Rituals on repeat

 

12 September 2021

She sat on a bench in downtown Tacoma; leaning over, she had no face, just a layer of hair, lighter at the top, darker where it hung over her neck. Her right arm darted out, sketched a circle in air, then fell to her side. Her left arm followed, in quasi-symmetry. An old man got off the bus, nursing a battered suitcase; headed (I suspect) to the tent city under the freeway. Yesterday, we refused to turn on the television, though the Times offered up Dust Woman’s photograph, who later died of cancer in her 40s. Rituals not of release but of re-run. The young woman’s mother might wish for her arrest, for her arm to stop its windmilling, for her to have a bed softer than the bench. My mother’s mother wanted to be a conductor, flung her arms out to direct radio symphonies. A thin Black man leans back, while his arms push forward, conducting music in a small apartment in a painting. Fans thrust their arms in air as the referee blows another call. Hands express what the face withholds, young woman marking the time of her hallucinations. Outside the museum we saw a parking lot empty except for a rectangular chain link fence, inside the fence a police car. The museum employee said there was a courthouse nearby, which didn't answer the question. A man with my father’s name posts a video of a small terrier dressed in a silver reflective coat, his leash a giant chain. A moment of silence, and then the game begins.