Alberto's boxer monologue

Dedicated to my boxers in Writers get Violent, who really beat the shit out of each other:

To you the boxers,

to whom the gong sounds always unexpectedly, to whom the stool slides out from under your ass, unexpectedly, like a fart. And you find yourself there, legs bent, facing this ring, a space that seems infinite and yet limited, metaphor of the human condition.

When you hear it, don’t ask yourself for whom the gong tolls, it tolls for thee.

Which means you.

YOU the winner

or precisely

you who will win JUST tonight,

this is a sport where it is better to put aside any Cartesian doubt, where the only certainty that counts is that of a big clout right on the nose. There is no point to wonder why. There is no point to pursue the search for truth, when the only truth that counts is that of the winners. That goes for war, sadly, and for the smallest type of conflict.

So, don’t think about it, just knock him down and enjoy the natural spectacle of seeing a boxer slowly fall backward, straight as a shaft, following the trajectory of a toppled oak, of hearing him crash to earth and the numerical tick-tocking of a grown child that has become a man,

but who still hasn’t stopped counting to ten

to give some meaning to this game.

To YOU the loser,

or is better to say you who’ll lose JUST this time,

when you’ll be there lying down,

your cheek stuck on the ground,

don’t ask yourself why YOU got it, YOU got it for everyone of us, the cowards,

your face got it for all these faces, your eyes saw it for all these eyes,

like a diamond that refracts everything around it into a thousand brilliant slivers and glares,

like a lake that is mirrored in every raindrop when it rains,

a limpid silvery lake that reflects every face, you absorbed every punch and every mirrored feeling, connected with those punches, we felt. You’ve been battered from our fears, sorrows, greed, wonder, like a human god listening to everyone’s prayer at the same time, you’ve been worn out by OUR emotion, you’ve been defeated by YOUR empathy.

When you gonna be here, laying down, don’t ask yourself if you are dead, you’re not dead.

You’re too alive.

Alberto Rigettini