[_Eastern Highways, Old Houses, and the 100-oz. Beer Tower_]

Today, I went to the house chosen for the setting for the "Coffin Door" photos. This is the new short story I'm writing, on in which images play an integral role in shaping the narrative.

It was the typical drive north, weaving through the psychosis that is the landscape of the American East Coast driver, weaving through the sociopathic, consequence-free mentality of the wretched masses that use highway transportation to express their own nihilistic tendencies.

And airplanes make me nervous.

Anyway, the house is an old one, owned by my friend P.H. and his partner, and it's in the middle of a long-term renovation. One room had just the fireplace I needed, and plenty of hardware to build out a setting for the small door of the story's title. We photographed the door in various states, dressing the area around it with plaster that P.H. pulled from a section of wall that's under reconstruction. After that, we gathered some old wood from the attic and then went down to the fieldstone basement and constructed a small compartment that would stand in for what one character in the story calls a "coffin hole." I took photos of the inside of that. When the pictures are brought together in a sequence, the compartment interior will appear to be what is on the other side of the "coffin door."

When the work was done, P.H. and I grabbed a bite to eat. I have never been to Chili's before. This is where one consumes large amounts of everything, if one lives in the suburbs or has that kind of inclination anywhere, I suppose. A poster on the wall advertised a 100-ounce Budweiser "draught tower." The price was $18.98. The restaurant was mostly empty. News of the new Virginia Tech shooting played on the television. We talked about P.H.'s work out in L.A.

Later, I drove back to Boston, a mere twenty minutes on the highway, but then about forty in the Callahan tunnel, waiting for the hoards of homebound cubicle farmers to crawl their way south.

There so much work to be done, now, work left untouched because of my day up north. The price of the creative choice is that the rest of everything gets agitated in its box. It is rattling, but something will have to wait. I've been over-sleeping, over-everything really. I'm going to just sit here a while. It'll only be a while.