5:42 a.m. Denny’s. A Grand Slam Slugger is churning its way through my GI tract on a wave of acidic nightmare, equal parts orange juice and coffee. Somewhere down there the whole mess is going to hit a loose gasket and come bursting right out of my sides.

I’ve been staring at this hateful picture for hours now. It has kept me up ‘til dawn because it’s actually quite good, and thus hard for me to add to textually because I think it does a pretty good job on its own. It has that sort of surreal conflicted inversion that I’m usually a fan of, all other things being equal. That’s why I picked it.

But the assignment! What comes to mind?

Originally I planned to write a pathetic, dispassionate first-person vignette about a kid who had to bury his father, but first needed to reflect on the day he and his dad painted the side of the house together, and that face that the paint on the section he had done, the window trim, was now peeling and chipping more quickly than those his father painted.

I’m not really sure what that would have said, in terms of a thematic narrative thesis, but it was going to have a lot of pastoral imagery and half-smile humor, and I was going to save the revelation of the father’s death for the last paragraph or so. By then, I’m sure, I would have found something clever to tie the bugger together.

But the damn lighting on the right side of the picture, giving the impression that the photo is taken from outside into outside, is really pissing me off because it makes the picture more complex, and harder to attach to a single strand narrative.

The picture precludes a definite story, and gives no easy answers as to where the focus of my inspiration should come from. Do I write from the perspective of the “outside” of the barn (the camera’s side), or do I write from the partly cloudy skies on the other side of the wall itself? Where’s my focal point? Do I need one? It’s been so long since my last attempt at this kind of imaginative exercise, you see, that the gears are a bit rusty.

The NFTA shuttles are now roaring with some spunk and regularity on Sheridan Drive, and there isn’t a police car in sight from any of the local departments, so I’m thinking now might be a good time to make a clean break from this greasy hellhole.

I’m also thinking hang this frustratingly well put together piece, along with whatever cracked out eagle-eyed photographer put the damn thing together at Boardman’s request (or was it Boardman himself…?).

Whose damn idea was this anyhow? I hope whoever turned this in is happy: I now have an $8 Denny’s bill to sweet talk my way out of, and a massive guilty ulcer brought on by the coffee/orange juice/Slugger fiasco and my utter inability to complete the assignment. Happy trails, jackass, thanks for putting an appropriately painful period on an insufferably difficult year.

Love the picture, and best of luck to you in all your future endeavors.

Yours,

JD