Simple is as simple does.

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

No corner of life is simple. It is rare to find a wholly predictable. Seldom is simplicity seen, yet it is simple enough to stare. Edit rough edges omitted smooth. Highlighted goodness and happiness. This sort of judgment can be found. Often, unavoidable.

Importance. Prevalence. Power that must be recognized by dominance. Hope climbing high into the air with trees, titans with subtle little minds, cherished thoughts uplifted, held out and free like charity and leaves let go of at the ends of seasons. Selfless. Endearing. Seldom seen for what it really seems, but for what it seeds.

Incredibly complex and selfishly. A gift better to give than to receive. In fact, power and strength, which I likened to trees, also have roots. Ants and flies and worms, climbing mammals and slow-crawling turtles lugging homes, all benefit from a lack of simplicity. The majestic, monarchal star ablaze in the spotlight of our sky, clouds, rain, mountains rebelling gravity and impenetrable obstacles asleep under rotted logs. Where is simple? Lowly? Creepily crawling forest floors. God of bright. God of massive. Clouds sparked and exploding, exhaustive radiation outward. Pressure. Gravity deep within. Molten smarts and iron whim.

I can not find a simple element in life. And I live simply. The soil is a novel. The blue roof a confessional poem. Rhymes and metaphors and simile bubble out steady like springs, until so many collect, pooled into analogies. Drowned rivers that slice the narrow banks of religion, philosophy, art. All emptied out into the ocean of Mankind, behind our complex staring eyes, within our imaginative plastic minds.

I have found simplicity. It is buried like a seed inside the benign produce of perspective.

Representative of people

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Change is in us and always has been.
A true mature individual has many friends, strong families, but needs no one.
Choice. It is what frightens us most out of life. Forces us to believe
choices for us need limitations, restricted without hesitation, immediately,
legally bound. The representative people charged with enacting change
are incapable of making decisions. They’re crippled. One of many concessions
politicians are asked to sacrifice upon election. Suppress your personality,
your personal issues, marketable regrets, your misplaced anxieties. Yourself.
We, the authentic people, can own those aspects in ourselves. But our mirror,
our reflection, our hoisted, well-dressed representation, must be better than we are. Banish weakness within your majority selected self. Do not act with reason, or logic.
The insurance is in reaction. Wait for oil to spill then drill the rhetoric of development, change, growth, ground starts shaking and buildings fall down,
call just after to mend the source of disaster.
Trace the vine to roots too late. Be sure to hesitate.
It is the safest way to restrict your own choices, limit options.
And who can argue with the last viable solution.
With the world sinking beneath garbage,
let’s finally discuss pollution.
This next part will be frightening, and read like revolt. It is not.
All we must do in order to grow, change, progress, is already in us.
Shatter the mirror, break the desperate stare at a better representation
of us than we are ourselves. It is only superficially better.
It does not matter the marks we scratch against the glass.

When we change ourselves in order to alter our reflection,
no protest is necessary to influence our representation.

North Carolina Conservatives and the Bathroom of Secrets

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

We have an economic system that has, since its inception, maintained a wavering level of poverty, unemployment and homelessness. It’s called capitalism, and accordingly, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We have a large movement within the scientific community that, with or without any validity or backing or proof, believes the industries of Mankind are changing the climate patterns of this planet in exceedingly detrimental ways. The bees who seed the pollen into every fruit or vegetable we eat are disappearing. The scientists we don’t believe about the impact we have on our environment are injecting bacterial DNA into our food so that it can eat poison and multiply.

Why are we tax-funding a conversation about bathroom policies?

I know this could easily be read as a rhetorical question, but in seriousness. Why? It is completely, one hundred percent, legal to report any suspicious persons or activity in or around a restroom. Essentially, these big strong proud fellows whose daughters would wither on the vine without them around are, in the most costly and publicized manner, expressing a distrust in their own progeny’s ability to detect a threat and act on it. Because seeing a man in a woman’s restroom, whether illegal or legal, is threatening, and therefore completely within the realm of reporting to the administrators of a facility, the local police department, or even eventually local, regional and state government officials. But this is not the case. These complaints and reports are not rolling in. They are hypothetical. Imagined up by vapid, sexist fathers who are not confident enough in their own masculinity to have any faith whatsoever in a woman’s ability to perceive a threat. And that is all good and well, but we should not pay for their anxiety.

And that is what we are doing. Every discussion in the state legislature, every salaried position taking calls, hired lawyers, political ads, public announcements, social media managers and image consultants. I don’t want that. I want what little money we have running through state government to go to the procurement and security of three things. Food, water, and shelter. Apart from that, I have just enough faith in Mankind and its many daughters, to entrust each facility, building, each location, every single person who uses a restroom wherever they are, to save us some money and keep determining for themselves what is safe or not.

And seriously, what does the word freedom mean to our government, if not that. It is not a matter of winning arguments or proving points. This is not an expectation we should have of any government. Help us propagate food. Secure our water and instill plans for promised drought. Preserve our land, our right to shelter, and to defend what is ours. Apart from that, freedom means leaving cosmetic social issues completely out of expensive, politicized, tax-funded conversations. Especially ones that hurt our image, diminish our tourism, and further socially ostracize people who already felt out of place in their own bodies.

I don’t support a call-center republic. I don’t support holding signs and standing outside office buildings and eating cold McDonald’s while googling the rates of single rooms at the Red Roof. I don’t support marches, lining up to increase police budgets and the gadgets they get awarded to keep our movements thwarted. I say ignore this law. This ban. Any woman or man or institution who expresses supporting it, ignore them also. Pay attention to government when and where it supports us in the things we all need in order to be free.

Food. Water. Shelter.

There was a bill we paid to create this bill. There is a bill we are paying to have it repealed. And there was no fire, no damage, no outcry for help against an active threat. Ignore any human being who claims to be a leader, yet wastes even a moment discussing funding such asinine, clearly social, partisan, political agendas. Ignore anyone who, this day and age, with the issues staring us in the face, thinks we have time to waste checking birth certificates outside every ladies room.

It is a harmful distraction. And worse, expensive.