rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

daily excerpts: mojo rising 2.0

MON 12/7 9:21AM (back in the saddle)



HUNTING SOULS, ME AND MY LEGIONS
I often claim to be an elite in my work, when I tell folk
to restrain their elites, I will add – folk like me - i tell them
not to let themselves get took by elites / playas, including me

and its kiinda bold of me cause I don’t have the props of most elites
but im a historical force positioned to influence the destiny of humanity
when it come to ideological orchestration im the top of the food chain

and if you scatch the surface too deep you gon find a powerfreak
I just want to rule the world, pinky, and truth be told I enjoy taking souls
and building armies, whenever I perform I call myself seeding legions
I got legions all over the world  but I restrain my powerfreak
I restrain the charismatic force I am capable of being
the babajohn taught me that, told me I need more compassion






SUN 12/6  1:04pm



so couple of weeks ago got an email from my homegirl jamey hatley
she say this sister on instagram using HBOF for bibliomancy, passage
got over 500 liikes, tickled me i must say

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHvH-QXHy8q/?igshid=1m0f9vri61qgk

 

SAT 12/6   12:12pm

I guess its never too early to start drawing lessons from the hammer –
perhaps a pertinent excerpt on pandemics from the hoodoo book of
flowers – let me say this 1st, fauci say surges on surges, last lap yall,
dont get weary on the last lap, masking, distancing, virtual xmas,
another year maybe, mount the fuck up yall, we can do this:

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

5:29:5: when the conqueror realize aids / ebola / covid19 / whatever
comes next / had an affinity for the souls of blackfolk he cry out this
is a demon that must be finessed in its infancy, but nobody listens -
the prophets curse - the conqueror muse that a culture that does
not respond to cultural challenges in a timely manner is not a culture
flexible enough to finesse them, the tactical / survival response to any
cultural crises is to 1st acknowledge it, to monitor the evolving knowledge
base and change community behavior accordingly, each one of us doing
individually what the collective must,

5:29:6: but thats just defense / survival, seems we susceptible to every
pandemic come down the pike, the corresponding longgame should be
designed to harness the karmic power generated by a cultural crises of
this magnitude to make health of primal importance in our culture and
our lives, a cultural trait, geas by rickydoc, then we will have transformed
adversity into power, worked the counterspell,

finesse it and we stronger for it,
otherwise its just another tragedy,

FRI 11/13  9:33 AM



so much for daily, been crunching pages, still generating memories but
this morning one of the nyt opinion folk told a stpry about a bedouin
whose turkey was stolen, find my turkey he said, his sons laugh it off,
then horse and finally wife stolen and they say what shall we do and he
says find my turkey, then op ed explained, in ref to trump / repub denial,
when thieves realized they could steal w/o consequence they did

okay, good story, material for the hoodoo book of wisdom

i had 4 goals, 1st to tell it in as few words as possible
even fewer than above synopsis if possible

2nd make it an african american cultural beat
3rd address gender issue of wife being just another possession
4th, cut out - and the moral is - and replace w/signifying title
(literary storytelling frown on wrap-ups explaining the point)

this is what i came up with;

CONSEQUENCE
once heard of a sharecroppers wife had her chickens stole
told her sons, find my chickens, they laughed it off, just
chickens, they said, next week her mule was gone, find
my chickens, she said, oh mama, they said, next week
her husband was murdered in the night by thieves, what
shall we do, said her sons, find my chickens, she said


FAMILY
reminds me of another arab saying i need to process
me and by brothers against my cousins, me and my
cousins against the world

SUN 10/25  11:30 AM



LEFT HAND WORK
I am not going into detail on this one
suffice it to say I once did death magic on
a perceived enemy and he died forthwith

and I was like fuck that had to be a
coincidence but I never did that again
no left hand work never ever

in my heart i know that i did not kill that man, in
my heart i know i had nothing to do w/his death

don’t even know if I could give you
the details, that memory been seared
shut and locked away somewhere

the plague report: ride or die

SAT 10/24  1:48


its been on my mind to chronicle the times
the experience of living (one hopes) thru this
plague, one of the reasons i have not is a
superstitious fear, it seems to have a dry sense
of humor and goes after folk who deny it or
otherwise draw its attention but these is 
portentous times, its my griotic job to chroniclle
them and shape the cultural response so as to
be better prepared when this hammer falls again

im strong in my covid game, i
ts like covid fatigue? fuck that
im settling into my longstride
vaccine in a year or so

i can do this

wash my hands, wear my (clean) mask,
watch my distance - i can do this

but then i live a retired lifestyle that allow this
lot of folkk living much harder than me

also i am a 70 year old diabetic blackman who
has perhaps smoked one or two joints too many
if the covid catch me i feel llke ima dead man walking

its got me working hard because its come down just when
ive retired and was moving into a woodshed mode anyway

im deep in the zone, and ive stopped doing all that zoom virtual stuff
without the traveling meeting new people part, moving the congregation
and all it aint no fun no more, and only the elite folk getting paid
id rather just consider this a woodshed phase and get my work done,

id rather clock pages

as for what we need to do beyond individual protocol
which include avoiding the maskless zombies

thats kinda in the air till we see what happen in the election
if bidden wins america will implement mitigation strategies
it will still be a rough period with many deaths but we will be
able to see an endgame, we will know the gov is trying

if trump wins we looking at herd immunity with possibly
millions of unnecessary deaths and that might not be
the greatest of our problems, trump is an existential threat
and stopping him supersedes everyhing else

nov 3rd, ride or die

 

hello ellen, an fyi

SAT 10/22 12;24 am (mojo rising 2.0)



hello ellen, no need to reply, its an fyi
trying to work out in my own head

how I will proceed

deep into this memoir, trying to use flash fic
tech to force me off my soapbox and its working

sometimes I feel like this is the one

then sometimes I feel like im just regurgitating
same thing ive said everybook but this
time instead of declarative jeremiads

Its all reflective, a 70 year old black man
in hard times reflecting on a rather full life

okay, so im having to treat it with more respect
1^st it was just a project to distract me while
I waited on your judgment on rest, I was gon
do a rough damn near notes draft but now im

kinda determined it be a real draft before I put
it away, im working like a fiend, maybe nov
but more likely dec to fin it

as part of process I went into all my old works, then I went
thru 20 years of blogging and when I started working it I
thought I didn’t remember much,

these days I just sit down at the sacred desk, turn on
the spigot and memories cascade so quickly I cant type
fast enuf to catch them all, got this condition - essential
tremors - where I often have to type w/two trembling
fingers, feeling mortal, ellen, got to get this story down

I got 600 single spaced pages of material ima winnow down to
about 300 ds, all im trying to do now is turn raw notes into text

don’t have to be good text, just fill in the hole text and sequencing
all these flash fiction beats, im titling each one and I think I told you

in the process of going thru all my stuf I found material for about
8 major projects ive had in mind to do and im in the zone ellen

the narrative blessings flowing like rainwater and the project I value
is one im calling the hoodoo book of wisdom, exploring wisdom
and wisdom tale traditions from around the world and rewriting wisdom
tales to make them fiit my narrative so anyway whats happening is

that my beats for my memoir have become contemporary wisdom tales
but im striving to stay subtle, nuanced and indirect, the titles are the
giveaways,, structurewise im feeling galeanos memories of fire

this is a beat is just did, its raw, ima refine it and give it
the kinda detail that’s gon bring iit to life later

right now im just capturing memories and filling in holes
I fear ima have a 1000 pages of slush before im done that
I will then have to cut down to 300 ds pages of the best

I think I will take a couple of days to do those titles in
novel that you have asked for, just in case and then
fall back into memoir, im still going for jan sometime
with  novel, I could say go with it now but ive been

on a heroes journey ellen w/this memoir and im
a diff person / writer / visionary who understands
better who I am and what phase of life im in and

ive always been a metafictional writer, I got a stronger
novel in me ellen, and it’s the novel I want to cap my life
and work, I just got to be patient and hope this all works
for you, iit will be a much stronger novel and after all
these years a few more months wont hurt me

did this one today, all thru I been having fun w/my
narrative even when the passage is hard on.me,
this is not one of those, some stuff I been writing hurt
might edit but for this draft im letting it all hang out

cause im searching for truth for whats real and true
and even I don’t know what that is, I will edit later

at one point I had to ask myself what is the driving theme of this text
which is basically asking myself what is driving theme of my life and I decided

after much pondering it is to shape in my brief lifetime an illuminated soul from the
material I have been given, which I don’t think woulda been my answer a year ago

sorry about all the wordage
all my love - be safe

---------------------- 

GOOD LORD WILLING AND DE CREEK DON’T RISE
the car started drifting, clearly no longer on the road and as I desperately worked the steering wheel in search for dry ground I thought about the flood I wrote up in another good loving blues, and how it was nothing like what I had experienced the last couple of days trying to get back to syracuse from the city, I had finally abandoned 81 and its lines when I saw a road leading off the beaten path and in a state of desperation had taken it and now I had spent the last 5 or 6 hours wading through lakes and streams of water running across the road carrying trees and shit and often the road disappeared under water and its only luck I had not driven into some of the downed trees laid across the road like submerged alligators, my volvo then, roaddog 4, was the 770, which was a tank of a volvo and that’s what got me thru, cant tell you hopw many times roaddog waded thru water up to the fucking window, well maybe not that high but you get the idea, 2 in thhe morning, raining 7 days 7 nights, im the only fool on the road, my headlights the only light, and then suddenly I would lose the grip of the road under the tires and I was in a boat, using the steering wheel  in a desperate search for road and this last one look like my luck had run out as I drifted further away from where I thought the road was and I thought about now I know what its like, wished I had experienced it before I wrote about it in another good loving blues, realized I wrote a tsunami not a delta flood, and I was thinking if I survive this, if I ever get the chance ima write a better flood scene than that, and just then I felt the wheels catch on something, it wasn’t road but it was ground and I swa where there was a a strip with no trees that I decided was the road and as I carefully made my way there I called on the conductor, dear lady tubman, please see me safely home

phase 2: formatting

SUN 10/4 2:26pm phase 3: placement)



hello world, in da zone, clocking pages, got 7 phases:
phase 1: extraction (raw notes, 800+ page)
phase 2: formatting into paragraphs (397 pages)
phase 3: placement of appropriate paras in 9 movements
phase 5: sequencing internal progressions per movement
phase 6: enrichment of manuscript per movement = 1st draft
phase 7: clean it up

ellen said novel ready to go, i asked if i could hit it once more
being immersed in me me me for a month now and covid et al
got me fey - ima diff artist that i was 3 months ago

i got a deeper novel in me, been on a heroes
journey, bringing back gifts for the tribal soul

pic of my 5 vol hyatt set, kinda rare
how i got it is a story i will tell later
i got to get back on the gun, im giving
phase 3 two days, three max

been thinking about doing a covid report thing
a transformative approach to the challenges thereof

for instance been expressing love for the impo folk in my life,
i find it comforting in these mortal times to spread joy

also been struggling with my response to trump falling ill
trying not to to indulge the thought somebody needs to die
before the powers that be take it seriously, think its
only black and brown follk dying so fuck it, started wondering
which one would work best politically and appalled myself
the republican party has become a death cult
aint going there, struggle always spiritual aint it, shit
about to get wierd and only one thing is certain

ive already voted