rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

I GOT DEM WORKHOUSE BLUES

Apr 9   4:41 am (pg 100 of 292)



3rd day straight ive not done a lick of work
bonnie had surgery yesterday so i was on duty
but i could have gotten work donne, im just tired

no work stretch like this is rare,
tells me just how weary i am

when you keep working burnt out like this you
just spinning your wheels and getting nowhere

i might just take a couple days off

if you spinn ing your wheels like Im doing now
you not getting any work done or rest either
you just frustrating yourself

have to officially shut down shop

finish watching zach avengers, read a thriller
mindless shit that turns the creative thing off

bonnie watches deep movies that make you think
i dont want to think, i want to space out, thank you

have not heard from industry about novel
fuck em, its a good novel, fuck em and fuck em

on this memoir, ive got some questionable passages
there and its this constant quest to be emotionally
honest and then i think its so strange and different
the industry is going to dis it like they do all my work

then today when I was sitting there just now
trying fruitlessly to get going and part of it is
me questioning what Im coming up with, if it will
sell, be picked up, respected, appreciated

the industry just does not know what to do w/me
bullshit gets published, i cant get the time of day

and i think fuck em, fuck the industry
fuck the literary world, fuck the readers

fuck em all

im telling my life story and
im telling it to future generations
and im trying to be true and honest
and ima let that suffice - fuck em

and that understanding was so liberating
part of my stumbling is my anxieties about
the secrets Im exposing, my own and others
and the value of the life i offer for cultural mining

1000 fucking pages, i must
be out of my fucking mind

each passage im trying to evoke emotional
resonances and registers, its killing me

and i know its still protodraft, i know that
when i reread it ima be embarassed
and disappointed and im just tired of it
months / years to tread and im bone weary

ima take a couple of days off
get my head right, rickydocs
traveling medicine show is

closing down shop, packing up the
Wagon, moving on to the next town



Apr 6   5:05  pm (pg 100 of 292)



not a lick of work, im just burnt out

Apr 5   11:18 pm (pg 102 of 292)

i coulda done the 2 but im burnt out

Apr 4   11:04 pm (pg 100 of 292)

just barely making my 10, 20 more days
of good 10s and i will jave a real draft

Apr 4 1:01 pm (pg 95 of 292)



I have been fully vaccinated
I can’t wait to get wild and do

The very same thing I been doing
Maintaining covid protocol et al

I ain’t eating at no restaurant
Take out works just fine
Ain’t hanging out w/friends
Ain’t going to movies etc

Parties? Be real.

I only do what I have to - whilst
Evading the maskless hordes

I have been forced into the
Very situation I retired to be
In - the woodshed - wrestling
With the work, clocking pages

24/7

Been a hard row to hoe but if the
Covid don’t catch me I’m good

And tonight ima watch Brer Kong
Kick that lizards ass - on tv

Apr 3 11:15 am (pg 90 of 290)



dammit its not fair, did my 10, still behind

part of the reason Im moving so slow
is that this been an emotional rollercoaster
i write thru great memories and i work thru
memories that sear my soui - again and again

did another page and im emotionally exhausted

got to take a break

percolate me some golden monkey
stretch my legs, take a toke

get back in the saddle
back in the saddle

Apr 3 9:10 am (pg 85 of 290)

been working hard all morning, 6 pgs, still
early, if i get todays 10 Ima eat into backlog

god im tired

Apr 2 11:51 pm (pg 79 of 290)

in about 5 minutes my top count willl be 102
and i will be abt 30 pages behind, i need to
abandon 10 a day but i fucking refuse

Apr 2 9:44 am (pg 75 of 290)

damn iim rolling slow, you see im losing top #s tho
that means im cutting more slsuh, very good

but i should be on pg 92 today, if i roll
my daiiy 10 i will only be 7 behind

i want to cuut my daily count to 5 which seems
to be whats happeing, but that wil mean 2 months

and i just cant handle that, ima stay at 10 and be
constantly frustrated but ima get this done this month

good lord willing and the covid dont rise

problem w/5 is its not superhuman
hell, anybody could do 5
takes a real writer to do 10

remember that, every
day remind yourself

takes a real writer to do 10



mar 30, 8:28 am (pg 62 of 292)



had to force myself to the sacred desk this morning
ive loss faith in the work, in the value of it, the narr
styee, the content, my life and its value, i got the
workhouse blues

just figured out how i can keep this
from being struptifying boring, will
put a segment from each days work
most segments arent this long
its raw text in need of revision

next draft:

LOCKING IN THE PARK: I WILL NOT ABIDE

so I had been experimenting with reading and commanding souls through this eyelock technique I was developing when I took a shortcut thru washington square park one day, so Im standing there in a crowd of folk watching some breakdancers, all male, popping and locking, when I notice this slim young woman of their age range staring at them with the hunger and I could see she wanted to step on stage so I settled into the hoodoo blink and caught her eye and once I caught iit I didn’t let it go and holding her in my will space I beamed at her, do it, she hesitate, she hesitate, do it I beam do it and suddenly one of her arms popped, rest of her still, still in eyelock, do it,  do it, another arm popped, do it, and boom, she glided out into the mix, I let her go, 

that kind of thing happen enough for me to be open to the possibility of commanding souls, I had already learned how to project charisma, had learned how to radiate charistmatic power when influencing a group or ritual performances designed to take a congregation to higher ground and how to focus charisma in a tight little beam when working individual souls during healings and the like, spiritdoctor work, formal and informal, as a hoodoo Im constantly giving folk life advice, as a teacher Im constantly giving young impressible folk guidance and grading them on how well they take it, its a daunting responsibility, you tell a young writer, oh you not a realistic writer, you need to write surrealism, thats your strength, you tell a young writer, o, invest the next 5 years of your life on a novel, knowing that most of them wont follow thru oor sell it if they do - as a hoodoo you tell somebody come to you w/an abusive spouse, oh this is no good, leave that person - or stay with them, whatever - whatever advice you give affects their lives, specially if they really trust you, and the tradition, to help them, to care, I try to avoid taking control of folks lives, I try to lay out the options and let them decide but the role (teacher, hoodoo) is fundamentally one of guidance.

cant heal souldunless you can handle them but souls are very fragile and should be handled with a very light hand, only then can you began to accumulate the experience that will make you a competent practitioner, sensitive to the crossroads moments in a client's life and development, as a trained hoodoo your potential for harm is as great as your potential for help, when providing guidance to individuals I have learned to always err on the side of caution, who knows what challenges this person must meet to accomplish fa, better to allow folks to find their own destiny, to meet their own challenges, the practitioner must capable of reading in the book of fa how far they will be allowed  to intervene in a condition, 

back in the day I took souls because I could, experimentation basically, in personal interactions with folk I found it relatively easy to exert my will on folk if I so chose, this when I come up with my aversion to soul stealing, I saw how easy it was for folk like me to take souls - as a practicing spiritdoctor this appalled me, got to ge able to handle souls in able to heal them but souls and destinies both are fragile little thing and should be handled w/ very light touch this when I begin incorporating prohibitions against mishandling souls into my cosmology, when I declared,  I will not abide a thief of souls   

once more into the breech

mar 30, 12:28 am (pg 62 of 292)

kick it rick

mar 29, 9:52 pm (pg 57 of 294)



okay, got todays 10, was thinking to make
up some of that lost ground, pg count should
be 72 - but tommorrow the count should be 82,
no can do, Im discouraged tho working hard

okay, rick, reset the clock,
need 67 tomorrow

lost ground trying to redpen before its time
redpen is for finetuning, for broad strokes
need to keyboard till its rready for finetuning

i know yalll tired of the minutia of me
struggling w/the page but this all i do

the pandemic has forced me into the
very thing i retired to do, the woodshed

i have not physically interacted w/anybody
other than bonnie for a year bow

bonnie is fidgety and hanging out some
i am not, all i do all day is figure out
how much work can i get done today
if the covid dont catch me im good

mar 28, 9:57 pm (pg 47 of 294)

thought about recalibrating to 5 a day but keep
it in perspective, rick, actually did 15 today, 10
yesterday, just keep grindihousing, rick, 10 a day
will get me to the promiseland, 10 measly pgs a day

mar 28, 8 pm (pg 47 of 294)



worked hard all day and got 5 more
pages, 5 measly fucking pages

mar 28, 10:38 am (pg 42 of 294)



i lost a lot of ground this week
why im not sure but im back in
the saddle now, abandoned
redpen and working keyboard
clocking 10 pages a day again

redpen was premature and i
got too much wordage to fuck
around, moving forward again

22 pages on 22nd, 42 on 28th
6 days 20 pages, jesus

how hard do i have to roll to get
back on track, lets count my 2
days off, 20 pages of grace

so 4 days, 40 pages, i need
to be at 62 pages by end of

day, i can do that

have not heard from agent
so industry not breaking the
door down for REST, so be it

this memoir is doing what its
supposed to do, distract me

all my love



mar 22, 11:28 am (pg 22 of 291)



at the early stage all you can see is the immensity
of the task, i did what i tell my students not to:

looked at the 300 pgs to be done instead of the
10 to be done today and discouraged myself

working w/james, casey and brittany on booiks
get in touch with my songbird, be systematic
about the folk im helpinng, do an invite onlly
zoomshop in my retiirement

just got my social security check, what did elders
do before social securiity i cannot imagine

okay i got to get back to work, get my daily grind in
ellen asked me to explain text to potential editors

this is what i sent her:

----------------  

REST FOR THE WEARY is a meditation on prophecy told through the story of Jubilation T. Conquer, a hoodoo sorcerer who gets called to the prophetic while living in a riverside community in old Memphis. A reclusive hoodoo elder known as a Finder of Lost Things, when somebody starts killing his hoodoo colleagues  he becomes a hoodoo detective leading to a confrontation at the crossroads with Staggerlee, his best friend and fellow Vietnam Vet. Both the Conqueror and Staggerlee are afroam folklorics, as are many other characters in RFTW. This confrontation at the crossroads represents the conflict between afrospiritual and gangsta impulses in afroam culture. The historical thread attempts to tell a history of Black Memphis mostly through monologual narratives serving as literary slave narratives. This is told primarily through the story of two escaped slaves who come to Memphis during the Civil War searching for a daughter sold away during slavery. This telling incorporates significant moments in Black Memphis history including the Fort Pillow Massacre, the Riots of 1866 and the Yellow Fever epidemics. The daughter becomes Queen Mother Memphis, a local hoodoo elder some 150 odd years old. She and and Angel, her QM-in-training, think Jubilation has a role to play but he is resisting the prophetic call because of trauma in his past. The charismatic power that enables the prophetic he has come to equate with taking souls, and he has sworn off enforcing his will on civilians, which he did w/abandon in his sorceric youth. He has a complicated relationship w/Angel, maybe real, maybe just another confabulation by a weary conjuror who has perhaps played one reality game too many. Through an increasingly fragmented nonlinear fusion of past, present, future and mythical narrations RFTW attempts to encompass prophetic eternity in the moment / text. The afrofuturistic scenes speculate on human destiny (incl transhumanization) as a star faring folk as part of his prophetic visions. These visions become narrative(s) when he is sitting on a driftwood throne caught up in the roots of a riverside bottletree, working on a wouldbe afroam holybook he no longer believes in. The narrative style aspires to be an afroam talking text, oral, a griotic epic, The Long March of the Firstborn, told through an African American literary language that also aspires to be a sacred language, an attempt to explore the concept of novel as magical text that transforms the reader / world as it is read. The novel as holybook. Let this work be a healing.



mar 21, 11:28 am (pg 4 of 291)

im tired, bone fucking weary tired

mar 21, 11:28 am (pg 4 of 291)

starting redpen, after this i will have a real text
ima try to do 10 a day, 5 more likely, got other
projects need to be maintained
the almanac has been put on the front burner

Amistad published The Minister Primarily, I wish they had let me edit it, Ida pruned it ruthlessly cause I love the Babajohn and tending to his legacy is part of my mission, but it is what it is, a new work by the Babajohn and this is the blurb I wrote for them:

It is good to see another work by Baba John Killens, a master of voice illuminating everything that stumbles within range of his biting irony and expansive literary heart. In narrative riffs cascading all over the page, MP reminds us why John Killens occupies such a unique place in the literature of the world. Like all Killen’s work it infuses African American literature and consciousness with an unrivaled power and responsibility. In the MP we are blessed with an exuberant and finely tuned text, a consummate study in compassion by a singular literary visionary. Read MP and you too will understand the joy of found work by Baba John Killens, the Great Griot Master of Brooklyn at the top of his satiric game. Life is good. My heart is full.

and you know what it makes me realize I need to dredge up a lot more about the Babajohn, and really bring him to life in these pages, ima reread keiths work and let it generate shit, I need to imbed the bio the Babajohn never wrote in here, my account as his chieftest student

im gone, i got to get back to work

life is such a grind



mar 17 12:35PM (pg 162 of 296)

clearly i am not doiing redpen
another structural draft
redpen premarure so now im
just trying to get thru this draft
as soon as possible so i can
do a redpen which will be a
good draft


mar 17 9:56 am (pg 115 of 295)



okay let me see what im averaging
its been a challenging few days but
i tried to maintain production

gearing up thhe flowers hoodoo almanac
invited james and casey iinto the mix

be good training for them and the
possibility of getting paid

and i dont have to worry about
instituttonalizing it if they involved

okay mar 11 to mar 17, 6 days 70 pgs
means i been avg 12 pages a day

not bad but not wonderful, im back
in the saddle now, i managed 12 a day
under the gun, lets kick it up tp 20



mar 11 9:38 am (pg 42 of 297)

not bad, not bad at all, a


Mar 10  7:07 am (pg 20 of 297)



interesting, basically a 10 page day
can i maintaiin that is the question
the answer is no, am i going to try
the answer is yes, one month
superhuman effort and i will have
a draft ready to redpen for april
a rreal draft and can put this
project down for a moment as
i am thoroughly sick of it now
but i will not come off the gas
till i have a real draft or collapse

im gone, got pages need clockibng
or rather paragraphs cause thats
what im doing now, each beat got
to acteually work before i move on
which is not always the case, this
is where it becomes real text

im gone

rdoc

Mar 8  10:49 pm (pg 6 of 296)

spent a couple of days spinning mmy wheels
thought i was gon redpen but its not ready for
redpen yet, fucking bummer, so ima o like a
fusion of redpen and raw work onscreen
which means we probably talking 5 pages a
day not 10, 2 months not one, such is life

part of the reason ive thrown myself in memoir
is so that i wont be sittiing around waiting to hear
from ellen, this is liike a distraction but still i check
that emaiil every day hoping to hear good new

gotta stop that,, conduct msyelf
like a professional, im gone
be niice if i can bust 10 today

all my love




mar 6  11:39   (129 of 298)




had planned to start refining but still too chaotic
will spend weekend doiing a read thru, then do
a serious redpen to knock it into shape