rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

of making many books

ancestral positionings:  ai word by rdoc

hello world

i am working on an afroam holybook
the hoodoo book of flowers
there is an earlier draft on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Hoodoo-Book-Flowers-Great-Generations/dp/1734101911/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YR5ZKNWOHEKW&keywords=the+hoodoo+book+of+flowers&qid=1701961510&sprefix=the+hoodoo%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-1

got the idea traveling cross country on
a greyhound, strungout and brokedown
looking to resurrect myself when i

read a watchtower pamphlet about what
a new spiritual tradition would have to do to
be competitive, said a new trad had to:

be a true advance in human understanding and empowerment / had to promote truly universal fellowship instead of just that of the believer / had to provide a realistic 21st century alternative to established traditions / one closer to the truth of things / had to enable a moral, ethical life, one of wisdom and understanding / had to be a tolerant, loving way / asking the very best of its adherents / had to be an evolved understanding wrapped up in an appealing mythology / said the true test of a good, healthy spiritual tradition is that its adherents lead good, healthy lives / brimming with strength & meaning, beauty & grace / that they build strong, healthy communities / asked do its believers benefit / does it provide a coherent all-encompassing worldview / is it a cosmology by which its believers can understand and manifest the meaning and purpose of life / asked what laws does it set forth to regulate human life and living / are these laws of life as consistent and fundamental as gravity, / does it inspire its believers in the struggle and challenges of life / does it provide in times of need / does it comfort in times of despair / does it renew the weary and guide the strong / does it nourish the spirit / does it celebrate life / are its believers healthy, wealthy and wise, strong and enlightened, productive and respected / do they live lives rich in contentment, achievement and significance / does it give its believers power in the world / power in the spirit / the power to master the flesh and the baser nature / the power to triumph over evil, within and without / does it give them the power to tap their fullest human potential / to make them godlike / does it deliver unto its believers a miracle working power / are they a beautiful people / are they blessed / is it an open gate, o traveler, a point of contact with the divine / the supreme power of the universe / the great mojo in its many names and infinite manifestations -

and i thought wouldnt it be nice to
do a text does all that and boom

i had my mojo back

wrote down the notes of what it said a trad
should do then, this excerpt come out of my memoir
but its too much their words, too little mine

i got to fiddle with it more, hemmingway said
amatuers borrow, professionals steal

and this has not been fully digested yet

ima play with it

ancestral positionings:  ai word by rdoc

hello world

i am working on an afroam holybook
the hoodoo book of flowers
there is an earlier draft on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Hoodoo-Book-Flowers-Great-Generations/dp/1734101911/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YR5ZKNWOHEKW&keywords=the+hoodoo+book+of+flowers&qid=1701961510&sprefix=the+hoodoo%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-1

got the idea traveling cross country on
a greyhound, strungout and brokedown
looking to resurrect myself when i

read a watchtower pamphlet about what
a new spiritual tradition would have to do to
be competitive, said a new trad had to:

be a true advance in human understanding and empowerment / had to promote truly universal fellowship instead of just that of the believer / had to provide a realistic 21st century alternative to established traditions / one closer to the truth of things / had to enable a moral, ethical life, one of wisdom and understanding / had to be a tolerant, loving way / asking the very best of its adherents / had to be an evolved understanding wrapped up in an appealing mythology / said the true test of a good, healthy spiritual tradition is that its adherents lead good, healthy lives / brimming with strength & meaning, beauty & grace / that they build strong, healthy communities / asked do its believers benefit / does it provide a coherent all-encompassing worldview / is it a cosmology by which its believers can understand and manifest the meaning and purpose of life / asked what laws does it set forth to regulate human life and living / are these laws of life as consistent and fundamental as gravity, / does it inspire its believers in the struggle and challenges of life / does it provide in times of need / does it comfort in times of despair / does it renew the weary and guide the strong / does it nourish the spirit / does it celebrate life / are its believers healthy, wealthy and wise, strong and enlightened, productive and respected / do they live lives rich in contentment, achievement and significance / does it give its believers power in the world / power in the spirit / the power to master the flesh and the baser nature / the power to triumph over evil, within and without / does it give them the power to tap their fullest human potential / to make them godlike / does it deliver unto its believers a miracle working power / are they a beautiful people / are they blessed / is it an open gate, o traveler, a point of contact with the divine / the supreme power of the universe / the great mojo in its many names and infinite manifestations -

and i thought wouldnt it be nice to
do a text does all that and boom

i had my mojo back

wrote down the notes of what it said a trad
should do then, this excerpt come out of my memoir
but its too much their words, too little mine

i got to fiddle with it more, hemmingway said
amatuers borrow, professionals steal

and this has not been fully digested yet

ima play with it

 

The Hoodoo Way

dec 6  9:30 am - the cuse

hello world


beale street billy: ai word by rdoc

finally in, i been spinning my wheels
and wallowing in frustration, problem
is i want this to be my speculative work

it was originally an almanac and oriented
toward the gneral public but i didnt like
the project, too rudimentary, pop spiritualism

so i decided to write what i want to write
go full on speculative, go deep

problem been it aint been that deep
so i keep stalling out

but i got to do what i tell
my students to do,

just let it be bad
trust the process

to have a draft by end of year i need to do two weeks a day
cause the thread is a year of pilgrimmage, 52 weeks, 52 beats

so im on last week in january now

did 2 weeks this morning already, i got my groove on

also i dont break the lines on the page

& once i got the material / content right
ima experiment w/a griotic voice

a delta storyteller

--------------  

INVOCATION: let this work be a healing

I am Flowers of the Delta Clan Flowers and the Line of O. Killens.
This Test was originally a 365 day Hoodoo Almanac structure designed
to give guidance in your Daily Grind. A year of transformation that
represent a lifetime. But I was not happy with the Product. Also the
challenge is saying something I haven’t said a million times already.
Decided I would let this be the one where I let it all hang out, and
speculate all over the place. I always restrain m yself, I rarely say
what I really freel for fear folk will find it delusional. But I guess
anytime you let your freak flag fly you delusional. Default is to fit in.

Normalizing is like default.

Since it does not appear to be commercially viable and I am
running out of life might as well do what I want to do. Speculate.
So. Meditations on the Hoodoo Way. An interrogation of
the Hoodoo Way designed to walk you thru a transformative year,
a life as pilgrimage. An attempt to refine your daily grind in
the hoodoo way. To define just what it is the Hoodoo way is.

I would like in this work to explore the oncept of being a Healer.
My works I consider healing spells. My performances healings..
Rickydocs Traveling Medicine Show
 
This Text will also serve as a meditation on Wisdom. It embarrasses
me how much I want to be Wise. There are other aspirations. I want
to be Spiritual. Illuminated. A Healer. I want to be Sanctified. But more
than annnything it appears, I want to be wise. A wise healer, The Griot’s Way

In part this comes from my griotic pursuits. One of my goals as a griot /
storyteller is to found a Wisdom Tales tradition in Afrospiritual Literature.
In the Hoodoo Way. This aspires to be a Wisdom Text. Designed to rupture
your understanding and enable a rebuild on a higher plane. Open your
consciousness past a point of no return. I want to make the pursuit of wisdom
an integral component of the Hoodoo Way and African American culture.

This Text is thereby structured as a Guide to Empowerment. Designed to
ground my teachings and enable an iteration of hoodoo the whole world
can sing. A work of Tribal Healing by the High Hoodoo of Memphis.
So, let us begin. Let us stumble thru. The Hoodoo Way.

 

you need me you call me

hello all

just finised the last draft of memoir
im pleased w/myself

ima stickthe closure here
may not leave it here

it is closure
let me see

-----------------  

Prayer of the Literary Elder upon

finishing last book - One More, Lord

I once glitched. A 125th Street bus stop, I
just switched off. Everything shut down.
And back on so quick I didn’t fall. And
for a long while I walked around afraid of
that sensation happening again. For the 1^st
time ever truly conscious of my mortality

Doris Jean Austin once said: every
book finished makes it easier to die.

I can only hope that this Work will achieve what earlier works have
not. Cultural Agency. Whether I achieve it or not is up to the Fickle
Finger of Literary Success. But it’s up to me to continue to conduct
myself as though I were really in truth what I aspire to be -

a great writer, a griot master,
a legendary hoodooman.

There are times, fleeting moments, when you being strong, disciplined
and productive, or you’ve written the perfect passage, or participated
in an historical moment, that you are acutely aware of yourself as
historical, epochal, mythical, history in the flesh. There are moments
when you have placed yourself so precisely in the historical continuum's
center of balance that you are aware of being Godforce.

A Focal Point of Reality and Illusion. A Nexus of Generational
Possibility. Conjuring Reality into Being through the sheer
force of your Will, your Work, your Craft, your Game.

If you pull it off you and your works will be studied and modeled
in the hearts and aspirations of generations to come. To the
extent that your Works are relevant and significant to those
generations, to that extent are you Immortal. Immortal.

Every morning I suit up, like my father, even if I’m just gon
sit there at the computer. A parody of the power I once was.
10 more productive years would be nice but if I die tomorrow,
I’m okay. Played the hand I was dealt hard as anybody could.
I may have gambled and lost but damn if I didn’t enjoy myself.

The Gods of Literature have been good to me. They did not
give me what I wanted. I got neither Fame nor Fortune. But
what I did get I treasure far more. They gave me Purpose.
They gave me Fa. They gave Destiny.

They have prepared me for the last and possibly most
important phase. Ancestral Positioning. A Serene Closure.
One more, Lord, one more. Cross my mind sometime that
I must be the slackest holyman ever was. Cross my mind
sometime that if I’m the hope of the race we in bigger
trouble than we thought.

Making Real Into the World That Which Was Not aint
no joke. Failure is likely. I don’t care about no failure.
Fuck a failure. I will continue to conduct myself as
I aspire to be. The High Hoodoo of Memphis.

You need me,
You call me.

I will come.

blacks and jews, israel and palestine

two bits of online info
the arrest of a su mfa grad, palestinian poet, mosab abu taha
and this article in foreign affairs by two israeli security folk
laying out israels strateg for actions which have perplexed me
being the relentlessly cruelty against the civilian population
longterm this strikes me as a losing propositon
i got emotional revulsion but i like to think of myself as a
strategic thinker and this article gave me perspective

its from a israeli perspective and the suggestion
that the US lead a coalition of friendly arabs
governing gaza is laughable, gunga din

america got enuf preoplems wo becoming the
face / implementors of israeli policies in gaza

this is not a dialogue i wish to be
part of, no matter what you say it
piss somebody off and nobody is
to listen to anything but their fears

i dont have tiime to engage at moment
but i fear i have things to say, the problem
is i dont see a good option here

baba charles saunders: imaro

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/02/michael-deadder-cartoon-charles-saunders/

 

i remember when i found imaro
a kid into conan and such and
in the 60s was a black sword and
sorcery guy, and i was hooked

reading this reminded me of zora
dying alone and unheralded
ima have to give baba saunders
some ancestral play

 

lost in space

sept 30, 7:59 am the cuse

beale street breakdown: ai by rdoc

okay, i dont know what im doing
still crippled but still writing, learning
hoow to live with it, hoping on PT
and meditations in long run

have been unable to get groove on novel
just dont know what to do with it, gon mmake
it more fablic and it read better than i feared
im just not sure what to do with it

in process of revising my hoodoo almanac
iit was designed as daily advice thing, an
attempt to do something commercially
viable but my agent was unimpressed and

i find myself embarassed by it and assume
its not commercially viable and there are
a million of them out there, most really bad

okay, inlf by the essay approach to memoir
gon do a weekly rather than daily which gives
me 52 mini CNFie room to stretch out

and instead of rudimentary daily advice
ima stretch out with spiritual and cosmic
and conceptual and political musings

i figure im in closure and since its not
commercially viable (i cnt hustle it if
im not impressed with it) i might as well

do what i want to do and consider this
my way out there effort where i let
myself go conceptually and spiritually

a big concern is that it cover diff ground
than memoir and holybook,  maybe iinstead
of a 2nd person jeremiad i do more internal
musings but that is the memoir, i need to let it

be a meditation on the hoodoo way and
what about i incl mini interviews w/fellow
travelrs, we will just have to see . . . .

just do it and see what hsppens . . . .