notes & things | 1/28/2026

There are a million things I could say about the current environment. Nurses and poets being shot in the streets in cold blood in other cities that could just as easily be here. The steady doom of internet screens I have been trying to balance to salvage my mental health, which I feel like I am hanging onto by the skin of my teeth. The daily strangeness of still having to do the ordinary life things like grocery shopping and dentist appointments amid the looming constitutional crisis. As a poet, I should have metaphors and insights, but I find myself stuck and unable to create in that space. There are lots of poems in my various social media feeds that are taking on the task. I do not know a way in. Nor do I know if that is where I need to be. Where I need to focus my attention. Our leaders and our systems have failed us. Will keep failing us apparently. 

The irony, of course, is that when I feel this way--loose around the edges and flapping in the wind, art has had a way of saving me. Or maybe not even the expression, but the focus. Amid so much barrage of daily horrors, its hard to find that focus. I've been working on the play this week--taking my shoddy and rough draft I completed before the holidays and trying to make it a little more orderly. I get distracted a lot. From writing poems. From freelance assignments and layouts for chaps. I did make some gains on a new series of collages (see above) that are forming the basis for something I have set aside for February writing hours.  I have also been working on promo materials for CLOVEN, which launched softly into the world at the beginning of the month. I find myself needing to lie down a lot more. Particularly after reading the news or scrolling. Sometimes, sleep is a better place but others, its a morass of disturbing dreams I can't help but think are a result of the stressors of daily life. 

As for the play itself , I managed to work up a clean draft to pass off to J to see if I am on the right track. While I normally wouldn't share poems with anyone, having really never shared poems outside of workshop in the early stages, his stage and script experience could be useful to keeping me on the right track since I scarce know what I am doing in this new form that is both strange and familiar at the same time. I know most of the mechanics of a play script and writing for the stage, but I struggle with climbing action and structure. Poems, in contrast, are so small. They can also be fragmented and disjointed in a way that probably doesn't work on stage. While we've seen a lot of productions over the past couple years, the ones I have loved most have been a little rougher around the edges. Both The Drowning Women and OAK, both scene at the tiny Raven storefront theater up here in Edgewater, are great models that I kept in mind as I was writing. Spare, but rich in language and action. Also, not as glossy as things we've seen at larger downtown theaters.  

I have also been staying close to home for the past couple of weeks amid the snow and cold, which just seems to keep coming this January, perhaps even moreso than other years. Its not just cold, but a constant howl of wind whipping through the alley at the back of the building. While the radiators are pumping, in between I can feel a chill at my back from the window while I work, so much so I've toyed with the idea of hauling over the space heater that is by my old writing table in the living room. The bedroom is the warmest room in the apartment with less windows, but sometimes, with the radiators working, it get s a little too warm. While most of the winter, we have it cracked for fresh air and just snuggle under the duvet, its really been even too cold for that. Still, I tell myself by the end of February, the sun will be setting later and later. And whatever else is happening, spring will come eventually. Despite the chaos we find ourselves amidst in this long winter. 

     

 

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