Exhausting Happiness

“Let’s not get tired of being happy. Let's just not.”

What I didn’t write about. What I didn’t write about, I could not write about now. Like so many other stories and scoops of my life that just slipped this journal this year. This year’s probably one of the most unproductive years of my journal-writing, despite the year’s relative eventfulness.
The weight of the world rests on my eyelids. I’m sleepy as Sleeping Fucking Beauty. If this account was a superhero comic book, my protagonist will be called Tired Man. He’s a superhero with incurable hang-ups on the existential dilemma. Tired Man, the former reliever of the world’s tiredness, is now just tired. Tired Man, an ominous victim, a superhero turned into his own arch-rival. The knight in shining armor who’s also the damsel in distress. Tired Man was the hero of all those who were ever weary of work, of life, of anything to tire about, of those who suffer from a quarter-life crisis, of those who ever sought the answers to why they were thrown into their worlds.. He used weapons of elaborate philosophies. But he himself was convinced that he is tired of his superhero task. And as such he received that name, and became his own villain. But like Sisyphus, he acts against his fate and continues to try to save the world of tiredness anyway. Despite the unalterable fate of being tired himself.
I’m a tired man.

Tired man? The man with the tires? He’s got a Spare-tire backpack? He rescues people with tires gone flat?

I didn’t even tell why I’m tired. Maybe because that’s less interesting, or maybe because I heard Guster sing, “honest is easy, fiction’s where genius lies.”

On the last hour of the last day of the year. It’s still customary for everyone to throw in a Happy New Year text message. Don’t we ever wear out from all the merry making? I’m almost tired of being happy. All the happiness that streamed in during the holidays has literally made me sick, sneezing and coughing as my form of noise contribution to New Year’s Eve.
Like nothing’s ever new in the years I write, I’ve been drinking like a flower vase, and my mouth’s a smokestack. Between December 24 to 29, I’ve had four nights for parties. Present this year was Christmas-hashish-happiness, Christmas-party-at-the hotel-room, Christmas-reading-by-the-poolside. All these parties, all the compulsory Christmas joys. And yes, presents. For example, a Bulgari Weekend Set from D., the wonderful gift of D., the unspoken joy from my family, my friends, my life as a whole, and… a eucalyptus plant from J.K., a CD with 14 different versions of Bach’s cannon in D by my cousin D., a lucky rooster door chime from A.V., Blur’s Greatest hits and Razorback greatest hits CD from M&L, a Calm Water perfumed oil from ___, money from my Lola, handkerchiefs from my cousin B., weird figurines from H., brownies from B. and A., a DVD from D.T., and a desk set and desk organizer from my officemates and my boss. And whatever else I received from anyone else. It was all remarkable, but maybe a little overboard. I just spent over fourteen grand in cash and five grand on gift checks. But there is no accounting for this happiness anyway.
There is so much pleasure that I’m bound to receive some kind of penance. Like how I got sick right now. Cough cough cough. Like how things are bound to get hard when you’ve learned to take it easy. Easy breezy. Lemon squeezy. Maybe it’s not that hard to take it easy. Even if 2005 comes to me with all it’s got to get even. Even Stephen. When I come back to work on January 3rd, I’ll be buried neck deep with a pile of taped interviews to listen to. I can’t even begin thinking about the New Year’s results-oriented resolutions that boss will be imposing for the group. And 2005 means I will be 24. That’s definitely something I don’t want to think about, but I’ve already been thinking about since I was 17.
A line from the New Year’s greeting I sent to everyone goes, “Let’s not get tired of being happy.”
Let’s just not.

Christmas Figures

Some numbers I got from reading December’s Newsbreak, and some from newspaper editorials, appropriate for the 12 days of Christmas:

1.) 33% of the national budget will go to interest payments. Not even debt payments.
2.) 11 UP (school of Economics) professors warns of financial meltdown if government does not act on the budget deficit and reduce its 5.4 trillion debt.
3.) 6 months since Arroyo was “elected” into office. From what I hear, the amount she borrowed already totaled to the borrowings of 2 presidents combined.
4.) 451,309 corporations are registered with SEC. But only 113,145 firms have field their corporate income tax, and only 10,833 actually paid taxes.
5.) 29++ per liter of gas. 5.50 jeep minimum fare.
6.) 76.7 billion income tax yield: 87.8% was paid by workers and employees through automatically withheld taxes. A newspaper editorial goes: “Joblessness. High Prices. The middle class has little flexibility left. They are most resentful of the costs of bad government.”
7.) 4,000,000 families living below poverty line.
8.) 15,000 pesos in electric bills for 1024, 1022, and 1019 Nakpil. 7,000 in 1022 alone.
9.) 2.5% increase in family income from 2000 to 2003, but prices of commodities shot up to almost 14%.
10.) 4 Filipinos are born every minute. Growth in enrollment declined from 7.63% in 2001 to 3.94% in 2003.
11.) 1 – the number of sections in Letran Grade 5 elementary. It was 5 during my time.
12.) 30 pesos – taxi flag down rate. If I remember it correctly, it was 2.50 pesos when I was growing up in the eighties. Now it’s 2.50 pesos for each drop of the meter.

We wish you a merry Christmas (3x) and a Happy New Year.