Building the Coffin
Deciding to build one's own coffin is decidedly unusual, but, with Peter Warren's help, I did it. The project would have forever rested in obscurity had I not written a short piece about the experience and had the gumption to submit it to The New York Times. It's publication generated a response far beyond anything that I had anticipated: letters, emails, radio interviews, and two film documentaries. My fifteen minutes. I hope that my responses to all this attention were coherent enough to keep it all in perspective. Yes, Peter and I did build a beautiful wooden box of proper dimensions for body and crematorium. At least that was our initial intent, and this sequence of images takes you through the construction. I still look at the transformation of the old, dirty wood to finished product with pride and amazement. But I also hope that the images show something more profound--the love that developed between two friends as they committed themselves to producing something meaningful and which eventually surpassed the significance of anything constructed from wood.