More Life

Underneath the dusty silence there are tears. The world grows older and wearier and somehow there is less joyousness. A celebration is a celebration is a celebration. Or no. Tinsel and bright lights leave one with an indescribable emptiness. Bright red lipstick on a corpse.

There is no life, or less life or dwindling life. No joy or very little, so very, very little... We're tired. We need to rest.

Christmas limped by and now it's New Year and I think, another year, so what, another footstep on the road to my grave.

I saw my grave once - there was no one to put up a headstone, it was overgrown with ugly graveyard thorns. No candles, no flowers, forgotten. Worm food. (Didn't I tell them I wanted to be cremated? Didn't I say I didn't want any visible reminder of my utter insignificance?)

But no matter, no matter. I think when I'm done, I won't be coming back. The world has grown so terribly, terribly old. Aching ancient bones. Wheezing. A sour sadness spilling out of the stratosphere. There's nothing left for me here... everyone I ever really loved has been cancelled. Nobody even remembers that they ever existed. Not even me.

But I remember something, a feeling, a feeling of wholeness, a serene sort of joy, an unquestioning happiness. And I cudgel my brains - who gave me this happiness? Who am I trying to remember? And I get... nothing.

Happiness is not knowing you're happy. Smoothness, imperturbability. Misery, on the other hand, is a braggart. It announces itself, treads heavily in your face.

But where has the quietness gone? Once Christmas was joy. It was more than the presents. There was an indefinable magic about it. One Christmas, we walked home after midnight Mass and there was a hush in the air and the stars were large and uncanny and my father said... I don't remember what he said. Maybe he didn't say anything. Maybe he didn't have to speak, because we were chorussing The First Noel in our young, untuneful voices and there was no need for words.

I remember staring up into the sky in November one year, looking for the sleigh because my mother asked us to write a letter to Santa. I thought I could almost see it, there hidden behind the blue. I wanted to know how he stayed up there. She said, magic! And I believed her. She was perfect and she would never lie to me.

And all those New Years with new journals, writing down heaps of resolutions, goals, dreams. This year we saw in New Year watching the threadbare show on TV3 with the ministers standing awkwardly on stage to launch Visit Malaysia 2007. Some looked tired, others irresolute and unsure, one smiled evilly and I thought, I don't even have the energy to care about this anymore. I don't give a flying fuck. Mom, can we change the channel? Please?

And we caught the end of Fellowship of the Ring and it was so incredibly sad and I thought about how the world changed there was no going back. And Frodo had to leave and Aragorn had to die and Arwen languished underneath the fading trees until the long years of her life were utterly spent.

Sadder and sadder.

And I thought about how the world only spins forward.

Forward? You call this forward? When people fade, become less real, become less tangible? Forward?

And I wish you all more life. More life?

A blessing.

Maybe.