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“The mind becomes a field of snow”…..
and i immediately said out loud when i first read that prompt this morning :
“his house is in the village though…..”

Can’t help it.
Ever since diving headlong into the study of analyzing and speaking Shakespeare in the early days of being a Guthrie Theatre company member, sitting at the feet of the inestimable Michael Langham, a Bard genius director of Taming of the Shrew (in which I played the Widow), i hear language around me in pentameter …… mostly iambic pentameter, but as in this morning’s prompt, iambic TETRAMETER……at least that is what i was taught it was called…when there are 4 feet to the line and the stress is as such: da-DUH-da-DUH-da-DUH-da-DUH.

It invites poetry….it evokes rhythm…i lay in bed making up rhyming iambic tetrameters for a while:

“……he had a horse, its name was Shmo…”
“……I wonder where he’ll finally go….”
“….he stumbled on his big fat toe…..”
“…….a pretty garden he did grow….”
“….he had a wife, her name was Flo….”
“…….he went to find a pile of dough…..” (he was the Village Baker)
“……for his dog a ball he’d throw…..”
“…..he buried his treasure five feet below….”

….you get the idea….i couldn’t help it…i was caught in the rhythm and i still am.
SO i thought I’d compose an entire poem in iambic tetrameter, but frankly, i don’t want to work that hard, and so i will switch gears. I feel witty this morning, but not that witty. So….” back into the prose we go”.

(heh….heh….see what I did there?)

Me and snow.
I’ve been in far too much of it, and, i do hope to never have to see to or feel it ever again. Ever.Again.

Last Thanksgiving, Peter and I flew to Michigan to spend two weeks with his marvelous family.
I adore them, and their cozy cottage out in rural environs of Detroit, where they’ve acreage and bird feeders to spare….a sweet roomy sun room is where we all perched after a large breakfast, cooked by my father-in-law, who prides himself on cooking large breakfasts. I had my own special chair facing the large windows.

I was fine….enjoyed it…until one morning it began to snow, as it will do in November Michigan.
And I could feel my spirits plummet, as memory after memory came:

…………of being stuck in dirty Northwestern University midwestern snow ….walking to class in it….pretending to enjoy football games in it, while eating peanuts IN their shells with my gloves on because my fingers were otherwise too cold to move….the unending Lake Michigan walls of sleet and ice turning our campus into one large snow globe….but not a cozy one…..rather an inconvenient one of schlepping and eternal head colds….

……………trudging across graduate school snowstorms that wrapped the entire University of Minnesota in mufti….my nose would turn blue, until i realized i could cover it with my scarf…my toes would get wet, then freeze, no matter how sturdy the boots….

…..my throat would be raw, no matter what i did to not breathe through my mouth…
.
……i walked with my eyes closed against the slanting downpour of ice and snow, elements that seemed determined to make me as miserable as possible….to make me question why i chose a grad school not in Florida or California….to make me curse my fate….

“…then my NYC snow days, of which I’d had 45 years’ worth, when the relief of the City turning a clean white would soon be destroyed by the yellow and brown of dogs excrement , the dogs hating the snow as much as we did, still having to indelicately go to the bathroom in it….such misery…at least i didn’t have to bare my bottom on West End Avenue in all that pretty (irony here) white cold stuff…….

And all those miserable memories of being a younger and striving actress in a City that sometimes never seemed to care whether i lived or froze in the weather that battled us very time we tried to get to an audition…..i learned the trick of walking up Sixth Avenue through the lobbies of all the tall corporate buildings in order to stay warm on my way to ABC or my agents office….i did the same in summer, using the buildings’ air conditioning the way I’d use their heat in the Winter…

No….i do not like snow.

However , i do adore poetry in iambic tetrameter……and snuggling down in a snow storm , by a cozy fire, to read tons of it….so, there is that.

(cannot resist)
“…..till next we meet, now off I go….”