notes & things: valentine's edition | 2/14/2026

Since schedules can be weird, we have been celebrating Valentine's Day all this week with various endeavors and outings, including some plays and other entertainments (Hamnet at Chicago Shakespeare, a rousingly comic and drunken rendition of Romeo & Juliet using dildos instead of swords. and an odd all over the place production of Strindberg's Miss Julie (that I am not quite sure worked se well) down at U of C.  We also had a couple favorite restaurant meals and a visit to the Art Institute in which I took many pictures of paintings I wanted to think about and see more.  Tonight, it's J's usual karaoke gig down along the river, but beforehand, we gonna take in the new Wuthering Heights movie that I am excited to see in all its apparent bastardization (b/c who does not love a little literary bastardization of classics, am I right?) WH was once my favorite novel, though it was replaced by Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea in grad school, along with a subsequent greater interest in Charlotte's work over Emily's. There has been much kerfluffle over the adaptation (or barely-adaptation) but I am here for it, and given Fennel's other movies, I am ready for anything. 

Today, I got up and started work on a new play script, which takes on an old favorite and what I feel is one of my literary cornerstones established in college--Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". It's one of those stories, like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," that everyone in a liberal arts college has to read if you haven't already encountered it in high school, but unlike many of things we are forced to read, I actually have always loved this one. Since its short I feel there is a lot of room for expansion into a full-length play that maybe pulls at some threads that are in there and less obvious. I'll be using Gilman's text, but also maybe something a little more contemporary. I am envisioning simple staging in the room and perhaps and undulating pattern on the walls and floor that makes the wallpaper move and change according to her state of mind. So far, I have half a scene, but I know where I am going next and will be back to it on Monday. 

In addition to eating way too many raspberry and lemon paczki for one person this week and the rest of February, my other treat was getting a new tattoo, a pair of fancy and decorative scissors. Lately I do more digital work than analogue (something I am vowing to change this year) but when I did work more with physical materials, I always preferred scissors over X-actos, which sometimes meant my cuts were unweildy, but I was just more used to them (though it depends on the scissors.)  They are the first tattoo on my left arm, which I don't plan to create a sleeve, so it stands alone on my forearm and is actually about the size of an actual pair. 

And speaking of collage, the Februllage endeavors have been going well. Since we've been coming and going a lot, I've been doubling up and working ahead to make sure I can post daily, of not create daily (this is much easier with collages than NaPoWriMo poems.) I also dropped a sneak peek, in honor of Valentines' Day,
of the cover for the next upcoming book (likely due out in late summer if all goes well.) Its filled with vampires, angry governesses, haunted seaside towns, and more--so what's not to love?

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