come april she snows

[Michael J Masiko]

come april she snows

by ~ whatever pseudonym we decide upon to represent group effort

proposal:

this is meant to be a collaborative experiment.

I have a story that I'd like to keep intact

but I need help fleshing it out.

your job, should you accept it,

is to fill in the 'storyboard'.

what is there now is an example of why I need help.

moral: 

don't be in such a rush to grow up

you'll find yourself in a hurry to die.

take your time to live life well

there is more to life 

than meets the eye,

& it is indeed wonderful.

brief synopsis: 

... ultimately evolves into a ghost story but begins as a love story.

Act One:

boy meets girl, they fall madly in love.

they marry, have children and pursue happiness

with all that life has afforded them.

there are many mishaps along life's bumpy road.

even fights and separations but their love for each other

keeps drawing them back together.

they vow: 

"never will I leave your side again; not even until death".

the decades pass and they persevere,

though the road has become even less smooth.

one day, with the children all grown, they find they

have made their way, paid their dues, and were just about

to reap the fruits of their labors when the husband dies.

It is a devastating dark angry time 

and the wife does not take it well at all.

She needs to be dragged away from his coffin.

She keeps yelling and sobbing: "not even until death".

"NOT!"

Act Two:

a relentless sorrow captures the rest of the widows days.

displacing longsuffering with fits of anger, falling sickly often. 

and many times her children and caretakers thought perhaps 

she would not survive.

the first time she went into a long fever 

she said she had dreamed her husband came to her.

she drank him in and it was wonderful, kissing, holding and adoring.

He told her he was here with her and she had nothing to fear.

It gave her reason to keep living and so she gains her health.

But as the days wear on she finds her self ill content.

Less and less she felt his presence

and her heart was sore lacking evidence.

Where she once felt warmth now only a bitter emptiness.

She sees all the things they worked so hard to have,

and they are deemed worthless.

Soon she sets about a pattern, becoming more and more frequent,

burning in her wedding bed, on her death bed,

again and again she has the dream. 

only now, others are beginning to see the husband too.

He walks the halls to come to her bedside.

Sometimes it is supposed, in his frustration

He would trash various rooms in a rage.

they wax romantic;

he has come back for her and there is talk.

Some say he comes to take her and try to chase him away.

others say each time he comes he convince's her to stay.

Some even hear him say:

"if you even think you're better off dead, my dear,

and this some how promotes your hasty death,

we will never be together again."

Everytime the episode subsides, 

he is seen fading to thin air,

the last of him his hand in her empty grasp.

Fin:

finally one day the widow actually dies

but it is noted the husband never returned.

No one saw him and no one said a word

but they we're all thinking: "how sad.

"in the end he left her after all, and 

she died alone".

but when those in attendance

return with the proper authorities

to take her body away,

they find the lady has gone.

trying to piece together her disappearance,

as others search other rooms

and still others search the grounds,

looking for signs of some brutish act, 

a break in, bad adolescent behavior

or a hoax . . .

someone is looking out the window.

far off on the horizon they see 

a boat sailing away into an odd april snow.

the perspective switches from tailing the ship

to turning and focusing back at the house on the hill.

we see 'that someone' in the window, looking out.

it is the widow.

the storyboard:

Let Me take You too a place high up on a hill.

You can see the city skyline from here.

up in her widows peak you can see her still.

she thinks she sees a light bobbing way out at sea.

whataya think?

lets talk it through.

any revisions or major plot faults?

has this story already been told?

ideas for names or subplots.

working title = come april she snows,

I'm thinking of a Montauk type of setting.

perhaps a light keepers family on an island?

hmmmm … that smacks of already done ...

well, I showed Ya mine, now

show me what You got.

this is where you come in ….

…. and … GO!

( stay tuned for 'themesong')

the song:

come april she snows

caught longing for netherdays

when we dropped the end of day

contented exhaustion 

beds of hay

we ate our fill lived in a glow

who you are weathers your veins

very becoming this way

shadowfear glassonions 

chaste in spades

as I wait by the window

days gone by are netheryears

taciturn nights tracing tears

no rest for the haunted 

ebb and tide wake

just then come april she snows

for when come april she snows

by MJ Masiko March 8, 2010. ThornLane

[Maricel Evasco]

Thank you Michael. You know if this works out. I might just borrow your serendipity story boarding concept and use it in class. You don't know how many ideas I've gotten on TBD and put to good use in my classroom.

[Maricel Evasco]

this might be a bit off tangent, but your "moral" brought to mind a satirical piece:

[Maricel Evasco]

whataya think? lets talk it through.
I'm thinking....what device are you going to use to capture the widow's morbid sorrow in Act II? Will you be using mainly soliloquies? Act I and III(fin) are workable, but I'm still trying to envision how you would develop ACT II.

This is helpful for me because I am in the middle of teaching Macbeth and I shall be teaching The Crucible next.

any revisions or major plot faults?
He walks the halls to come to her bedside.
Sometimes it is supposed, in his frustration
He would trash various rooms in a rage.

This part jars. An angry phantom? Why can't he be like the spectre of Banquo sitting across Macbeth in the banquet hall. The spectre just sits there...eliciting more a feel of chill than an ghost going OD because he didn't get what he wanted.

has this story already been told? No, but it made me think of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, a favorite old TV show of mine.

ideas for names or subplots. (not at the momentm but my creative juices are flowing. Too bad I have to do my students report card grades tonight. They are due tomorrow.

[Michael J Masiko]

Hey Maricel,
yes it does.
I started to panic.
I felt the end slipping away so
I kinda rushed through.

I was hoping to develop moments
of dialog between husband and wife.
Hints of the NetherLife He is experiencing
and His frustration at not being able to
affect His loves anguish.

Also wanted to bring in correlation's between
Her reappearing melancholy after each visit
and the downward spiral of addiction.
never satiating.

Have a good time grading.

[Maricel Evasco]

I hate grading and being observed....but anyway a short break


Suggestion: Why don't you make that wife go mad and create a 3rd persona from her madness sorta like Sabine and Griffin. I found their exchanges very interesting.

Read the chart in this link http://www.middlemoon.com/sandra/g-s/analysis.html
If you haven't already read their (his) strange correspondence with Sabine, you should.

The two personalities have joined to form a third, mad one.
Griffin has merged both personalities into one and in his madness has become Sabine as much as he ever was Griffin, and expresses that in a mixture of names.

Sabine/Griffin, now completely mad, has transformed her/his madness onto another person for some unknown, probably insane reason.


The Wife in ACT II can go insane in her grief and start seeing her husband who is a figment of her mind sorta like the Captain was a figment of Mrs. Muir's mind.

Act III can stay the same w/a lil adjustment


the perspective switches from tailing the ship
to turning and focusing back at the house on the hill.
we see 'that someone' in the window, looking out.
it is the widow

yeah the widow has now transformed into the 3rd persona identity
snow is falling on the ground and at the window
is not a grief stricken widow, but the shadow of a woman
with maniacal eyes

These are just suggestions.

[thallygal]

Ohhhhhhhhhh I like the idea of her madness...how very true in sorrow, many times comes insanity