First I Want to Thank God

A boxer of moderate renown was once asked by a journalist whether he had a particular routine before fights. Were there any specific people he liked to surround himself with, any music he used to psyche himself up, any mental exercises that helped him visualize victory — that sort of thing. He replied that his routine, such as it was, resembled something like the opposite of that picture. In fact, he spent as much time as possible alone with his thoughts. Yes, he listened to music, but typically just a single song over and over, pre-selected for its effectiveness in helping him achieve the desired state, which was a deep, almost debilitating sorrow. What he sought was not sadness, exactly, but the sort of entrenched melancholy that follows sadness, and its compounding cruelties: pity, abandonment, loneliness, regret. He did not just want to feel like a failure, but to inhabit entirely the exquisite limbo of having failed, so that when the time came to leave alone alone, to enter the arena floor, to feel the crowd’s breath closing in like an invasive vine, and to witness the figure of his opponent standing in wait, he will have already lost, and in losing possess the miraculous gift of going back in time.  

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kclo