which means i should close this post down and start
working text, which is transposing about 40 pages
of notes into segments which i then stick (raw)
into their given movements, then i work those

until they are viable passages, then a couple of
full run thrus and i will have a draft, i need to
have that done by the end of the month

i got to go, im out of here, all my love . . .

 

MONDAY THE 26TH

i have a really funky blues, that book on human development
has depressed me, in the aging section it talks about when folk
have to give up their youthful dreams of fame and fortune and

in my case, significance, and im very conscious that i have held
on to mine w/o much reinforcement from the world long after
most folk have abandoned theirs

but when i read my work it feels inadequate, like the world
was right all along, and that mbira, was listening to recordings
i have of recent sessions and i dont sound as good as i think

i sound when im playing  -  man i am depressed and i want to
just give up and quit and withdraw from the fray, im so depressed

but my identity of myself is so wrapped up in being a dreamer
that i just dont know how to quit and ima keep on swinging but
but it appears i no longer believe in the victory i guess

ive set up a persona in the world and got to play the hand out
i might, for instance, be doubting my mbira chops but i got gigs in cuba
australia, bali, vancouver, lisbon and various colleges scheduled
and i got to show up and do whatever it is i do and make it work

i feel like i been betrayed by knowledge, i think of knowledge
as my thing, contributing to a wisdom that allows me to deal
with life and finesse it with a cosmic serenity of purpose but
my recent knowledge push has instead unsettled me

im tired, im whining but i got a full days work
ahead of me, might be why im whining

all my love . .. .

PS: im taking these posts and putting them in my HBOF notes
cause its that vulnerable tone im looking for in my personalized
beats, even despair can be of use in the Craft, hang in there, rick

you can do this . . .

 

 

SUNDAY the 25th

so im reading this book, human development
figured it would help my lifeworks beats
it is truly fucking with my head, one it talks

about personal mythology when adolescents
think they arent subject to the laws that govern
mortals and thats so me back in the day and
yes life quickly disabused me of that notion but
i still feel like im destinied

i dont try to work it cause its delusional enuf
without me trying to convince folk of it but i
conduct myself as if it were indeed truth, thats
what conjuration is, conduct yourself as you

aspire to be and you are

now i find that even that was not unique to me
its a damn stage that other folk grew out of and
at one point says folk give up on magic in
their lives and settle on hard work, i do both

then in the late middleaged sections it talks about
how folk have to accept that the great dreams of
youth were just that, dreams, and the wouldbe
jazzman accepts the highschool music teacher
job as his life and me i got a good thing with
my mfa teaching gig but it dont satisfy me

i have accepted that this might be as far as i go
but that dont mean ima stop swinging

at what point does it become delusional
or rather at what point does the delusional

become critical mass, i dont know of any other
writer whose late years stuff is as strong as the
work of his or her yoouth, there may be one or
two exceptions but mostly folk lose their chops

i suspect w/this novel ive reached a point of diminishing
returns, perhaps the holybook also, i think this is the last
summer im giving to either of these projects, at this point
i fear im just stripping what power they may have, im done

time to look at other projects
time to move on

the plan was to use the summer to enrich them both
which means i have to maintain faith in them, even

if in truth i no longer have it, old
trouper just dont know how to quit

if i dont win ima die surprised

1 mo year god, spit & bailing wire
then we will renegotiate, like always

all my love

rdoc

there are no answers, there is no rest

SATURDAY 3/24

my 1st stab at doing a 'personalized beat'
totally not working, tone issues, and i think i
jammed too many beats in there maybe

i dont have time to clean it up, i think ima
go thru text and do onne for each movement
then see what my arc look like before i try
to clean them up, just let it be bad, rick . . . .

i think where i went wrong is its too declarative
i got to tone it down, make it more reflective . .

or maybe i can wait and see what the arc looks like
give it some room to become reflective, trust myself

im tired, my brain is tired

ima go watch a good car chase movie
bonnie like to watch real movies that
make her think, i just want to shut my brain
down for a minute, ima watch thor:ragnorak
again, cause thats what heroes do

so this was the personalized beat
for 1st movement: consciousness
i need something that more reflects the
seeker sensibility i get on rootsblog posts:

im gone

-----------------    

I want to be a hero, a champion of my race
I want the generations to love me

Im only on the planet for the shortest moment
my mentor, baba john killens, called on his legions
To be longdistance runners, which I interpret as the
longgame, shaping generations and I determine

My best bet for shaping generations given my skill set
Would be a holybook, My biggest challenge is
universalizing my text, my vision

I put a lot of ponderation on this, should I speak for blackfolk,
like I was trained, or do I speak for All humanity, all
humanity is the strong move, all humanity is the future,

but I cant leave blackfolk defenseless, all over
The world blackfolk are the despised of the earth, I cant
Accept that, and all over the world that aint on nobody but us,

Somehow someway we must transform into strengths the weaknesses
that have crippled us in global competition, as a trained cultural
orchestrator in the line of o killens and a practitioner of cultural
Custodianship in the high hoodoo tradition my understanding
Is that the viability of a culture is a factor of its indigenous spiritual
Traditions, I will empower and illuminate the hoodoo tradition
I will make of it an instrument of destinical redemption

By god and all that's holy I will

 

 

WED the 21st

an ill wind from the west

"The plan to cut the liberal arts and humanities majors...is in line with a failed attempt by Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 to secretly change the mission of the respected university system — known as the Wisconsin Idea and embedded in the state code  — by removing words that commanded the university to “search for truth” and “improve the human condition” and replacing them with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

 

 

MONDAY the 19th

hello world, im holding up

shut down research, just got tired of it
am working the notes now, categorizing them
putting all the pieces together, generating text
its a process, finished categorzing today
compiling and putting into text as raw script
once im done w/this phase i will process it

the photos are for marielle franco, brazilian sister
who was assassinated in rio, dont know if it was
gangs or the police, she was a scourge of both
bonnnie was tellling me about her funeral, 1000s
of folk showed her love, thats what i want
i want folk to love me for my service

ima have to give her some play iin HBOF

so i had lunch with me colleague, dana spiottta
she had read HBOF some drafts ago and had
said she had suggestions, i blew her off, i dont
really take suggestions fromm folk on my work
i just want to be told its working, keep rolling
but dana had one thing to say, she said i should
personalize it aand i explained that i was trying
to avoid setting myself up to be worshiipped
or some such by keeping my personal out
of my holybook but she start takling about

how havving a narrative thread would help it
and i told her how i had come to decide the last
third had to be personalized cause when it come
to god and grace and fate and fa and all i just
didnt have the answers i had in 1st 2/3rds
which was lifenotes and destinywork

so anyway now im considering doing personal beats
which is basically de geas of rickydoc, all the way thru
just got to address it w/the humility which will avoid the
prophets curse, starting to believe yoour own mythwork

just cause i think im gods gift to humanitty
dont mean i got to act like it

just this morning im going thru my notes when i run up
on these raw passages:

----------------   

the center of the universe is also its circumference, my basic meditational tech is what i call centering, this came from efforts to monitor the body processes, to move consciousness thruout the body and i would often hunt for the center of my consciousness, which i perceived to be my soul, and was not necessarily physical and i would settle there in the center and came up with concept that it would be good to align my center with the center of the universe as i perceive it, hard to explain beyond that but i have found it to be one of my most rewarding meditations/experiences, it's a very cosmic sensation and i have further put that sensation to use in other meditations

the only thing constant is that im just constantly being humbled, i remember when i thought i was the last of the big time hoodoomen, went online and not only did i find an entire community of hoodoo there but i am not necessarily one of the strongest, most of my buddies are stronger hoodoos, stronger magicians, stronger mystics, stronger everything, its damn near a criteria of rickydoc buddydom i think

what i am is historical,
thats my superpower

i feel like i owe you an apology, at this point i think i got to start getting personal, which i been trying to avoid but i am not longer confident in my speculations, i expect to be humbled, embarrassed at the shallowness of my understanding, it is also my understanding if what you wrote a year or 10 ago don't embarrass you it mean you aint growing and might as well go sit in the corner and stop cluttering up the field with your sorry carcass

i want to be a big thinker, i want to be a cosmic thinker, one of humanites great teachers, but i feel like all i do is keep squddering around in the mud. i remember an earlier version of the hoodoo book of flowers, it was called black power the will and the way and it was much more political and i read it in a workshop and doris jean said, 'darling its beneath you'

---------------------   

so what ima do is put a geas by rickydoc beat
on each one of my 81 movements, then see if

it works and if it dont i will just cut it
im gone, ima do my work today, which
means ima have to throw down all week
on a schoolhouse grind just to catch up

also ive decided to try to tune up my array
i cant take it anymore, it dont sound like it
should and i just dont see packing it up
and sending it to california everytime it
gets out of tune, when its just a hair

out of tune i want to tune it and when its
way out of tune like it is now that dont work
ima get me a hex wrench and some needle
nose pliers and ima be real careful, ima

practice on the keys i dont rerally use 1st
thenn ima petitoin the gods and work the
ones i really use

im gone i got so much work to do
i can hear that clock ticking

one thing i want to do is when i do this revision
of the HBOF ima do an oral version over the
summer, while i still got voice and fingers,
neither which are not what they used to be,

that will also cause me to edit it down to the essential
performing a work you start cutting what aint essential

i got to go

all my love
truly

rdoc

 

 

a good nights sleep, a new day

TUESDAY THE 13TH

im done, im just tired of other folks stuff
im tired of silly godwork, im tired of theology
ima keep wading thru that quantum physics and laws of nature

cause its telling me stuff i dont know, i feel like im being
redundant with the godwork at this point, let me do text
and see what i come up with, see where im still weak
lets do the last two sections this week, that will be pushing
it but such is life

im really wanting to get thru this, one to do the novel
two i want to finish this revision then edit down for an
oral version using my array, feeling like sacred works
they come out of the oral trad and i want to do it oral
before age takes away my chops, im gone

iwill keep researching but it no longer has primacy
get ninas book off my plate, or do i just jump in

while my mind is full of godwork

sorry nina, ima jump . . .

all my love

 

TUESDAY THE 13TH

reading this book now called epiphanies across traditions and cultures
all aboot how diff seers and founders dialogued with god over the years
which would have fascinated me had i not read the book already, called
how religion evolved which made a good case for all the dialogues w/god being
because of the bicameral nature of the mind and that we constantly dialogue

with ourselves and how previous generations have always assumed that
dialogue was with divine or daemonic forces so a book which only attempts
to establish that we have had them (who questions that) and identify the
diff types of dialogues with god already feels outdated to me, how to move
the power of that dialogue into a 21st century sensibility would be more
useful to me,

the breakdowns this book gives are high relief epiphanies, quiet epipghanies
dialogue epipanies, unconcious epiphanies and epiphanies of unknowing

also deals with prophetic epiphanies, mystical epiphaniies
have not gotten to chapters on epiphanies in the modern era yet
but so far im not but so impressed, he is making case thqt they happen
but who questions that, i want to know why they happen, we will see
what value speculations i will get out of this one

MONDAY THE 12TH

so, marching thru the texts, latest batch of notes from various texts
ima close down this shop come thurs and start working texts, im bored
with research, will keep extracting but it will be 2ndary to text

-------------------        

Just read mythology and the new testament by bultman and he says
in 1941 what I keep thinking is my big revelation, that Christian mythology

No longer makes sense to the contemporary sensibility and it doesn't matter
How you try to justify it as metaphor its is clearly from an outdated era
And should be abandoned (that was my little addition, I don't know if he
Said it,, once I got the point I skimmed it, he was an awful writer, dense

 

 

Notes from the divine attributes (about a 3rd in)

theology as the study of the divine, rational theology it has to make sense

god can be physical or spiriutual, part of the univers or separate from it

I go with the concept that theuniverse is god, the great mojo

because I resist the personalization of god, I see god as a force, not a person

and I might as well call that force the great mojo since I see mojo itself as allotted godforce

pantheism is that god is the universe but it says then that god is material, I think not

spinoza says that god is neither spiritual nor physical

bec so many folk think of god as maxima

l personal being it becomes a force that can hear our prayers, etc

a morally perfect being as opposed to a ‘plurality of morally imperfect gods’

ockhams razor postulates that simplicyt is best, ie one god over many, assuming objective moral values

infiiniate or maximal greatness, essential rather than contingent force

omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent,

spinoza says that god thought is the congregation of all thoughts infinite
so god is not a unitary personality, a person and we don't hink god has self awareness as god
that's us trying to encompass what we don't understand,

this guy says that an impersonall force is not worthy of worwship, is that so
it would not respond to prayers and requsts for divine help or forgiveness

its responsibility for both good and evil is causual rather than moral, it is amoral
I can get around that by saying the universe responds to human grace, alignment with the great mojo

material as spatial, soul spiritual as mental property

a spiritual force is not outside reality because it occupies time and space

, omnipresence is located everyspace, not a space

Punctitude is being located in a variety of spaces at the same time (a word for that)

 

Notes fromm rediscovering reverence
big diff between faith of childhood and faith of adulthood that has survived doubt and the dark night of the soul, childhood faith you believe what you are told, you accept myths of your tradition as reality

Religious life is one of the spirit with all its benefits, so too is the spiritual or mystical life, what is diff other than acceptance of religious dogma

Life evolution must be both individual and social, if all you do is individual you little better than a beast

‘Heroic self assertion’ or as thor put it in ragnorak, that's what heros do

Western religious godwork is externally focused, eastern internal, the twoheaded high hoodoo must integrate both of these,this serch for the great mojo

Everybody has mojo to some % other theother, everybody has access to the great mojo, or do you access it only thru conscious search, but then there is the matter of grace, which is given to all irregardless ???

Reverence is awe and wonder for spmething greater than your current understanding, a spiritual force greater than your understanding, something that transcends your normal mundane existence and makes you feel truly alive

His premise is that god has to be a person not a force for you to worship it
this brings into question what is worship, is it that traditional obsesience to god/the gods

This is basically, the aligbnment of the god within w/the god without is what I call centering,

Approached thru meditation and seasoned with righteousness in the world

Living in the spirit is being attuned to that which lies beneath the surface of reality

This is the ongoing quest to surmount the constraints of the material world

For many contemporary secular folk art has taken the spiritual place of religion

The spiritual path is a vulnerable one beset with demons and charlatons, walk a croosked path

INTESTING, THESE NOTES ARE ESSENTIALL MY OWN RIFFS WHILE LIFE IN THE SPIRIT I JUST TOOK ONE LINER NOTES ALMOST VERBATIM CAUSE SO VERY LITTLE OF IT WAS USEFUL, IT DIDN'T GENERATES RIFFS WHILE EXTRACTING, HOPEFULLY NEXT PHRASE IT WILL

So what do I do next and see if it can be taken

He says eastern focuses on transcendence and western on immanence

IT'S THE MYTHWORK I GOTTA WORK,, BOTH IN HBOF AND IN RFTW (&whatever else I do)

He makesx a case for the importance of habituated ritual in thhe religious/spiritual/mystical/metaphysical life

His position is that faith is not something you have but something
you do, that faith is the courage to act on your convictions

The hoodoo code, the 7 hoodoo verities, honor, dignity, agency, compassion, grace, blessings, empowerment,  leadership, go with 7 for everybody, 9 if you high hoodoo, a traveler

Whenever you find yourself in a spiritual moment you standing at the crossroads, choose wisely

The mastter disciple relationship

Encounters at the crosroads are moments of intensity, it can be the hammer or it
can be a moment of grace, it can be a person or exposure to the wonders of nature

but it is always transformative, finesse it, extract from it the significance, the highroad

be attuned what is the most sifnificanr lesson inherent in this moment, whereis the mojo

there is in us all soemthign that wants more than mere exisatence, that needs a life in the spirit

the power of music and trhe spokenword to touch us spiritually beyond the written
the written conveys tradition but to move the congregation you got to work the word/music

the way of the spirit as a journey, life as pilgrimage

the way of the traveler, a jouney w/o end, no rest for the weary

what are the 7 steps (stations?) of this journey, the opening, the commitment, the doubt, the death, the renewal, the grace, the struggle, I need to come up with a word for it, the hoodoo journey, or something, that didn't ring, again do I add an extra 2 for travelers or am I saying everybody is a traveler

does this correlate to the pilgrimage concept, does traveler also refer to that
everybody does this, do they have to do the pilgrimage or should that be more a suggestion

‘compassion is always good, especially for those who appear undeserving, who knows what struggles lurk

My understanding (as in could be wrong) is that every 7years or so your cells have replaced themselves, surely your understanding should have to if you been growing as you should

Religou thought works best as metaphor according to this guy

Revelations epiphanies and the bicameral mind

The spiritual journey often grows from an urgent need

Many paths - meditation, prayer and conbtemplation, also maybe music art et al, what about love

Add to the fundamental question of who am I, add who do I want to be

When I say I am rickydoc im not only stating who I am, im stating who I aspire to be
we have many voices/daimons inside, be conscious of who is leading when, shape them
you have to forge the true you, homesoul, I, your slice of ther great mojo, on the planet for a moment to effect a difference,

We must 1^st develop the eye that sees
identify the pilgrims path, & journey forth
de journey within, god de universe, de traveling soul

Centering home soul w/de cosmos
w/god/gods, the divine, the great mojo
a slice of which we all carry with in, when you

Center your mojo with the great mojo

conscious of your godness

You are capable of finessing any challenge
and turning it into power, even death
will not stop the great mojo

Attend me, dear God.

hope is the big mojo, hope is faith in action, it is hope for a better future that makes life worthwhile, that allows us to gamble on the highroad, that leavens death – okay im riffing now, this needs work

Its because we like to hope there is justice in the world that we aspire to mojo even when no one is looking, we assume that god/the great mojo is listening, that there is justice in the cosmos (LAW?)

The only way you can claim exclusive truth is if you nistake the part for the whole

He speaks on the value of cultural resonance in favor of christanity, I hae used it as the motivation for empowering the hoodoo way

He says that you should listen to the songs of your faith in an adult fashion, an illuminted fashion??

I need a word a cocept for that spiritual maturity im referencing there

Speaks of heroic action and heroic nonaction, soemtbing there???

A developmental pattern, you are brought up in a tradition and you have a childs understanding that takes it all literal as given but then you get some training and you question the surface and its contraditions, a period of doubt and experimentation leads you either to a more satisfying understanding of your faith or to one that is more satisfying to your evolving understanding, this after the period of experimentation, then there are those who never question what they were taught as children and stay there, stuck in the fundamentalism of childfaith

That period on the bus to California, it was my crosswroads, what did it do to my faith

At that point I was already a hoodoo, had I already decided to defy hoodoo conventionalism then, or before, I do not know

Im THINKING 3^RD PHASE OF HBOF, I SHOULD ENGAGE THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE TO BE AT THAT POINT, LET IT BECOME PERSONAL, I TRY HARD TO AVOID PERSONAL IN LAST DRAFT BUT IT SEEMS THAT FOR ENGAGING THE SPIRITUAL ON THAT LEVEL (I NEED A WORD FOR THAT) THAT IT HAS TO BE PERSONALIZED AT THAT POINT (THIS IS ME RESPONDDING TO FIONNAS COMPLAINT ABOUT TOO MIUCH CERTITUDEE, WHICH I CATEGORICALLY REJECT BUT FOR THQT LAST 3^RD A DEGREE OF PERSONALIZED STRUGGLE I THINK WILL BE EFFECTIVE AT CONVEYING WHAT I WANT TO SAY ABOUT THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE TO EVOLVE AND ENGAGE GOD (I NEED A WORD FOR THAT) AND I NEED TO ENGAGE THAT STRUGGLE EARLIER IN THE TEXT AND LET IT INFORM THE WHOLE TEXT BUT LERT IT TAKE PRECEDENCE OR CONTEXT IT SOMEHOW IN THE LAST 3^RD

 

Random beats
from that book of quotes a religion that ha not mastered death is not a religion
to put with my riff on how all the great ways prepare you for death
a great way that has not mastered death is not a great way

of the traveler I require a text, a road map, for future travelers, a
blessing from somebody who knows the road, and is willing to share

 

FRIDAY THE 9TH 12:30

this is my backup mbira the array folk are building
for me, i chose the wood, aint it divine

just finished In The Spirit, god it was a chore, skimmed it mostly
but cant skim Quantum Cosmology, i have to reread every
sentence figuring out what its saying, its one of those just

Read it and hope you will be better able to comprehend
After youve read whole book, it will take forever, i think i will
focus on Rediscovering Reverence as primary read now
its a much more rewarding read than life in the spirit

still makes silly god statements, he dismisses folk who challenge the anthropomorphic
god the father as not realizing its not meant to be literal but why deal in illusion and all the
believers who do take it literal because you told them it is, why deal in obvious illusion

okay, do my priority list, i feel overwhelmed:

1          rediscovering reverence  by heintzman
2          liberating grace 
3          speaking of god in figure and narrative
4          human development by
5          sacred words and sacred texts
6          remythoologzing theology by vanboomer (?)
7          eternity, god soul and physics by trevelyn
8          mind, space and cosmos by odenwald
9          quantum physics and the laws of nature
10        tomorrows god by geerin
11        christanity, islam and orisha religion by peel
12        revealing prophecy (prophecy in east afica, an old text i want to read again)
13        sorcery, totem and jihad in african philsophy
14        the big picture by carroll
15        religous epiphanies across religions and cultures

 

FRIDAY THE 9th

okay, i guess i just needed a good nights sleep
get me some perspective, get back in the saddle
quit whining about the literary grind, was reading

this article this morninng and turkey arresting writers
and its like in the west you just dont get paid, i can
handle that, let me make me some tea and get

back to work, ima finish the extraction of life in the spirit today
i want this piece of trash off my plate, messed around and
downloaded more natural laws books

i need to make a list of the critical reads
and maybe keep reading as i write

already on my list:

sacred words and sacred texts
the guru question by kaplan
revealing prophecy (prophecy in east afica, an old text i want to read again)
sorcery, totem and jihad in african philsophy
masks of the universe
speaking of god in figure and narrative
humsn development by

quantum physics and the laws of nature
redisvering reverence
liberating grace
the archtypal cosmos
reverence by woodruff
remythoologzing theology by vanboomer (?)
metaphorical theology by mcfague

the essence of christanity by feuerbach
eternity, god soul and physics by trevelyn
mind, space and cosmos by odenwald
the big picture by carroll
christanity, islanb and orisha religion by peel
the faith instinct by niucholas somebody

the samples i just downlaoded:

the fortunate universe by lewis
sigbpostws to god by bussey
universal laws explained by Shertone
dreams of a final theory by weinberg

okay, these are like the ones that are
by the bed and my sitting chair downstairs

there are a bunch on the dining room table
that i got from last SU library run:

modela of god by mcfague
the universal god by will
the concept of god by ward
new testament and mytholgoy but bultman (the one i went there looking for)
religous epiphanies across religions and cultures
the divine attributes by hoffman
tomorrows god by geering

and these are the ones i took w/me, i sit there
at library table with a stack of about 30 ive pulled
off the shelf and skim thru to see which are worth
a closer look, at every stage ruthlessly winnowing

its amazing to me now that i thought i could write a holybook
without mastering theology, guess i just thought god would
would write it, from gods voice to my hear, like moses and
mohammed i guess, i should have known god wouldnt
make it easy for me

thought about how if fionna or asmistad had said yes
i wouldnt be struggling now to take it to higher ground

i know the gods of lit love me cause they wont give me
a break, they want to keep me hungry, keep me striving,
if im given a break they fear i will get lazy and coast

i have tired myself out just listing these
protize the top 10 arthur and as i did before

give myself an arbitrary date to cut off research
truth be told i could do it now but look at all that
knowledge i would be passing up

not only am i going to get specific riffs generated
by reading and notes, just the reading itself
makes me a more profound and hopefully
illuminated individual and all that contexrt
comes into play when i start doing text

but there is no way ima get thru all these dense texts in
the next 3 weeks, (while doing schoolhouse grind too)
can i schedule april too, no i cant, im already burnt out
on research ande need to get next draft done in april
so i can start novel revision in may ????

these books will also inform the novel, as will the new
draft of the hoodoo book of flowers, so prioritize rick
choose the critical 5, choose the critical 10

im almost 70 and my shelf life is short
got so many physical issues these days
would have been nice to get all this knowledge
when i was 40 and in my prime but such is ilfe
if i can incorporate it in my texts i will be satisfied

another functioning year lord and i will be good to go

all my love

rdoc

all my love