And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that.

So, computer is gone. In the words of John Mayer: "Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone."

If keeping this thing up and running wasn't next to impossible before, its sure as fuck will be now.

But I'm trying to recommit myself to putting my thoughts to paper (or... blogger).
One needs to write out, regularly, all these scattered thoughts they're thinkin'.
I have these fantastic debates in and out of my head, sometimes even in a crazy-psuedo-talking-to-myself-in-the-car way. But thats how I work things out; talking. Action. I could think myself in a ditch, to be sure. I could survive with my head in the clouds, but a man named Jeff Greene once told me a story which has stuck with me for years:
Jeff worked in prisons. He went into prisons and taught art, which might seem to some like building a card-castle in the middle of a tornado -- a pointless waste of time.
But its not, and it wasn't. However, where Jeff's motivation had been to *teach* art, he also learned a whole truck full of knowledge, most especially from his "students" who were repeat offenders, or who had life sentences. One specific inmate, who was taking Jeff's class for the third or fourth time, was talking to Jeff about "meaning". He was explaining to Jeff how inside the prison walls, what was important was completely different because of context. The context was the prison, and what was important outside those walls meant little inside. The example the inmate used was the secret of the whole universe. He said to Jeff:
"You could know the secret of the whole world. Of the whole universe. You could have divine knowledge from God himself about the workings of every secret plan there is. But you could be running around screaming it in here, and it wouldn't mean jack-shit. In here, the secret of the universe is worthless."

Not that my brain is a prison, but you see the analogy.

Its all about access this week. What do you have access to that someone else doesn't have access to? Because of your class? Your gender? Your race? This is the theme of my week:

- Access to commodities.
On a macro level, I was in a serious discussion at a feminist meeting yesterday about porn and sex workers. One of the big issues that kept coming up was access. The one thing a lot of people kept forgetting to consider was the motivation -- why did some women (not the one's who are all empowered and choosing to be involved in the sex worker world) turn to selling their bodies? Well, access. What other commodities did they have to offer, and what access did they have to other options? How does your access affect how you understand your own empowerment, and your identity?
On another macro level, tomorrow I'm teaching a workshop about the politics of HIV, and access to information, prevention, testing and ARVs. But thats for Friday's better-thought-out post.

-Access to people.
On a micro level, I've been trying to make myself more accessible. Both a resource to other people, and just being a little more transparent. Making myself understood... to understand.
And vise-versa -- trying to access other people, i.e. admit that I don't have all the answers, and sometimes I really don't know anything about certain subjects, or how to talk about them, and asking for help. Or just trying to work things out. That's why writing and talking are so important... I could make up all the answers in my head, but it'd be a whole museum by one artist. How boring.

Which is one of the reasons I read: Carnival of Feminists
So I can be hype on all the intersections of feminism and racial justice, or even science, or art. And so I know where other people stand. Access to ideas plays into this too. And access to education, learning...

-Access to answers.

Sometimes, there is no access to this at all. No matter how privileged you are. This is how I see the world's justice sometimes... you can't buy the answers (except to the SATs).

I've been trying to accept this reality. It is posed to me time and again in Buddhist scripture: Accept that sometimes you will have to accept no answer.

The world is confusing. Things seem to point in one direction, lead you to what seems like an answer, *the* solution to a problem... and then the whole situation turns upside down, and you're back at square one.

To me, this is life's way of saying: "Oh? You were so immodest to believe you had that all figured out, did you? Well, let me gently remind you that things are not so simple."

Sometimes (often) I am frustrated by this. I think I understand someone, something, but then something happens so totally out of left field that I have to reevaluate the whole thing. I'm trying to be a more passive observer of these moments... to be good natured and calm and understand that I don't understand. Accept my place in time. Kurt Vonnegut was a keen observer in this way... he was often criticized for making observations in his books which seemed callous. But to me, I loved him for that. It was his way of pointing things out.

So mix up Vonnegut and Brahma. And there you have my goal for this week -- in the face of confusing situations, plans being uprooted, unfinished moments... in the face of my access to answers, accepting that I just might not get any.

So it goes.