How can you enjoy so brutal a sport, people sometimes ask me. Or pointedly don’t ask. And it’s too complex to answer. In any case, I don’t “enjoy” boxing in the usual sense of the word, and never have; boxing isn’t invariably “brutal”; and I don’t think of it as a “sport.” Nor can I think of boxing in writerly terms as a metaphor for something else. No one whose interest began as mine did in childhood—as an offshoot of my father’s interest—is likely to think of boxing as a symbol of something beyond itself, as if its uniqueness were merely an abbreviation, or iconographic;… boxing is only like boxing. (Joyce Carol Oates)
Truth be told—and it is important to stress here that I do not exaggerate—when my sister and I entered the empty stadium and saw the boxing ring at the center, elevated and flooded with harsh lights, I knew I was a goner. Call me corny, or more accurately to some people, crazy, but I stood there agape and in awe. A painful tenderness at the pit of my stomach settled, too. I did not expect it to feel both church and home. My family has a favorite story of my brother Mike applying for a job with an Opus Dei institution. He was asked what our family did on Sundays, and he answered, “We watch boxing.” To our family, it was that: something we did together. Needless to say, he did not get a call back. It is a funny story we like to tell and retell. It was a story that made our father smile. I remembered that story turning into something so much more than a funny story staring up at the ring.
tatay ko rin mahilig sa boksing. natatandaan ko na ilang beses din akong nanood ng boksing sa tv kasama siya noong bata pa ako. pero medyo mas nagustuhan kong manood ng boksing nitong tumanda na ako at wala na si erpat. at hindi gaya ni oates, may panahon, mga ilang taon na siguro yun, na iniisip ko ang boksing bilang isang talinghaga o bilang posibleng ilustrasyon ng isang poetika–gaano man kababaw ang ilustrasyong yun. siyempre, gaya ng maraming dumadaang kaisipan, nakalimutan ko na rin yun, naalala ko lang ngayon dito sa post mo. salamat, mamu.
Pinuna ni Oates ang hilig ng manunulat sa boxing tulad nina Hemingway, Hazlitt (mula sa libro ni Beens na binabasa ko kagabi bago dumating ang mga tao para sa ating Themed Videoke Night), Mailer, tulad na rin niya. Sabi ni Oates, “That no other sport can elicit such theoretical anxiety lies at the heart of boxing’s fascination for the writer. It is the thing in itself but it is also its meaning to the individual, shifting and problematic as a blurred image in a mirror. The writer contemplates his opposite in the boxer, who is all public display, all risk, and ideally, all improvisation: he will know his limit in a way that the writer, like all artists, never quite knows his limit—for we who write live in a kaleidoscopic world of ever-shifting assessments and judgments, unable to determine whether it is revelation or supreme self-delusion that fuels our most crucial efforts…. The boxer’s world is not an ambiguous one….” Dagdag pa niya, “For contrary to stereotyped notions, boxing is primarily about being, and not giving, hurt…. To move through pain to triumph—or the semblance of triumph—is the writer’s, as it is the boxer’s, hope.”
Pinagisipan ko ang puna mo at na-realize ko na malamang hindi ko naisip ang boxing bilang talinhaga para sa buhay dahil wala, ni isang katiting, dun sa pinapanood namin tuwing Linggo, wala akong makita na maari kong emote-an. Maka-relate ba at pagkatapos akuin. At maiangat sa ibang kahulugan dahil iba na ang pinagdadaanan pero kumbaga may hold pa rin sa aking imahinasyon. Bilang batang babae na nuknukan ng hilig sa libro at muntik nang matigok nung grade 3, takot na takot ako na masaktan. At ultimately, ang ibig sabihin ng panunood ng boxing noon sa akin ay panunood sa tabi ng tatay ko. Kung kaya, di tulad sayo, nabawasan naman ang hilig pagkamatay niya. Ngayon nga lang bumabalik at kinahihiligan dahil binabalikan din ang isang proyekto. :)
When I started reading this entry, for a while I thought the first paragraph was yours :)
But your words on how it felt to enter that boxing ring: “I did not expect it to feel both church and home.” That rings so true. And I also felt such a rush to see the ring, the lights… I’ve ended up enjoying watching boxing too. One of dad’s legacies, apart from the watching-boxing-on-TV-as-a-family memories, I suppose.
Oh my head hurts. Spent last few days reading essays on boxing and old fights in Sports Illustrated online. Some of the names I hadn’t heard in a long time. Heartbreaking article on Mancini and Duk Koo-Kim death match. Vince sent this great read on Tyson, too. (http://nplusonemag.com/tyson-projected).
…at nagbago ka na pala ng Theme. :) nice
p’wede na ba kitang tawaging “mabo” ngayon kaysa “mamu”? mabo for ma-boksing, s’yempre. :-D
Ayer. Minsan ang tagal nating hindi nagkikita tapos naiisip ko, Naku miss na miss ko nang kausap si Ayer grabe sobra, tapos makakabasa ako ng ganito tapos naiisip ko, Ay hindi naman pala gaano. Hindi ko alam kung ano mas baduy: Mabo o Gobi. (Tanong pala ni Mabel kung Atenista ka, kasi yung jokes mo daw baduy. Sabi ko hindi. Wala kang Ignatian values, diba?)
hehe. kaya nga mas namimiss mo ako dahil sa mga ganyan.
mabel: direktang atake yan sa mga atenista ha. ano’ng masasabi mo beens?
at no comment sa ignatian values :-P
[...] Stadium opened the door and led us down to boxing ring “just to take a look.” My sister was right. We were goners the minute we saw it. That ring, harshly lit and all, that stadium, which has [...]