the cell as ritual space

Not written as reporting,

I was thinking in terms of a Noh play - the grieving mother as a
ghost (or Greek Fury) who haunts a president (Ahab, Prospero,
Lear, Macbeth?) who's really a clown. Maybe that lapdog Scott
McClellan would hover at the clown's elbow, making bland and
predictable suggestions.

What would the dialogue sound like when Sheehan and Bush meet in a
hot ditch, dust and wind swirling, secret service agents dressed
in black and wearing opaque shades setting up a circular and
impenetrable perimeter?

It would be a space transformed into something horrible and
sacred, a dark and subliminal ritual.

The writing must therefore be ritualistic and threatening, equal
to the task of heightened spectacle. It should be written cruelly
as the situation warrants.

Nothing about the writing should be sentimental or clever.

Stark and irrevocable, it should lock this transitory moment into
a cellular permanence.