We shall be examining the Seated Boxer this week in Art History. I recommend the excellent video on this great work of Greek sculpture, which I shall post below.
The boxer expresses how I feel at the ripe age of 78, my husband dead, my life baffling, a kaleidoscope of the most intense feelings, thoughts, dreams, memories I have ever experienced. I feel beaten down, defeated, prepared to vanish. I feel already that I am a ghost of sorts, not fully alive, watching the events around me with a sense of detachment and incomprehension. Do I want to die? Yes, but I don't know where or when. Do I want to survive this bleak time? I don't know. My feelings are contradictory and ever changing, except of course the never ending feeling of loss and absence.
My values remain the same, nonetheless, my love of the mountains, my love of the sea, my love of a few others who have shown me so much love and compassion. I have the same moral values. The same sense of beauty. The same joy in listening to music.
I am also Darryl; no longer in time or space, no longer bodily Darryl with all his beauty, but a spirit, a mystery, an ineffable being. Without Darryl's spirit, I have no enduring and consistent identity or spirit, myself. That is also true, I realize now, more than ever, of Jim, of Jake, of the other dead friends, lovers I have embraced. In other words, I too am beginning not to exist in time or space, the world of causality, the empirical world any longer, regardless of what I do.
This boxer, beaten and old, is no less beautiful, inspiring, an image as true to human life as a work of art can be, a being from the depths and heart of our existence, our joy.
-- Jack
