Karma

One might be under the assumption that the hole is generally filled with water, enough to buoy one slightly. The analogy changes rather drastically in the absence of that factor.

It hurts a lot more to hit the bottom of a dry hole after a long fall.

There is the possibility of finding bits to grab on to, but the chances that such things will halt the descent and provide an opportunity to reverse it are slight. One’s best hope is to attempt to orient themselves in such a way that these things don’t become jagged, bludgeoning obstacles; these slow the fall, erstwhile making it more painful. Thinking about how far off the bottom is, and consequently how much momentum one has gained and has yet to gain, can be depressing. Avoid this.

The most striking difference is the disproportionate amount of effort required to get back out of the hole. But, if the fall doesn’t kill you, staying at the bottom will.

I feel like I’ve been losing track. I haven’t been writing much, and what I have written seems shallow and less connected. I keep looking to the world for inspiration in case something jumps out at me. Nothing lately has. But honestly, something has been irking me for a while. It is another church sign, though from a different church this time. It reads:
"WAL-MART ISN’T THE ONLY SAVING PLACE"
You may read this and wonder why it bothers me. I’m rather obviously not Christian, and never even in my discussion of religion have I lauded the sacred necessity of being "saved". But somehow, this sign seems to be in terribly poor taste. It has been up for a long time now, and perhaps no one has complained about it. Maybe it’s because enough Christians shop at Wal-Mart to see the connection and find it funny. It’s a connection I don’t see, and I don’t find it funny - I find it tacky. Saving a few cents on poorly made items in a work environment where its employees are unfairly compensated and the business is drowning out other local family-owned businesses doesn’t seem to fall in line, anywhere, with the Salvation in the Christ. If, in order for people to make the memory connection to their place of worship, it is necessary to call upon an infamously cheap chain retailer, inadvertently (?) advertising for them at the same time, then our nation’s poison commercialism has reached a new level of saturation. Of course, it’s not like this honestly means anything to me; I’m not looking for a church, and I don’t need to confirm my personal beliefs against those people. But it seems to me that a person’s theistic perspective should be something that is not only personal to them, but remains "sacred", if you will. In that way, a sign like this is twisted and insulting.

Before you ask, this isn’t some hippie attack on the material culture.
I couldn’t bother myself to go that far with it, or to get that negative about it. Just couldn’t be bothered.
It’s just that lately, as I’ve been about to move out for the first time ever, I’ve been going through a bunch of stuff that I’ve had for years. Some of it was in such a state that it had to be thrown a way. A large amount of it could probably go to goodwill, but some of it I just had to keep, because it still meant something to me. I know eventually I’ll be able to just toss it all out the window and keep the memories, but not yet. Now, hold that thought.
On a completely unrelated mindtrack, I was thinking about Christmas as I walked from the parking garage to work today. I’m not sure why. But I was thinking to myself how a lot of really intelligent people condemn Christmas because it has become a purely secular holiday, revolving around people buying each other crap they don’t need in order to try and alleviate some weird media-imposed guilt. Which is true - for a large part. But that doesn’t mean it means nothing to people. And I think that’s where those people drop their argument. Beyond their condemnation of mass marketing, any counter-argument comes across as nothing but cheesy emotional excuses for its existence as such. I feel personally insulted when people assume that I participate in christmas because I am obligated by the media to do so.
I know that for a lot of people, that’s how it is. And you can kind of tell by the things that they go out and buy for people how well they know the person and just how important it really is. Would I be disappointed if I didn’t get presents? Hell yeah, I put a lot of thought into what I ask for. I get stuff I use. But if there were no more presents ever, would I think that Christmas was gone? No. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the “spirit of christmas” or even any religious elements. The attachments I have to the christmas, easter, valentines day, all that crap - they have nothing to do with all the corporate lauding. I would still decorate a tree, because that’s one of the most fun things to do all year. Same with eggs, because I’m an artist and my mother and I go all out… and it’s always fun trying to find them in the morning because she forgets where she hid them. Valentine’s day? I like chocolate. Yep, that’s all. No cheesy romantic stuff, my boyfriend isn’t obligated to buy me anything, I have never required myself to have one by that particular day, and my mom buys me all the sugar.
I could boycott the holidays, teach the media a lesson like some people do. But I already refrain from buying the pointless crap. And you know what? It doesn’t go away. It never will until everyone stops buying it, and with the large number of underinformed, brainwashed citizens in the country that believe they are making good purchasing decisions, that is not going to happen in my lifetime. And sure, I could work at organizing people and telling them not to buy it either, but not if they really thought it was what they wanted. Not everyone can give up their material ties so easily. Hell, I couldn’t get rid of half of that sentimental stuff that I found. Now my friend is Taoist. The last thing that this friend of mine wants is more junk, and after the last move, a lot of that same kind of memorabilia was done away with. My point is, we are all on different levels. It so happens that most of the country is at the level where they feel the need to purchase and hold on to things like that for no good reason until they come to the realization years later that they never needed it to begin with. Furthermore, there is the problem of what can even be categorized as “useless shit,” and until everyone agrees on that point, we cannot compeltely stop buying it. That’s how our commercial nation works. And it isn’t just going to break down overnight. It may be slowly decaying, but the keyword is slowly.
So people can go ahead and keep ranting about it in their “blogs”, just like this. They can either dribble on in some broken, misspelled variant of internet english about all the stuff they didn’t get, or curse antagonistically the fact that they never had a happy holiday because of domestic issues and use that to argue that no one needs it, period. It will be done intelligently. Many will agree with them. But listening to anything like that religiously is just as ridiculous as buying meaningless plastic on sight from an infomercial.
That can’t be stopped either. I can’t even tell anyone to give up the argument.
By no means am I being nihilistic here. One shouldn’t do or not do a thing simply because “it doesn’t matter anyway.” I celebrate christmas not because it doesn’t matter in the long run, but because it has personal value for me. Maybe that’s cheesy. But like I said before, it’s all internalized, and there’s no real way to turn everyone at once from complete externalization of self-worth.
Just a thought. Do with it whatever you like.

Between a state of sleep and waking, your worst nightmare materializes, inches away from you. It is vivid, and sickening. The things you trust the most conspire against you, believing you blind, knocking your feet out from under you and raping that trust. Even when you rise against it, you end up in the same place you were, comforting that which you feared moments ago… only to wake the next morning and remember it as nothing more than a dream, a figment, a nightmare.
It is nothing so trite as a lesson; perhaps a sign. Whatever it is, this figment of the night is haunting, leaving no direct recourse and no memory of where you stood before it all hit you.
Somehow, though disoriented, you feel at peace. Perhaps now the worst is over.
But those words always echo in the eye of the storm…
In your mind, the shadows dance. They stretch and flail, like spindly flames, then shrink, to creep along the edges and slip through the cracks. What it might be. What it looked like. What they said it was, and how it shouldn’t have been. It tears at you.
So why does the calm remain?
It cannot be the resolution of knowing what comes next, for there is no way to know what must be done. It cannot be the comfort of justification, for the trust still lays broken at your feet. The only question which can be answered remains as such: who is left with the upper hand?

The things you truly need, though they are the most worthwhile to wait for, are the most painful to hope for. You must wait for them to arrive: when sought after, they elude you; when prompted, they become false. When you have found them, you will only know after many a harsh trial has befallen you, and if you must call out to them, it can only be done when the length of your silence can justify it - or it will be broken, and must begin anew.
Even a year is not long enough, it seems.

This is as bad as showing up to school without pants on. This is, in fact, worse than showing up to school with no clothes on. Saying the wrong thing to the person that means more to you than anyone in the world, and not being able to talk to them to apologize or explain, leaves you feeling cold, empty, dark, and sick, hoping you wake up from this terribly realistic nightmare.
It isn’t a feeling I’m new to. But it is a feeling that never gets easier, and never stops looking for a way to creep into my life and take over my consciousness.
Inwardly, it is impossible to remain optimistic when the pain seems so hopelessly unavoidable. Outwardly, it must be shoved back inside, filling me with nothing but more emptiness.
And it is through the fault of none other than myself, through my own idiocy and inadequacy. The capacity to carve, on a whim and to my specification, the awkward and graceless facets of this, the english language, used to be something on which I could pride myself. Now it seems that I have lost any propensity whatsoever for poetic consolation, and can only find means in prose to lament.
Even here, I assure you, a sentence has managed to reverse itself in the journey from my mind’s intent to the twisted will of these fingers and now implies some unknown thing which I had never designed.
Will this torturous waiting pass? Of course. But it makes it no easier to know that there is a point in the future that may free me from this pain, when I cannot expedite its approach.
By the time this has ended, at least three hours - perhaps six or more, even - of this hell with my own contemplation will have elapsed. Once it ends, these words will seem even more childish than the very act of mistranslating my own native language. But perhaps the next time this aching finds its way to me, I will have something to look back on and remind me that it is neither the first time nor the last.