29 March 2007

This Woman Needs An Isis

Today's Times had a heartbreaking little AP story:

A severed leg washed up yesterday on the Long Island Sound estate of James L. Dolan, the billionaire chairman of Cablevision and Madison Square Garden, the police said, speculating that the limb was linked to a torso discovered in a suitcase three weeks ago on a Westchester County beach. The police were also investigating whether a leg and foot discovered by a fisherman on Tuesday night in Cold Spring Harbor were also related to the Westchester County remains. The legs were found a little more than three weeks after a suitcase with a torso inside floated onto the beach in Mamaroneck. The police say the victim was a Hispanic or black woman, 5 foot 6 at most, weighing 180 to 200 pounds, with a tattoo of two red cherries on a green stem above her right breast.

I was partially struck by the pathos, and whimsy, in the detail of the tattoo. But I was also struck by the body parts scattered hither and yon around Long Island Sound. My boss has been cogitating a ballet on the myth of Isis, who had to collect her murdered brother's body parts from whence they had been dispersed. I thought, this poor woman needs an Isis to put her back together again, so that she may rest in peace.

0 comments: