Rite

This rite is part of their religion.

This parade descends from an ancient rite.

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused riots at its 1913 premiere. These days, of course, music is only capable of causing angry YouTube comment threads.

It's a rite of passage.

"Nay, when thy vessels, ranged upon her shore, / rest from the deep, and on the beach ye light / the votive altars, and the gods adore, / veil then thy locks, with purple hood bedight, / and shroud thy visage from a foeman's sight, / lest hostile presence, 'mid the flames divine, / break in, and mar the omen and the rite."

And it shall be a lamb without blemish, a male, of one year; according to which rite also you shall take a kid. And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; and the whole multitude of the children of Israel shall sacrifice it in the evening.

The Italian Jewish rite has elements of both Sephardi and Ashkenazi traditions.

It's Lulu Island, the 26th of July of 2025. It begins as always—with sunlight glinting off sidewalks and the easy rhythm of habit. I walk to Tim Hortons, a modern pilgrimage. The oat-milk coffee, a small rite. Gary is there again—Gary the Cantonese, as I've come to call him in my inner haiku. We talk over steaming cups and breakfast sandwiches, meandering from Japan to Thailand to the war. I tell him: "One week Tokyo, one week Okinawa." He nods. We agree: the taste of a place is its soul. We smile at the thought of izakaya clamor and the smell of fish sauce. Then history unfolds like an old film reel. In the Philippines, my mother—a child—was given a toy chick by a Japanese soldier, who spoke of returning, of marriage. Gary speaks of rivers crossed under fear, in "Occupied Hong Kong" in the shadow of Empire. We don't mention everything. I don't mention my alternate histories—the Dai Tōa Kyōeiken, shimmering in some parallel world. The unspoken sometimes speaks loudest. Yesterday, the forest of South Arm Park. I wandered there in contemplative silence. A lone ice cream truck rolled by, blaring "Music Box Dancer"—a tune too cheerful for the tangle of emotion in my chest. / ice cream melody— / childhood ghosts stirring / in the shade of firs

And in the high mountayns swarmeth the Bogong Moth, dark pilgrim of the night. In caves they gather as a living carpet, a multitude without number. Then come the tribes, with fire and song, roasting the wingèd throng till they be crisp, nut-brown, and rich with fat. Here feast they all together, in fellowship and rite, as though at some great faire where man and moth alike are destin'd to commune. What saith this banquet of worme, of ant, of moth? That Nature, stern though she appeareth, is yet a tender mother; that in the barren sand she spreadeth a table, in the hollow roote she hideth bread, in the wing of night she provideth flesh. The stranger may mock, yet the wise man shall reverence: for he that tasteth these meates tasteth the very bounty of the earth unclad, and learneth that where man hath faith, no desert is desolate.