rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

dimensionwork

MON 7 6:35PM (excerpt from todays licks)

CONJURING NOVEL AND ITS BLANK PAGES
tired of the discipline of actually trying to write a novel and reveling in my newfound hoodoo power
of magical vItalization where you conjure the image / reality you want in your mind and hold omto
it until reality begins to adjust itself to your vision, same same art, you have a vision, you pour
everything you got into it until it becomes a work of art, a song a book a painting, making real
into the world that which was not, so I sleep with my manuscript under my pillow and in my meditations
I conjure up my novel and I let it get substantial in my head with understanding that ima open it up
and just transcribe what I find there so I solidify it, open it up to read it and the pages are blank

CENTERING
centering: an attempt to connect with universal consciousness, the godhead, where
every thought is a conjuration, where every thought changes things, at the time I
aspired to be one of, if not the, most significant forces of my times, I speculated that
if I aligned myself with the center of the universe, I would be one w/the godhead, 
and that this was a position of immense power in the world – cosmic power

TURNING THE KEY
realworld:  as writer and intellectual I was always trying to position myself so as to be able to
influence the significant issues of our times.  the right work at the right time in the right venue,
I call that turning the key in the hoodoo lock – everyday I sit and play, the hoodoo board of
destiny. so there was this constant monitoring of destinic dynamics and maneuvering to
effectively  place myself and my evolving cosmology for maximal influence on that dynamic – 

realworld: mystically inclined writer and political intellectual,
spiritworld: hoodoo sorceror and would be prophet
same powers, manifesting on different planes – two head man

MILESTONE: PELMAN THE POWERSHAPER
scifi - in one country a traveling player, in another a prophet, in the third
a magician, im seeing how the power operate in different contexts

MILESTONE: MAGISTER LUDI
when he leave the academy to become itinerant storyteller
at least that’s how I remember it and one of his tales is about
a tribal storyteller, and again im seeing dimensional work
the academic and the storyteller, same player, diff dimensions
and I value the ability to move among dimensions, this also
work in the mythic dimensions, once you get to traveling . . .

amongst dimensions,, dimension work, hmmm

okay that term just came to me, I detect ideological value
im referring to how I occupy diff roles depending on what
social milieu im operating in, but they all blend, as an artist
I write about hoodoo prophets so when I walk the walk im
thinking research, im thinking material for my novels, as an
academic my go to course was literary hoodoo, exploring
magic in afroam lit (all works im intertexting) and the magical
nature of literature, it was a popular class, and there is that riff
at the end of  mumbo jumbo where labas is a visiting lecturer,
it was all very meta, fact that im a metafictional writer, life
leaking into the work, work leaking into the life, just me playing
more dimensional games, so ok flowers can you define what
you mean by dimensions, fuck it, might not be clear to you
dear regulators but its clear too me and ive run this thread as far
as im gon run it, I believe in following fertile threads when they
pop up, then you got to get back to work / process

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

respect the text, saving the libraries of timbuktu

TUES 9/29 9:44 am

okay, one reason im going so slow this phase
in process of turning raw blog notes into text , this is
an article from 2013 about saving the libraries of
timbuktu and a beat i did for the HBOF off it but reading
it now i want to bring it to life more, ima do a draft of
a fuller story today, right now, here is the article and
the current riff, there might be a book on it i recall
this example is what i been calling rhetoric, got to
transform that into story as moving as the reality

once i realize getting to timbuktu hard as it ever was
i once used google maps to walk its streets, just to
see whats what, perhaps i should start there . . .

------------------- 

excerpt from HBOF: when ansar dine and them overrun timbuktu and began destroying preislamic artifacts, abdel kader haidra, librarian of timbuktu, patron haint of books and manuscripts, had some 80 trunks of the ancient texts of timbuktu moved by donkey to safe houses around the city, when ansar dine was finally driven out they had destroyed only some 4000 of 400,000 manuscripts, whats with these folk keep trying to burn the libraries of timbuktu, what is it they fear,

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

How Timbuktu's Manuscripts Were Saved From theJihadis
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Published: Wash Post May 26, 2013

In TIMBUKTU, MALI — It was 7 o’clock on a hot night in August, and Hassine Traore was nervous. Behind him were 10 donkeys, each strapped with two large rice bags filled with ancient manuscripts. The bags were covered in plastic to shield them from a light rain.

They had demolished the tombs of Sufi saints. They had beaten up women for not covering their faces and flogged men for smoking or drinking. They most certainly would have burned the manuscripts — nearly 300,000 pages on a variety of subjects, including the teachings of Islam, law, medicine, mathematics and astronomy — housed in public and private libraries across the city.

The scholarly documents depicted Islam as a historically moderate and intellectual religion and were considered cultural treasures by Western institutions — reasons enough for the ultraconservative jihadists to destroy them.

But a secret operation had been set in motion within weeks of the jihadist takeover. It included donkeys, safe houses and smugglers, all deployed to protect the manuscripts by sneaking them out of town.

This is the story of how nearly all the documents were saved, based on interviews with an unlikely cast of characters who detailed their roles for the first time. They included Traore, a 30-year-old part-time janitor, and his grandfather, a guard.

“We knew that if we attracted any attention, the Islamists would arrest us,” Traore recalled.

The New York-based Ford Foundation, the German and Dutch governments, and an Islamic center in Dubai provided most of the funds for the operation, which cost about $1 million.

“We took a big risk to save our heritage,” said Abdel Kader Haidara, a prominent preservationist who once loaned 16th- and 18th-century manuscripts from his family’s private collection to the Library of Congress. “This is not only the city’s heritage, it is the heritage of all humanity.”

The jihadists who took control of Timbuktu in April 2012 quickly chose as their headquarters the Ahmed Baba Institute, a state-run library and research center named after a 17th-century Timbuktu scholar. The center, painted in tan and pink hues, was built in 2009 to replace an older library with the same name in another part of the city.

The militants kicked out the employees and scrawled the name of their organization on a wall in Arabic: “Ansar al-Dine,” or “Defenders of the Faith.”

The jihadists, along with fighters from al-Qaeda’s affiliate in West and North Africa, had piggybacked on a Tuareg separatist rebellion that had taken advantage of a military coup in March to overrun the north. Within weeks, the radicals pushed out the Tuareg rebels and asserted control over Timbuktu and other cities in the north.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu was a center of Islamic culture under several African empires. It had a university and many Islamic schools that attracted scholars and students from Cairo, Baghdad and other corners of the Middle East. Some brought along sacred Muslim texts. Others produced several hundred thousand manuscripts, handwritten in Arabic and African languages, sometimes in gold lettering.

Radical Islamists had entered Timbuktu four months earlier, and they had set about destroying everything they deemed a sin.

The jihadists initially appeared not to know the value of the manuscripts kept in Timbuktu — or didn’t seem to care. But after local television reports about the manuscripts, some Islamists, clutching guns, came by the old Ahmed Baba Institute and asked the employees whether any documents were inside.

“We told them the center was empty and that all the manuscripts had been transferred to the new center,” said Abba al-Hadi, the 72-year-old guard and Traore’s grandfather, who had the keys to the place.

But in reality, most of the institute’s manuscripts, about 24,500 pages, were inside. The workers knew that it was only a matter of time before the militants would force their way in.

“The Islamists were destroying everything. We knew that once they heard of the manuscripts’ importance to the world, they would destroy them,” said Alkamiss Cisse, who worked in the restoration department of the institute.

‘We had to move fast’

The director of the Ahmed Baba Institute was worried. As a government official, Abdoulkadri Maiga knew that the jihadists would target him. So he fled to Bamako, the capital. By June, his employees in Timbuktu had informed him of the threat to the manuscripts.

Even before they contacted him, Maiga had begun to meet with private collectors from Timbuktu, including Haidara, who also had fled to Bamako to find a way to save the manuscripts. “We didn’t know if the Islamists one day would take the manuscripts hostage,” Maiga recalled. “We had to move fast.”

There was another concern: The rainy season was nearing, and it was time for annual repairs to the roof of the old center to protect the manuscripts from dampness. That was no longer possible because it could draw the attention of the jihadists.

After hearing from his employees, Maiga sent a reconnaissance mission to Timbuktu. The group returned to Bamako with the computer hard drive containing the institute’s records of the manuscripts.

In late July, Maiga sent a second mission to Timbuktu. The goal was to take out some of the manuscripts, to test whether it was possible to evade the Islamists.

During the day, members of the team stayed with relatives and friends and never stepped out. At night, they worked in the old center, putting as many manuscripts as they could into two metal trunks. Such boxes were widely used by people to pack clothes and would not attract attention. The team placed the two trunks in a truck and drove about 600 miles to Bamako without incident.

But tens of thousands of pages still needed to be sneaked out. It could take weeks or months if they took them one or two boxes at a time, increasing the chances of being caught. Maiga needed a different solution, and so he turned to Haidara, the collector, for help.

‘Manuscripts were in danger’

From the moment the Islamists seized Timbuktu, Haidara, too, had been seeking a way to save the manuscripts.

His family’s collection was housed in a private library, Mamma Haidara, named after his father. It was one of the city’s largest private libraries, its collection accumulated over the past 400 years by his ancestors. The oldest document was a 10th-century manuscript on Islamic law.

This was not the first time that his family and other private collectors had to find a way to protect their manuscripts. Whenever foreigners invaded Timbuktu, such as the Moroccans in the 16th century or the French colonialists in the 19th century, people hid the manuscripts in caves and secret rooms or transferred them out of the city.

For more than 60 years under French rule, Haidara’s family had buried their manuscripts in deep pits and in metal trunks, fearing that the documents would be seized and sent to Europe. It wasn’t until 1960, when Mali became independent again, that his family could freely show them again.

Now, it was time to hide the manuscripts once more. Haidara bought several hundred metal trunks, which he and his employees packed with manuscripts and began to secretly transfer at night. By May, his team had moved tens of thousands of pages of manuscripts from the libraries to safe houses elsewhere in Timbuktu.

“We locked them inside rooms, and then we fled to Bamako,” he said.

Haidara alone owned an estimated 45,000 pages of manuscripts, so he traveled to Dubai to seek funding from an Islamic center there. He first approached the Dutch and German governments and later flew to Lagos, Nigeria, to meet with the Ford Foundation. The Dutch government gave $425,000, while the Ford Foundation donated $236,000. The German Embassy in Mali and the Dubai center did not respond to e-mails for comment.

“It was clear that manuscripts were in danger,” Joseph Gitari, a senior Ford Foundation employee in Lagos, said in a telephone interview. “The narrative of the manuscripts, their focus on science, culture, law, contradicted the ideological position of the groups who took over northern Mali.”

By August, Haidara said, he had secured some of the necessary funds to pay for fuel and transportation. To pay the smugglers, he borrowed money or promised to pay later. The manuscripts of the old Ahmed Baba Institute, the most prominent of the repositories, would be the first to leave Timbuktu.

‘An Indiana Jones moment’

It was the first stage of that mission that brought Traore and his donkey caravan to the old-city streets of Timbuktu on that August night. His grandfather had helped him load the donkeys, but he stayed behind as Traore and three other men set out with the manuscripts.

The rain, in the end, helped them. The jihadists were not at their checkpoints, preferring to stay indoors.

The caravan arrived at a safe house. Traore gave the cargo to a trader working for Haidara. Over the next two weeks, the donkey caravans would make the trip six more times until all the manuscripts were out of the center, Traore recalled.

The documents were placed in metal trunks hidden under cargo on several trucks. Within days, the manuscripts reached Bamako.

Over the next few months, Haidara’s people took out the rest of the manuscripts from the safe houses. Some were carried on donkey carts. Others were carried out on canoes on the Niger River, before reaching a safe area where they could be placed on trucks.

Most of the trunks were taken out in batches of three to five, until all finally reached Bamako safely. The evacuation was still ongoing in late January as French troops closed in on Timbuktu.

“The operation continues,” wrote Gitari to his colleagues in New York in an e-mail. “An Indiana Jones moment in real life! Touch wood.”

In the end, a total of 2,453 trunks were evacuated — containing about 278,000 pages of manuscripts, Haidara said.

In Bamako, the manuscripts are being kept in a safe place. Neither Maiga nor Haidara would disclose the location.

But Haidara and his allies could do nothing about the 16,000 pages of manuscripts in the new Ahmed Baba center, where the jihadists lived. There, Maiga’s worst fears came true. Days before French forces entered Timbuktu, the fleeing jihadists burned about 4,000 pages of manuscripts that they found in the restoration room.

But the jihadists never headed to the basement, where about 12,000 pages were stacked on metal shelves.

“They didn’t know the documents were down below,” said Abdoulaye Cisse, the institute’s interim director. “How else can you explain why they weren’t burned?”

down the rabbit hole

SAT 9/26 8:51 pm (next phase turning 600 pgs of notes to about 250 pgs of text)

A MORAL DELIMMA question. you a freelance photographer in the
middle of a catastrophic delta flood when suddenly a man near you is
swept away in the raging floodwaters and my god, it is donald trump,
there is rope at your feet - so what would you do?  Choose color film?
Or go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

THURS 9/24 1:30 am  (aug 2016)

i am so sick of me, my whole life been a loop, on loop in loop
i cannot tell you how many times i was sure the novel was done, waiting
on the deal that never came, every couple of years or so, just likke now
or how i obsess over production day after day, been caught in a loop
some 20 years now, hell ever since i decided i wanted to be a writer
even this same im so tired blues, its a repeat 2 repeat 2 repeat . . . .
and once again ima ignore the blues and just keep clocking pages
least im free of that schoolhouse, shoulda retired years ago

 

wed 9/23 12:37 am (july 2013)

a beat from 2013, jimis bday recently, this gives me another beat
for this string of historical stories i had in mind, might as well start
that one too, go into rest and hbof and hbow and extract the
historicals i already got:

who do i already have:
harriet tubman
David walker
cuffy
Gullah jack
ida b wells
jimi Hendrix
deadwood dick
stagecoach mary
babajohn
queen mother lucy
coltrane

real question is who i want to do

------------ 

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 rough and raw beat for jimi:
 
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.

 

mon 9/22 12:45 pm (feb 2012)


this is from apr 2012 i believe, exactly what im doing now
life is a cycle sometime, except now its 20 years of blogging
interesting my approach to making books is set in stone

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

i got to revise the old 400 page manuscript, extract relevant passages from rewritten 200 page mojo rising
and - most daunting -  go through almost 10 years of blogging and extract relevant observations/passages-
from all this im going to have about a 1000 pages of old manuscript/notes to reformat/reconcept into new format

straight out slushwork, hours and hours and hours of it, id say of good month of slush work easy
a month w/no satisfaction because it will be strictly trashwork, moving pieces of old text around

and all thats just to get a draft i can work with, a draft instead of a bunch of notes -

----------------- 

that picture there is stagecoach mary
notorious hell raiser in the wild wild west
aka ruth bader ginsburg, rest easy judge
we got your back, you done yo part
we gon do ours

 

revelation 2009 -

sat 9/19  12:18

THATS WHERE YOU GET TO PLAY


well i will just be blessed, followed a link on rootsblog
re a chapter on black soldiers in memphis riots of 1866
in a book callled a questiuon of manhood and damn
if a good chunk of my historical memphis is incorrect
im gllad i found it, i got 3, 4 major scenes taking place
in a contraband camp on presidents island but it appear
that the families of the soldiers lived in huts outside
fort pickering and revolted when they were moved to
presidents island and other historical inaccuracy
i ordered the book cause its only partial online and
its a critical part of the text, 30 fugging dollars but
what can you do, bonnie say cant you claim poetic
license and i was appalled, i say no, when folk
question my work and try to say it aint historically
correct no mmatter how deep they dig they will see
for all my fancy footwork it is historically accurate
it what history dont know, thats where you get to play

addendum

okay, read the article, appears i panicked too soon
i did learn more but it doesnt counterfeit what i have
i will just incorporate the new knowledge in revision
when i thought i would have to rewrite 3, 4 scenes
i was ready to do that right away, miight still do it
read thru see what needs to be upgraded - later



THURS 9/17 3:34 pm  (april 2010)
god i love me some lizz wright, can listen to her over and over
i can do this on my mbira, mostly i just do my own but this
one moves me, check out the last stanza:

my god calls to me in the morning sun
the power of the universe knows my name
gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way
to raise my voice for justice, cause i bellieve

THUR 9/17 2:32 AM (jul 2010 burnt myself out)
my greatgranma reeves, took in washing in nc
notorious hardass, my mothher was her 'asst'
talked about going house to house picking up
white folks laundry and her grandmothers rules
my sister elise remembers family stories, i
do not, going to have to call in the master

 

WED 9/16 7:07pm (jul 2010 did my 6, going for 12)

i forget who wrote it, or where it was but damn if i dont like the way she roll:

"Earth Day 2009 was almost such an experience. The weather was gorgeous in New Orleans. I put on a favorite dress, grabbed some reading material and bicycled up to catch the streetcar, on my way to the French Quarter to work for/with the Crazy Lady I love. En route, I read the most recent issue of Oxford American and discovered Arthur Rickydoc Flowers' powerful article, "Race Man". Such great writing! In a magical fantasy world, my mind would have melded with my closest friends' in the moment, to allow them the enjoyable privilege of consuming this work. And I would have been embracing the friend who gave me the magazine. And I would have been pregnant with Flowers' child."

followed the link to sojourner in the 21st century blog, "Opinions, memories, reflections, and confessions of a dark-skinned American African woman living the luscious final chapters of her life."

WED 9/16 9:15  best part of song of the south, from april 2010

TUES 9/15 9:29 pm (march 2010)
i am so interesting . . .


TUES 9/15 7:55 am  (jan 2010)
did the year, got a groove on, only question now do i keep going
get a little headstart on tomorrow, but my brain is tired . . .

im done


MON 9/15   12:03 pm   (aug 2009)

aug 2009, done my minimal daily 6 mos, but ive recalibrated
14 days till end of month, 11 years to go, counting say 4 down days
it will take a year a day to be done w/this phase by end of month

- so be it . . another gear, rick, you can do this
lets separate the dilettantes from the bulldogs . . .

MON 9/15   8:46   am

HAD THIS RESEARCH BEAT, APRIL 2009, an account from stono river campaign:

“Just before ‘tattoo' the military bands on each side began their evening music. The still winter night carried their strains to great distance. At every pause on our side, far away could be heard the military bands of the other. Finally one of them struck up ‘Home Sweet Home.' As if by common consent, all other airs ceased, and the bands of both armies as far as the ear could reach, joined in the refrain."

NOTE: WRITE THIS INTO WHEN THEY ARE TRYING TO GET AWAY, FUCK WRITE IT IN NOW, BOTH SIDES PLAYING HOME SWEET HOME , HAVE OTHELLA AND MAN CARGO CAUGHT BETWEEN OPP LINES LISTENING ALL NIGHT, DO IT NOW:

"It had been a sight to unnerve the most accommodating of Memphis citizenry. The 6th Heavy Colored Artillery, marching through the filthy winter slush of Memphis like the ragged bunch of newly freed fieldhands they were, carrying rifles like they was picks, hammers, and hoes. The 6^th Heavy Colored had been relocated from the Corinth Mississippi contraband camp, Othella and Man Cargo with them. Trying to get to Memphis from Nashville and evading soldiers of all persuasion they had got pushed down into Mississippi where they was promptly caught up by a Union patrol and brought on into Corinth. The night before they was gathered up they had spent hunkered down between opposing lines. They were crouched in the lee of an overbank, covered in foliage and afraid to to breathe. The armies were damn near face to face and preparing for battle in the morning they would have to move but were afraid to move. At one point the bands started battling, martial tunes to raise the spirits of their troops, the music washing over them when one side, they didn’t know which was which, started playing Home Sweet Home and its like you could hear the other hesitate and there was this new silence  punctuated with two listening armies and then the other band started playing it and soon enough it was one song and it was with this distraction they slip away, Home Sweet Home fading into the darkness behind them."

ruff, ruff ruff, i will clean it up next draft

back in the saddle

SUN ADDEDEDENDUM

in the past i would get hung up on readership #s

doing rootsblog mostly for scholars of future
but i would like a little reassurance my words have value
i realize now tho that beyond the scholars of future

its written for me, changes my relationship with it
a lot of what im reading is slush, hopefully it will
be stronger going forward but its fed 3, 4 major
projects and im only on feb 2008, interesting . . .

 

SUN ADDENDUM: counterpoint

in my memoir im doing these flah fic beats and
each one has a title and the titles are good, beats in
themselves, for instance the pat moody beat i
entitled that one  'the deep dark unfaceable'
cause that what stick with me, what i want to stick
with you, i got to go, im on feb 2008 and got to

get to july, no mas rootsblog

all my love

 

of making many books

part of reason im moving so slow is because these old 'public journal' beats
are so provocative, ive literarally started 2 oe 3 books based on passages in
this last week or soo of reading, or found major material for books in mind rather
its put all kinds of things on mmy mind and all mmy meta projects have evolved
but god help me im averaging 3 to 6 months a day, 3 months basic but that will
mean 4 days per year x 12 years almost 2 months, that will not fly, i must have  6
mos a day which gets this drudgery phase done by end of month, i can live w/that

i can live with that

bonnie say is 6 months a day possible, i said no, she said consider
a more reasonable schedule then and i said reasonable dont get no
novel done, reasonable people do not become artists, you give yourself
inhuman deadlines, yoou fall short but still you got further than a
normal person could, excuse me, a reasonable person would

obsession is what i do, sometime
iit works, sometime it dont

SUN 9/13  the deep dark unfaceable

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is a beat from Feb 2008, i see i had in mind to play with
the graphics on my beats, abandonnned it i recall cause it
added minutes per post but i willl consider using it again
didnt have disc minutes then, certainly dont have them now

but i do like playing w/spatial narrative

--------------------  

didnt do a lick of work yesterday, and morning almost gone still nothing
once i realized im in my endgame i believe it scared me - just flat out scared me,

 its like okay, when i finish this one i should have a real novel  (2008, 12 YEARS AGO, SAD)
after all these years im almost afraid to have no more excuses

so im sitting here at the SACRED DESK about to face the beast one more again
got to go into longhand now, word by word got to move these last 50 pages to higher ground

when you need good rich critical narrative, longhand seems to work best
some primal connection w/the hand the mind and the pen, and the slower

pace gives your mind TIME TO PLAY W/THE WORDS as you create them

got some good commentary for you but wont be able
to focus until i see if i get a good days work in

if you hear from me this evening you will know im good to go - clocking pages
IF YOU DONT, MEAN IM STILL RUNNING SCARED

pray for me

WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES PAT MOODY ONCE PUT ON MY MIND, I WAS DOING A CLASS FOR ONE OF HER PROJECT ADVANCE SEMINARS AND SAID MY WORK IS FEEL GOOD WORK AND FEEL GOOD DONT GET NO RESPECT IN LITERATURE AND SHE SAID ALMOST ANGRILY I DONT REMEMBER THE EXACT WORDS BUT BASICALLY THAT LITERATURE WAS SUPPOSE TO EXPLORE THE DEEP DARK UNFACEABLE IN THE HUMAN CONDITION AND IT WAS LIKE A REVELATION TO ME -  IM STILL WHO I AM, STILL A DELTA SOULDOCTOR AND THIS NOVEL STILL GON BE A HEALING SPELL BUT to GET THERE I GOT TO GO DEEP . .

 

 

FRIDAY ALREADY?  TELLING MY OWN

so i got all these projects in play

the book of wisdom is all these wisdom stories from round
the world that ive rewritten but what i really want to do is
write my own - so i was reading a book about aesop and it was saying
many of the tales attributed to him were just greek sayings to which
stories were attached over the years and one of the tensions with
taking stories from many cultures is wo cultural context you lose
something sometime, they should be universal beats but then there
is that inexplicable note so i think i should take sayings all bllackfolk /
americans know and put stories on them, was listening to a reggae song
'the journey of a 1000 miles' and everybody know the payoff is
'begins with one step' which is also a creative mantra, that passage
that book, just start it, trust that one day you will finish it
if you make it exist - right now  r i g h t   n  o w

so on that principle i did a rough immediately:

so what about a pilgrim that needs absolutely needs to take an impossible journey and the babajohn does something that makes him or her get up and go outdoors and s/he will say what was that, and the babajohn will say, the 1^st step

 

okay, 2nd take, opened it up a little
and degenderized it

what about the babajpohn the proprietor of the inn of lost souls, the hole in the wall, the inn at the crossroads, the pilgrim comes, talks about this impossible journey that must be ventured, but i cannot, the pilgrim cries, no one could, and the babajohn agrees, it is impossible, you may stay here as long as you like, but the babajohn gradually turns the temperature of the Inn up until it is fearfully hot and the traveler prepares to leave, why this sudden graciousless the pilgrim cries, what do you call this, the 1^st step, say the babajohn, which way you will go i do not know, but you cannot stay here, demoja,

okay, its rough and raw, i will fix it, make it sing
the next one i wiill do is 'know thyself'

maybe using a crossroads decision . . .? ? ?

also an intro tone came to me while on the porch today, maybe the voice of the text
it wiill be a storyteller talking about telling stories, i turned 70 last month
and its tripping me out cause of the covid and all, feeling mortal feeling fey

this reflective elder voice might work:

once i was a man of power, a master griot, once i could command the stage, stridiing it like a caged lion, tail a twitch, mane inflamed, i recall the time i leaped off the stage in full roar, landed on the back of a chair in the front row, it tilted over and i lept to the next row, that chair tilted and i rode it to the ground, still shaking my long tailed rattle, now the only thing ima do with a chair on my stage is sit on it

be safe

 

 

SUN 9/6 12:41 AM   a new world is born

"its like im standing there and im macking and its an epic mack and i got to keep macking  and
weaving that magic mack until every thing around me is transformed and a new world is born"

---------------------   

okay, so im slogging thru old rootsblog, still in 2005, crawling along cause its so provocative
for instance this one line talking about some REST scene i was struggling with, so now ima

do a fllash story, some storyteller trying to tell a new world / reality into existence
ima stop everything and do a rough draft of it right now, rough and raw and wont be
viable for some 7 or 9 drafts but the 1st step is raw text, in fact lets see what we can do:

the storyteller is ancient, does not look like he has a good story left in him, the lines
of his face as deeply cratered as the forests of wagadu, the villagers are expectant
it has been awhile since he told his last tale and tongues have been wagging

but they all cease when he begins talking because in amazement they hear a voice
that is frail yet still commanding and as he tells his tale it begins to grow in power until
it has riveted them, a gathering of the tribes at the foot of jebal barkal,the elders
of kush have spoken he said, calling on the long march of the 1stborn, you who must
be scattered to the 4 corners of the earth and tempered thru the holy hell of
slavery to a star flung destiny, the long march of the firstborn has begun and
there,, he points at the stars in the sky, is where it ends, and so begins his

tale, strange and otherworldly, faint and halting, but the more he speaks the more
it becomes real to them, the more solid he becomes (have him be faint at
beginning, he has to tell the tale to substantiate or something?) and
suddenly they see it, the march of the generations, a star faring folk leaping
at the sun - and something something along this line, this is the core, i will fix
it in the subsequent drafts, 1st step is always to make it exist, get it out of
your head and on paper, once it exist you can make it sing . . . .

i once thought writers were diff from other folk, special
i know now what makes it diff is we wriye shit down
other folk their useful thoughts float off into the air

 

 

 

 

------------------  

 

WED 9/3 11:35

hello world, been interesting giong thru old posts
seeing whats stood the test of time, most of the
overt political is dated and the personal, which i
try to avoid, still good - aint like i dont know thhis
babajohn used to hammer it, politiics cant carry
a story, want to preach write an essay

somethiing to keep in mind as i go forward
have slowed to a drag cause so evocative
and only up to 2005, got 15 years to go

want rootsblog 2020 to be in part a covid journal
chronicling the times / the moment
maybe try to give info that will be useful to folk

right now im living the covid life
minimalist social interactions
(bonnie has a pod, i do not)

i feel like im in a zombie apocalypse
hiiding out in my cave and only leaving
to forage for food while avoiding the
maskless undead

but following covid protocol:
handwashing, distancing, etc
staying informed, engaging
policy and social behavior patterns
is just shortgame, survival

all of us doing individually
what the collective must

the longgame is to turn a hammer
of this magnitude into cultural strength
makiing good health a cultural trope
then we will have turned the trick
otherwiise its just a tragedy

photo: mi mbira getting charged on
the grave of mi mentor  -  babajohn
killens: the great griot master of brklyn

all my love

 

 

MON 9/1 11:35

hello world, i think im back

big transitions, sent novel off and for 1st time
in 20 years of hardgrind proud of it

retired after 20 odd years in academe and
loving it, all i do is write read and vegetate

knee still fucked and need to kick up pt again

finally after much anxiety got my medicare
a, b, and d right, big relief

handling lockdown welll, beibg productive, will
be on covid lockdown untill there is a vaccine

if trump is re elected will just kiss my ass goodby

part of reason ive withdrawn is got this condition essential tremors
where hands tremble so bad its an effort to type write or brush my
teeth and part of reason i retired is if i dont have but X pages left in
me they gon be my pages, not my students so im going to be very

minimmalist here

working on a memmoir, real one instead of a manifesto
using flah fic tech, part of 'research' been going thru old

rootsblog posts and realizing how valuable its been to
me trying to account for the evolution of my cosmology

and how many concepts i worked out 1st here
so ima resurrect it

publiahed the hoodoo book of flowers myself
got tired of industry trying to make it something else
now working on the hoiodoo book of wisdom and i

can let this one be the feel good spiritwork i wish
the HBOF is but it had too much work to do

thinking of it as part of a trilogy
the hoodoobook of wisdom
the hoodoo book of grace
the hoodoo book of divinity

turned 70 back in july

feeling mortal cause of the plague (and 70)
maybe 70 year olds shouldnt start trilogies

we will see how that goes

tired of this two finger typing

all my love

 

hanging in there, baba jackman

MON 11/25 12:10

brother jackman

thanks for checking in on me
you have no idea how much i

needed to hear that

but then again maybe you dio

its just that my work so stylized
industry / folk dont know how to
read it, it will have to grow on folk

strategy all along been to make it
so powerful it cannnot be denied
even 10 years of rejection been
good cause each time i dig in to

make it stronger and this one is
it, im done and its infinitely better
this draft than its ever been -

whether industry oks it or not im done

ima give it the xmas woodshed
cause fuck i like seeing it grow

ima fiddle w/over the semester
dig in 1 more summer of poetry
drafts, and then im done
no more revisions, moving
on to my folk opera

in truth aint about the industry,
this about me and my text
reaching an understanding

reason i aint been posting
im in the zone, man, the

almighty zone

12+ hour work days, manuscript growing
doing new things, dont want to eat, or sleep

like that scene in amadeus the movie
where he works himself to death

the almighty zone, wherein all things
are possible - this draft gon sing

I remain, your Brother
in the Craft

rdoc