ON BOXING



The Fireman and I hang out and do nothing all weekend. We socialize, and cook, and drink beer, and go grocery shopping, and watch movies. We sit on the couch as it rains. "So busy," he teases me.

We watch "Million Dollar Baby." Mo cuishle, mo cuishle, mo cuishle.*

Did I work as much on my sample chapter and proposal as I woulda shoulda coulda? Why no.

Torrential downpours threatened Subtropical City, being that we are in the subtropics. The ditches in front of people's houses, some three or four feet deep, filled with water. The dog quailed at thunder, feeling that God was telling him he was a very, very bad dog. He shook inconsolably in the bathroom. But when it was over, spring peepers and bullfrogs and toads emerged by the thousands, which kind of made up for the thunder, for C. (Frogs appear to him as living toys, endlessly chase-able. They jump when he bats them! And then I have to make him stop and come back in the house.) After the deluge we found a new bike path and walked it, in the noise of all those frogs, all the cardinals and robins singing, the magnolias suddenly opening, the jasmine almost choking the air.

TF decided that really, I need to learn how to box. As per usual, I am "busy," anxious about my writing, and about my impending tell-my-mother-I-can't-be-her-bitch conversation. "The mice are whirring," he says, tapping my forehead. So he taught me how to hit. (A true Quakeress, I have never hit deliberately. Nor have I ever gone to a casino, or bet on a damn thing, or even played poker. I have worried that, were I to have a Quaker wedding, I would not be able to even serve alcohol, for fear of offending people's teetotaler sensibilities.)

But TF was right. It feels really, really good to unleash some actual aggression. The boxing dummy, George, in TF's office has a bright red illumined "sweet spot" on his chin that was quite satisfying to damage.

The process of boxing is counterintuitive: you hit mainly with your non-dominant hand, reserving the right for unexpected power. And as much as boxing is about the individual, the single body standing there trying to protect herself, it is also profoundly intimate. For there is the dyad of the two fighters, jostling like two lovers. And of course the dyad of the fighter and the one who teaches her.

You need another person to put the gloves on for you. You can do the left, but you need another set of fingers to do the right.



Love Song: I and Thou

Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage's nails
into the frame-up of my work:
It held. It settled plumb.
level, solid, square and true
for that one great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it I sawed it
I nailed it and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can't do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

-- Alan Dugan




*In "Million Dollar Baby," the central character, played by Hillary Swank, wears silks emblazoned with the words "mo cuishle." Her trainer, played by Clint Eastwood, is a Hibernophile, forever learning Gaelic and quoting Yeats, and gives the silks as a gift. The crowds, when she fights, chant those words, and it takes the whole film before she learns what they mean. "My darling, my blood."