The Box Man (The Boxer, Paul Simon)

As I eagerly await this week's Desmond flashback, I can't help composing yet another soliloquy by my favorite Scrooge-ish Scot. I say Scrooge not because he's a self-involved, greedy, bitter old man, but because, like Ebenezer Scrooge, he seemingly forfeited the joys of an epic romance because he felt he wasn't good enough for the woman he adored; it appears the harder he tries to prove himself worthy, the further he gets from what he really wants. He even got an otherworldly visitation showing him how happy he could have been, and he might as well have been only a regretful observer for as much as he changed in his past. His future is another story, however, and I really do hope that he and Penny are reunited eventually. Perhaps all his island heroics will have inflated his cripplingly low self-esteem by then, and he'll realize Penny doesn't need her father's blessing or his money to be happy. In any case, it seems appropriate to me that Desmond is so obsessed with Charles Dickens...

This little ramble, to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer, is rooted in the season two finale, with the first two verses set on the evening when he and Locke first unknowingly interact with one another and the third during their dramatic lockdown.

The Box Man

I was such a poor boy,
But my heart would not be sold.
I have pondered my resistance
Since the day that I first tumbled
On the premises.

My trying quest
Made me land here and kill Kelvin here.
Has this all been a test?

I'm so far from home.
For a man to be
Left alone, denied his joy
Till his circumstances change,
Is cause for crying.
Drowned in ale,
I fume, "It isn't fair!"

Now I know, as I cower in the corner,
That this island's a snow globe.
All the other places vanished long ago.

Time to die. Time to just give up and die.
Time to die. Here with Dickens by my side, I'll give up and die.

I go leafing through the pages
Of my novel, and I'm sobbing as I discover
Penny's secret, tender words,
For what am I to do?

But my despair
Is cut short when I hear someone's voice
Resounding through the air.

I will try. I'll survive this if I try.
I will try. Don't know why, but from the sky came the will to try.

How I landed back here, no one knows.
I had the chance to roam, so I roamed,
But reality is bitter. Fate was leading me.
Needing me now is John.

Standing near me is the box man,
And he's acting quite deranged.
The poor man could not be blinder
If every light in this cursed room was shut off.
So I cry out
That it's real and I'm to blame:
"Please believe me, please believe me,
I'm the one who crashed your plane!

Not a lie! John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie.
John, the button's not a lie.
Not a lie! We will die if you deny that it's not a lie."