What's the use of stories that aren't even true?

In my final paper I talk about genre.  Before I answer the question of semester I'm going to first mention three classes that shaped my idea of genre. Professor Lansverk's 18th Century/Restoration Literature class is the first class in which we addressed the beaten-to-death question "What genre is (enter book title here)?". Then, as I briefly address in my final paper for this class, in the Studies in Shakespeare course with Dr. Sexson himself I came to the conclusion that there are only two main genres, comedy and tragedy, and every sub-genre is a derivation of the two. Why did I believe this at the time? Simply, there are stories with happy endings and there are those that end unhappily. And finally just last semester I took a Creative Non-Fiction class with Glen Chamberlain. In this course we would discuss approaches to composing true stories and the differences between various non-fiction genres such as journalism, memoir, biography, essay, etc. There's also this idea I read somewhere last semester, I believe it was for Literary Criticism class, which said--and I'll paraphrase whoever wrote it--"once oneself has commences in an act of writing the self of that oneself is no longer active nor present in what is being written." No matter the medium, even say in an autobiography, whatever is written is ultimately untrue because of, what I'll call, 'the issue of interpretation'. Non-fiction requires distinct remembering, reassembling, and thus complete recreation of something that has happened in prior times, but writing, non-fiction or fiction, is a foundational medium which cannot do justice to real life. Simply, the recreation is not the creation. With all that said I've come to what I know now concerning the title's inquiry, and since I've come to firmly believe [as I scratch my head] that all stories aren't true that only makes the stories themselves all the more enjoyable. Theoretically, in and of the use and understanding of words, writing is attempting to perfect thinking and stories become far more interesting in being recreated. Then, reversing my original belief, what if I appeal to 'suspension of disbelief'? It so happens that this is, if I may, the impossible task that us aspiring writers have much trouble understanding because we try so hard to mimic life as we know it and displace reality altogether. As writers we want to simultaneously do the art, our audience, and ourselves justice. It seems that stories must embrace fallacy and disregard logical truth for them to render an audience amazed, suspended in disbelief, and lost in the story. That's my final point which validates all untruthfulness. When people have their mind vested so much in what they're being told that they become lost, must piece together, and solve the story from its previous events and remnants which have come to pass, this fact means that they believe. If you believe in something that is untrue, even for only a certain time, then for that certain time untruth is flip-flopped and transformed into truth. Therefore, and I hope everyone's [even you Spencer-man] with my philosophizing, we have two conclusions from two perspectives both focusing in on the idea of stories. From the outside looking in, all stories are untrue. From the inside looking further in, all stories are true.

Final Paper

The Naïve and Mature Genre

“The romance in people mostly goes unsaid. People think about what they're going to say—to someone they really like or think is awful cute—but people hardly ever say what they think. We give what we want to say a lot of thought, but because people have so much trouble saying what they think we can’t quite be defined as romantics. Not if you don't speak it."

I’m not going to waste any time; this topic’s spectrum is far too vast to explore in entirety, thus this paper’s ultimate goal is to end as the perfect romance would, where there is silence. This imminent moment of silence is only temporary, and at the end of every story there is presence of “the end of speech, not the stopping of it.” Northrop Frye, in his book The Secular Scripture: The Study of the Structure of Romance, expounds that “in a much misunderstood aphorism, in such an act of possession there are no more words, only the silence that marks the possession of words. A good deal has been said since then about the relation of language and silence,” (Frye, 188) but real silence comes about when there is nothing left to say.

“Yet ourselves, every day, do we not, each of us, receive from the unknown beggar an apparently unimportant fruit, only to disregard it and cast it heedlessly aside?” (Zimmer, 218)

Early on in class when we were told the story of The King and the Corpse (i.e. King&Corpse) I became fascinated with two concepts: 1) Silence 2) Stories within stories. In the story the king comes to a “great funeral ground” where a sorcerer tells him to enter the grounds and cut down a corpse hanging from a tree then to bring it to the sorcerer. Without any issues the king finds the corpse but to his surprise the body is inhabited by specter in disguise who is cackling. The king demands “What are you laughing at?” but the instant he speaks the corpse returns to the limb of the tree (204). The king retrieves the corpse many times over who would say empathetically “O King, let me shorten the way for you with a tale” (Zimmer, 204), its specialty being storytelling. Then at the end of each story the specter would have a riddle evoking the king to answer it, and each time the king would speak the body would disappear, returning to the noose hanging from the tree. He may only succeed the deed by sustaining silence and simply keeping his mouth shut. The king thinks after each story and riddle “that he knew the answer, but suspected that if he uttered a word the corpse would go flying back to the tree” (Zimmer, 206) and yet he would still have an answer for each inquiry. It would seem that the king by always talking must have some longing to remain within the realm of his impossible task even if he felt the urge to refrain from speaking. He knew to some extent that he would be stuck in time whenever breaking the silence. With this knowledge the king stayed a member within inescapable world becoming “something subintelligent and subarticulate” (Frye, 116) where his human form is reduced and transubstantiates in space freezing his consciousness in time. Sure, the king didn’t actually metamorphose and, paradoxically, the king’s articulation, symbolizing his subarticulation, was his very base problem. The specter’s message is, even if you absolutely know the right answer, don’t answer. Just listen…“or your head will explode.”

“…where the recognition has been visible throughout.” (Frye, 131)

In appealing to logical analogy; if the King symbolizes silence then the Corpse represents a device facilitating stories that work within themselves or stories within stories. How fitting that the stories the specter would tell are romances. As for King&Corpse in full I’d categorize it as irony, not romance. With that said we must examine the essence the ‘knowledge of the sea of stories’ which is referenced most explicitly in our first novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I didn’t think this book was a romance either—although that’s not the case now, but we’ll get to that later. Early on, around when Dr. Sexson presented King&Corpse and I finished Rushdie’s novel, I began rethinking my understanding of genre altogether after considering the concept of the perfect romance, “the structural core of all fiction: being directly descended from folktale” (Frye, 15). Romance is the foundational genre and catalyst of all genres henceforth and it must be differentiated from what this class calls the other primary genres being comedy, tragedy, and irony in this very order, with romance first, each associated with a season; romance represents spring, comedy is to summer, tragedy to fall, leaving irony for winter. Winter encapsulates irony because that is when the world’s at its harshest, but when the going gets tough the tough get going. I mean, can it possibly get any worse if, as the Shakespearean saying goes, ‘the worst returns to laughter’? Laughter is what I conceive as being the final and primal image of irony. Let me explain before our eyes feast upon the meat of the matter, romance specifically. It was now, just recently in another class someone commented that “Irony is very adult concept,” which struck me. ‘That’s it! Irony is the most mature genre, not tragedy,’ I thought. Therefore, irony must be connected with the most aged of understandings and naturally the winter season when the days are darkest and where the only place to go next is up or to the beginning, naturally bringing us back to spring obviously with its recreation, rejuvenation, rebirth and other similar, synonymous motifs. Early on I held a simplistic idea of genre, that there were only two primary categories being comedy and tragedy, but now what comes to mind is one particularly poignant and analogously analytic Frye line which has interrogated my idea of genre saying, “The ambiguity of the oracle becomes the ambiguity of wit, something addressed to the verbal understanding that shakes the mind free. This point is also marked by generic changes from the tragic and ironic to the comic and satiric” (130). All four genres are accounted, the satiric signifies romance. Also, there’s a fine line between the purpose of an oracle, a senex, a beggar, a corpse, a pirate, and a magician because typically these—we’ll call them—side characters withholds some form of wisdom, knowledge pertinent to the main players. Each role is incredibly similar to the jester type who is “clearly of some structural significance…speaking for the audience’s desire to be entertained” (Frye, 107). It was just mentioned how the oracle’s prophesying tends to carry imbedded undertones of humor in and of the ambiguity of wit, and the King&Corpse has both a sorcerer or magician and a corpse or beggar who know the tricks of the task from the beginning. By assisting the king these two roles portray quite the sense of humor and wit.

 “…romance, as a whole, provides a parallel epic in which the themes of shipwreck, pirates, enchanted islands, magic, recognition, the loss and regaining of identity, occur constantly, as they go in the last four romances of Shakespeare.” (Frye, 15)

The Story of Sinbad the Sailor is the prime example for further exploring these several romantic necessities. The structure is reminiscent of the King&Corpse because Sinbad tells each of his seven voyages on as many separate occasions to the same crowd, beginning and ending each story in an equivocal fashion. In every voyage Sinbad’s ship wrecks leaving him lost at sea until he is washed ashore a fruitful island where he explores and must pass tasks before he is permitted to return home or even recognize a place to call home. After each tale Sinbad would tell his audience to leave and then come back at the same time the following day. As for the stories themselves, Sinbad’s fourth voyage stuck out for me specifically. Sinbad avoided eating the delirium-inducing food and escaped from the barbarous aborigines off the island only to tell his tale to a king who wished for Sinbad to marry his daughter. Sinbad acquiesced embarrassingly and loved his new wife until she became sick. He also realized that in this culture they take the vows and obligations in marriage quite seriously, and when his wife would die of illness he would be buried alive with his wife quite literally ‘till death do us part.’ In the cavern Sinbad survives because he kills all others who enter and uses their rations to live on until he finds a fissure in the rock and escapes the darkness. This voyage didn’t strike me as a romance because a couple reasons, first our hero gets married and two his wife dies. Both of these are romantic supplements, their necessity debatable.

"…in a life that is a pure continuum, beginning with a birth that is a random beginning, ending with a death that is a random ending, nothing is more absurd than telling stories that do begin and end." (Frye, 125)

                Let’s digress briefly before drawing any conclusions because a couple years back for a mythologies group presentation we rewrote and presented an adaptation of Oedipus, one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever read, but what genre does it belong to? I believe that it’s all of them, but above all it is pure irony because of the plot’s maturity and the quote aforementioned—because the story starts from his birth and I’ve read nothing more absurd (but King Lear is up there too. Ah! What a coincidence, and my do these two playwrights have eye-popping similarities). Oedipus is hard to classify because its content contains vital elements of every primary genre. It could be a tragedy, but Oedipus doesn’t die; his wife and mother does, though. It could be a comedy because of, well, all the irony. Unfortunately Sophocles’ masterpiece may indeed be the perfect romance, the story indisputably having remnants of each and every conceivable element, both necessary and peripheral. But, I suppose my argument here goes back to irony because of Oedipus and Jocasta’s unimaginably naïve relationship! It’s tragic to the point of hilarity. It’s the oracle, the beholder of [fore]knowledge and wit, who knows where this is going from the beginning. Jocasta’s child is cursed from birth and has a “sharp descent in social status, from riches to poverty, from privilege to a struggle to survive” (Frye, 104). Much time passes, the apparently dead boy grows into a man, and then he must quest to find his true identity. Then after the deadly crossroads incident the concept of doppelganger motif emerges and he must find the king’s killer. From here pieces of knowledge are unveiled and we know how the story unfolds. Frye says eloquently, "we are often reminded of this type of descent by the imagery of the hunt...in the pursuit of an animal, and as he disappears the dream atmosphere closes around him...seeking a false identity which is the same thing as his own destruction" (Frye, 104-105).

“William Blake once said 'imagination has nothing to do with memory.'” (Frye, 175)

All imaginative tales collect and converge in a mythological sea. The sea’s tributaries gather imagination from higher worldly sources rendezvousing at the mouth of the river. Here is where perspectives are set, where people see straight or otherwise where they’ll sea level. Since early childhood our parents have told us their stories, sharing their knowledge of the sea. Some stories stick and are stowed away while others sift out of memory. From a psychological standpoint Frye contends that with "’transactional’ therapy, we are told that we take over ‘scripts’ from our parents which it is our normal tendency to act out as prescribed and invariable rituals, and that all possible forms of such scripts can be found in any good collection of folktales." (57) Over the years the good stories stick best in our memories, and as we age we hear innumerable amounts of stories on a daily basis which suppress other stories and memories. In other words, “all memory is selective, and the fact that it is selective is the starting point of creation” (Frye, 175). Every day stories are on display, the same ones we heard as kids, and we’re constantly re-remembering how the story goes because our memories mimicking the original are augmented, displaced, and redeveloped. We may remember a story poorly, but “the worst plays [or stories] are no worse than the best ‘if imagination amend them’” (Frye, 187). I may not agree exactly with Blake, but what I do understand is that imagination is far more potent than memory, granting stories unrecalled reinvigoration.

"Nineteenth century writers of romance, or of fiction which is close to romance in its technique, sometimes speak in their prefaces and elsewhere of the greater ‘liberty’ that they feel entitled to take. By liberty I they mean a greater designing power, especially in their plot structures." (Frye, 46).

Rushdie's novel is a "censorship allegory" and he's liberating against those who control, litigate, and police our freedom of speech and honest opinions. One of his aims is to properly allegorize larger orders in the world in utilizing secondary romance motifs. For example, he implements pirates who poison the stream of stories, and this summons Haroun to elevate himself and become the hero he was set out to be by saving the world from being stripped of stories. As for the pirate roles themselves, they are a supplemental requirement in the idyll spectacle of romance [as is marriage, sex, violence, death, rape, misogyny, cross-dressing, birth, over-exposed infants, intoxication and hypnotism, senex or oracle, amnesia. Got most of ‘em I think.] but they’re a necessary complication in this narrative having infected the stream of stories in attempt to permanently censor the knowledge-rich story waters with a permanent polluting solution. It doesn’t happen of course; this is a romance. Early on I thought ‘this is no romance, this is a coming-of-age tale.’ Now I think ‘those are the same thing!’ after grappling with the ideal structure and primary elements of romance [including naïve lovers, quest, apparent death and substitution, revelation or recognition of identity, happy ending]. Although Haroun’s girl is secretly absent for most of the story, having apparently been caught when her ploy is exposed, but at the end she’s accepted by all and kisses her hero. Aside from their rather underwhelming romance all of the elements play vital parts in Rushdie’s novel.

“Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu

All our dream-worlds may come true

Fairly lands are fearsome too

As I wander far from view

Read, and bring me home to you” (Salman Rushdie)

And finally we’ve come together down the home stretch, a romance between words and their reader, and we’ll go ‘into the sunset’ as the perfect romance where there is naught but silence. Once the lovers have fallen in love there’s ‘nothing left to say’, at that point our ideal romance comes to an end. Things like marriage are left out of typical romantic narratives because people don’t ‘fall in love’ the day of their wedding (see Sinbad), nor do they realize their true feelings as they’re bedding (see Oedipus). If laughter is the lasting image of irony then it follows that it would also be the first sign of romance (see King&Corpse), but everyone knows that all stories come to an end; even the ones with happy endings (see Haroun). Sure, the linear continuum may not end because the imagination won’t allow it. Stories may extend and they amend for those who don’t want it to end, but the romance is over…for now, because speech cannot be stopped even if there is a moment of silence…until later on after that silence, that pause in time, an elliptical reflection…and then it all comes pouring out because there’s and ocean of stories more! That’s what’s so peculiar about stories in general because they work with and within themselves. Also, the same stories exist everywhere, they’re transcultural and the subtle advocate which allows stories to persist and proliferate is myth. So, here we are, at the end where ironically we find a new beginning. At the head of the paragraph are the first words I read for this class and at the foot I’ll leave you with a quote from Frye’s preface.

“However, the book has its own place in my writing as a very brief and summary geography lesson in what I call the mythological or imaginative universe...Even if there is ultimately only one mythological universe, every reader sees it different.“ (Frye, vii-viii)

The Ballad of the Beibs

Characters – By Entrance

Tanner – Jester, Gray-tailed Gordie

Oranda – Mom, Violet, Redwing bird, Mountees

Spencer – Beibs, Beavorr

Aaron – Father Orr, Ogilthorpe

JP – Forrsberg, Tuttle

(Play opens. Enter Jester.)

Jester: Oh hello there! How is everyone? Welcome to our home, the home of our characters. Should I tell you a story? Well okay then. It’s a good one and so it goes…Once upon a time in a land unfamiliar to the common, far into the dreary icy mountain peaks and past the snow sheeted plains of Cahnehhdia there once lived a new mother who’d birthed a bright and bubbly baby boy known only to this very day as…Beibs. That sunny day around the March equinox, the time betwixt winter and spring, there was an untimely dimming on the times. The newborn Beibs was a blessing on the world, although his mother left our out-of-this-world far too soon on that overcasting and dark day. The mom, she went into the light (singing like a bird of spring) Her last words to Orr her beloved husband were…

Mom: Tell my son one thing, please tell him, ‘Sing for me’. Cough! Cough! sitting still in her chair with a blanket over her legs and singing. She dies.

Orr: I will….he holds his newborn baby…One day when you’re old enough to understand…My son…there’s dramatic pause as he looks deep into his child’s eyes…’Sing for me!’ Your mother wanted you to know that… But you, you, it’s because of you—that she’s gone.

Beibs: Googoo, gaagaa

Jester: As for Father Orr, he was distraught. How could he go on living without his wife who he loved so dearly? He became angry and bitter at the world! But he left because he could. He is well renowned here in our land as the ‘king of hockey’ and his obligation is to game itself, and he leaves for good each year from the beginning of autumn to the early summertime. His life is mostly lived on the road, having little roots betrothed in any hometown, away from his only child and his home. During his kid’s childhood Orr’s brother Forsberg became Beibs’ trusted mentor who would always have an eye on his nephew. But because of a sibling rivalry Forsberg always had alterior motives while guising himself as a role model whom would become the most influential figure in Beibs’ upbringing when his Fathorr wasn’t around. Forsberg was a scholar in the art of sorcery to spite his brother’s favor in their early life, and he would practice his sorcery out of anger over his underachievement on the young, naïve, and beautiful. There is little motivation to his madness other than jealousy, for he has lived in a body of ugliness his entire life and was never the national hero his brother became.

Meanwhile Beibs from the beginning had a passion for music. He had a lot of time and a good chunk of change (from the child support check of one of the highest paid players in CHEHHL league history!) to drop on different musical endeavors. Something his father denounces. Orr always wanted his kid’s instrument to be a hockey stick. Nevertheless Beibs first bought a drumset, then a guitar, but then in time finally settled for the Boxroll-ar. When his father would come around in summer he once saw what his son had spent so much time with, and he called the investment and instrument…

Orr: Cheap crap! They didn’t even include a roll of duct tape with its warranty package?

Beibs: Don’t dad! I’m tired of your gold standards!! You know what, I wish I were poor!

Orr: Well that’s your opinion boiyo! And you’ll never be poor because you were born into this family! Do you know what they call me?! I’m the king! I’ll always be! So don’t forget where you come from! You’re a Cahnehhdiahn! If anything, you were born to be a hockey player!

Beibs: Nooo! You want me to be exactly like you and I’m not dad! I’ll never play! Never!

Jester: And it was so. Instead of listening to his father’s wishes, Beibs became even better at his musicality and that talent escalated along with the quality of his growingly handsome appearance, which encompassed the beauty and fire of the sun, for his smile could glean a smile onto the most sour of people.  His hair felt like the run of a warm brook on a perfect summer day, and his skin was soft like a fresh spotted fawn.  And did the girls notice? Oh my, did they (Beibs is being chased by girls and he hides and runs around the stage as girls chase and look for him)

And it was so, and Beibs grew tired of all the attention given to his baby face beauty! So one day it all came together and he decided to depart and haul his things away and perform on the poor downtown Cahnehhdiah skid row-like streets where no beautiful soul could be found. (Beibs removes his Boxrollar from another box)

Beibs spent much of his time vagabonding and would earn very little from the ugly passerby regulars who neither paid any attention nor cash. (Violet is lurking in the shadows behind the downtown buildings)

And it was so…Until one day, everything changed. (Jester passes by throwing a coin in the box…)

Beibs: “Baby baby baby ohhh” Ohh I stink! Maybe he’s right, why does dad always have to be right? I’m not meant to do this music thing.

Violet: I think you sound terrific.

Beibs: Really? Nice to know that someone loves me for what I do and who I am! What’s your name?

Violet: My name’s Violet.

Beibs: (nervously) Um—that’s my favorite color…

Jester: Violet wasn’t the most symmetrical maple leaf on the tree. Her knuckles grizzlier and more fibered than that of the shawl she wore. Her nose oversized and her teeth (the Jester shivers) bucked… Nevermore, Beibs was captivated by something in Violet, looks regardless, and he sensed something he couldn’t quite detect in her eyes. An unusual sense of exquisiteness was present in Violet’s gaze but it was hidden behind something unbeknownst to Beibs as if it were some ancient taboo or curse.

(Forsberg enter intrusively)

Forsberg: What’s going on over here?!

Beibs: I was just…

Forsberg: You were what? Not whoring for your day job. Where you perform…every day… on the corner.

Beibs: It’s not like that uncle, she’s my new friend and she likes my music!

Forsberg: No one likes your music!

Beibs: That’s not true! I’m outta here! (He runs home and up to his room)

O the woe of this cursed beauty and my goddamned family! The more I sing, the more I dance, the more the harlots hound for meh! 

Forsberg:  (who has followed Beibs back home) You want to be cursed eh? For you are worthless in these musical endeavors.  Do you know the men, real men that own raging jealousy of the women you say can only hound their breasts on you?  And they hound from everywhere with such booonty, eh.

Beibs:  Such booonty?

Forsberg: Bounty EH Booonty! You know what I’m saying Eh!

Beibs: Well I have no intention on being a hound for women if that’s what you’re saying!  Where is Love, eh?  In my arduous ten years of life and beauty, not one single drop of the honeydew of love from another has befallen and been graced upon me, ya knoow. (Beibs leaves to find Violet as Forsberg is talking)

Forsberg:  Each and every breath sucked into your ungrateful, lifeless lungs nourishes worthless melancholic thoughts.  I will leave you with these words: From now on you shall know only ugliness and regret your pure self. (Exit Forsberg storming.)

Beibs: (Pantomiming Forsberg’s line sadly)…and that’s pretty much it…That’s what he said!

Violet:  Do not believe such thoughts, eh Beibs.  Don’t let these beast-like and whoring women taint you and I understand the love of aboot which you speak, eh. We have suffered the loss of our mother’s…

Beibs: You lost your mom too?

Violet: Yes, and both of us growing without our father’s eye over us too. That’s why I’ve been on the streets for so long. I have no family and you cannot begin to understand the way I feel.

Beibs: I might have some idea; is it as if you’re…toxic to the people, where most men hate you and the women can’t stand your presence with only a glimpse of you they’ll oh! Eh they’ll I can’t say it, eh.

Violet: Well not exactly, but I understand where you’re coming from. As for toxicity in me, it’s there but for different reasons...within the looks of abhorrence over my homely countenance.

Beibs: Oh Violet. Follow me. I want to show you where I go to get away to rejuvenate and collect my chi. It’s been my favorite place for a long time. It’s where I would go to be alone for its solidarity, to develop my talents. It’s where everything started earlier on.

Violet:  I will go with you, eh. Just show me the way.  Even though I am ugly, and talentless, I will follow you with love.  (She tries to touch him on the shoulder but Beibs screams and flinches)

Beibs:  Please don’t, eh.  I cannot let the hands of an ugly…I mean friend caress me with such…hairy knuckles and beaver teeth, eh. Ehem, excuse me I’m sorry that was very rude but it’s just that I must find one of beauty equal to that of my own.  Let us go north, I mean behind my hooose, eh? (Beibs and Violet start walking then come to a snow machine which they get on. Violet grabs Beibs’ waist for safety and Beibs grins, and they begin to chat)

Jester:  So the young travelled for what seemed like forever from the town square north to the end of Beibs’ neighborhood out-skirting their hometown. They rode gaily past the city limits speaking deeply of their childhood and through the thicketed forest where the land is frigid and the air brittle. Their stories continued until all halted; their chatting ceased when coming upon an iced over river and Beibs parked the snow machine. They hopped off and he showed Violet to the base of a ladder leading up to a tree cottage. The confines of the cottage were simple. There was merely a cot and his other few instruments. The instrument Violet noticed most was the hockey stick.

Violet: What about this one? (holding up the hockey stick)

Beibs: You can’t tell anyone about this! No one really knows!

Jester: It seems that Beibs came out here to learn a thing or two about more than just music. Beibs talked of the old beaver dams downstream which kept the water calm and left the ice smooth. And all was calm because they felt not at home, but alone. And it was so…but this time the figure of speech’s intention is ironic… For Forsberg has been watching the scene from afar with his magic menacing. (Forsberg on one side of the scene looking into crystal ball while Violet and Beibs are on the other)

Violet:  Don’t stay out there too long or you’ll be walking on this thin ice with me eh?  I am making something special, it’s Poutine for lunch and I want it to be fresh. 

Beibs:  Ah these skates are slightly small; I’ll need a new pair soon. And as for the Poutine, I have never had your cooking so I don’t know if I should work up an appetite, but nonetheless I shall be back after an hour or so.

Violet:  O I know you will love it.  Have a good skate, eh. (Exit Violet. Beibs skates on the river and Forsberg snickers)

Beibs:  It’s nice to have such solitude, away from the masses, back to the nature of my being. (Beibs begins to skate around and then stops and looks down into the ice) Wow, now that is a pretty reflection. Look at my hair and that jaw line, so wavy, so chiseled.

Forsberg:  Fool!  Mesmerized in his own gaze! How arrogant, what audacity! I shall make your young beauty foul! (He casts a spell) Biibbity boo beibery blooo, I cast the beaver fever on you! (the ice cracks—there’s a dramatic scream—Beibs falls through the ice)

Jester:  With this turn of events Beibs descended into the depths of the of the river leaving behind only his purple hat...(Violet leaves the cottage, and the Jester yawns)

Violet: Lunch! Beibs! (There’s a pause as she searches only to find his hat on next to where he went under) Oh nooo! It’s his…O cursed world!

Jester: O my, it seems I’ve grow sleepy and my story telling voice wears tired.  I must lie down…Wait, more you say?  So you love the story?  Ah! I see how insistent you all have become… if I must then I must. (Beibs awakens)

            The boy fought frantically against the current, but it was too strong. The river carried his body under the ice until he suddenly found providence in a pocket of air lodged in a dark, logged cavern.

Beibs: Where am I? It’s very dark and musky. What’s that horrid stench? I feel all hairy and hunched. Oh my, what am I?!

Ogilthorpe: You’re a beaver!

Beibs: What do you mean? I’m not a beaver!

Ogilthorpe: Well you look like one.

Tuttle: Believe us, you’re a beaver! We’re all beavers!

Beibs: What has become of me and my…my beauty? No, the hair, the well-conditioned flow and that chiseled chin. It’s all gone!

Ogilthorpe: At least you have some hair!

Beibs: This isn’t who I am? I have no DO! (pointing at his head)

Ogilthorpe: Well what are you going to do about it?

Beibs: I…don’t…know…

Tuttle: I have an idea.

Ogilthorpe: Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?

Tuttle: Let’s bring him to the gray-tailed one.

Ogilthorpe: But I don’t want go. I wanna stay here at home?

Tuttle: Change your shoes bro. Step out of your comfort zone.

Beibs: You aren’t wearing shoes…

Tuttle: It’s a figure of speech. Let’s go.

Jester: And so the three embarked, diving back into the depths of the water to get out of their dam, through the river current coming to the shore, and ascending into the mountains where dwelt the old gray one.

Beibs: Are we there yet?

Ogilthorpe: Patience young’un.

Tuttle: We’re almost there, but here’s something you can appreciate, this part of the forest has some of the best trees if you want to build a dam. Come here, check this out. (Tuttle tears down a tree with his teeth)

Beibs: You’re good at that.

Tuttle: Practice.

Beibs: So I have to ask, both of you, what’s with the teeth?

Tuttle: It’s that time of year again.

Ogilthorpe: The dam stays in place pretty well over winter with the ice and all so we don’t need much upkeep. Tuttle here just likes to show off his chops and that’s why he’s losing. I’ve probably around a dozen trees more length on me than my little brother here.

Tuttle: At least I got the hair where it matters, Frenchie! (pointing out his chops and beard)

Ogilthorpe: Don’t associate me with their kind!

Tuttle: Settle, but hey Beaver take a stab at it! (pointing out another tree)

Beibs: How about this one?

Tuttle: Very ambitious for your first one, assuming that you’re not really a beaver. The circumference of the trunk is large—it’s an elderly oak…we must be getting close—this one will be tough to take down.

Ogilthorpe: Might be trouble.

(Beibs walks up to the tree, takes his first bite, and then hears a yell from above)

Redwing: Hey you down there stop that! This is my home!

Beibs: I’m sorry I didn’t mean t—your home still looks oakay—it’s just a love mark.

Redwing: A mark of love—some symbol? Hah—you beavers think you’re so clever and think you can get away with anything! You bring us birds’ trees into the water, destroying the natural habitat of others! This is where my kids play!

Beibs: You know what, you’re right, I was a kid once and had place like you do here where I was happy. I’m sorry—I didn’t know. I don’t really know how I got myself into all of this.

Tuttle: That’s enough Redwing! You flyers don’t know what it’s like! You’ve always had it out for us rodents! We were just teaching him a thing or two on our way to the gray tailed one.

Ogilthorpe: Yeah! You think you’re better than us groundhogs cause you can fly…and sing and make nests in any tree you want. Tut, I wish I could sing. That or defy gravity. Don’t you? Oh—Tuts you can tell the ladybird about your dream dam and what you want to build it with!

Tuttle: I don’t think that’s proper to talk about at this very moment.

Redwing:  Well you have come a long way on the trail and we are on the side of a mountain. Your journey must have been tiring.

Tuttle: Surely. Can you see lots from up there?

Redwing: Pff—of course. I can fly. What do you want to know?

Tuttle: Is there a waterfall in the distance?

Redwing: What kind of house do you want?

Tuttle: What?! Why can’t you just tell us…please?

Ogilthorpe: Maple trees!

Redwing: I knew it! And I still can’t believe it! Here in Cahnehhdiah! Where’s your loyalty to the sacred tree of our land! You should be ashamed.

Tuttle: Not again.

Redwing: Ogi, what you’re looking for is three tree lengths forth. You’ll get there before nightfall. The days are getting longer. It must be spring.

Ogi: Word up ladybird way up there.

Redwing: Good luck, and please no loitering around my stump. My eggs are comfortably resting and nestled in for the evening. (the Redwing flies away singing)

Tuttle: I can’t handle the conservationists and their pride. Trees grow back, and we need them to live!

Beibs: She’s right though. I mean dude, that’s like having a golden toilet.

Ogi: What’s a toilet?

Beibs: Maybe I should—what I’m saying is the whole maple tree thing…they are priceless and must be treated accordingly with respect.

Tuttle: It’s just a dream of mine! I didn’t think everyone would take it so seriously—let’s go! Crap, they’re just trees!

Jester: Our few fellow rodents argued all the way up the mountain until they heard a flowing continuance of crashing water. They traversed their trail to find waterfall’s top. The great stream before the falls was being fed by a number of other smaller falls along the mountainside. They followed the great mountain stream until they came to a great beaver dam intricately of golden logs stripped of their bark.

Beibs: This is it.

Tuttle: The force is strong in this one.

Ogilthorpe: Under here, this way! (the three beavers go under the water) Oh! There he is…

Tuttle: Gray tailed Gordie!

Beibs: Please great gray one help me for I am lost, I am don’t know of the trickery that has overcome and befuddled me.

Gordie: I see the dark magic on you and I see a path ahead for you, but it will not be easy. Have you heard of…Ogopogo?

Beibs: You mean the Cahnahdian loch ness monster?! That’s a myth!

Gordie: The myth is more so than you’ll ever know…Ah! I see, I see a task on the path ahead. I see a monster and I see demons. It shall be treacherous either way. From here you must choose; you go down and never go back, or you go down and return to me with…twenty liters of maple syrup, twenty wooden hockey sticks, and a lock of Celine Dion’s hair. This must be done if you wish to find what you seek.

Beibs: What is it that I must do once I have dastardly retrieved each ingredient of which you speak?

Ogilthorpe: Drink the blood from his jugular!

Tuttle: No bro! Let the old one speak. Go on.

Gordie: You have till the final day of the ice breakup.

Ogi: Uh oh—

Tuttle: What’s the matter?

Ogi: It’s just that another ground rodent told me not too long back that he saw his shadow. He told me that spring was coming early this year so we haven’t much time!

Beibs: And we have to defile maple trees in the process!

Tuttle: Yeah, and who’s Celine Dion?

Beibs: Well, she’s a one hit wonder. And she’s Cahnahiahn.

Jester: Together the three as they left the gray tail’s great dam they concocted a plan with the utmost swiftness and efficiency. Beibs asked if Tuttle and Ogilthorpe would scout for the maple trees and extract the syrup. One tree provides one liter. Sounds simple….it’s not! This is a very dangerous task because of the forest’s tight security measures surrounding these sacred trees. These laws are upheld by the passionate Cahnahdiahn Mountees dedicated to preserving their country’s ultimate cultural symbol from destructive rodents and pestering vermin. The two brothers embraced their challenge and harvested what they needed from each of the first nineteen trees without being seen. Beibs brainstormed; How would he get twenty stick and a lock of CD’s hair? He didn’t know so his first solution was to help his friends finish what they’d started.

Beibs: Are we close?

Tuttle: Shh! They’ll hear you, and stay down.

Ogi: Why did we let him come? We had a system Tuttle?

Beibs: It’s my problem okay! I want to help!

Tuttle: Shh! Over here, get us up and running Ogi!

Ogi: I’m on it.

Beibs: How can I help?

Tuttle: Be quiet or we’ll be in an even stickier situation. This is highly illegal.

Beibs: So this is how you get maple syrup? Wow. Here, let me try please.

Tuttle: Shh! They’ll—

Mountee: Who goes there!? AHA Vermin!

Ogi: Just one more drop, I got it—My god—he has a hockey stick, watch out! (the mountee chases around the beavers who all get away)

Tuttle: Whew that was close, and now we know where look next. The Mountees must have plenty of sticks stowed away in their cabins! But why would they use them as their primary weapon?

Beibs: Because it doesn’t take much to drive away us small land animals. Plus they’re cheap, durable, and you don’t need a permit.

Jester: The three returned to the cabin. Beibs caught the mountee’s attention until again they were chased while the cabin door was left open for Tuttle and Ogi to round up the sticks that were there. They went to several cabins, driving several mountees out to chase them, but in the end they only came up with nineteen sticks.

Beibs: We’re almost there! We need just one more stick and one lock of hair.

Tuttle: I still don’t know who that is? But I do know where we are now. It’s our river, back where we started.

Beibs: She sang a song about a sunken ship. It’s an awful love ballad and it’s all very sappy…that’s it! Of course!

Tuttle: What’s what?

Beibs: That clever old beaver, it’s a riddle. He knows me too well. “A lock of Celine Dion’s hair,” think about it. There’s a lock of hair. There’s a loch as in lake. And there’s a lock to be unlocked, for which we need the key. And my brothers, I’ve found that key. You guys really taught me a lot, and your life must be pretty tough always being viewed as lowly rodents, not even my people will spend any ammunition on your kind, on our kind.

Ogilthorpe: Hey over here you guys, I found our last hockey stick!

Tuttle: How convenient. It must’ve washed up since the shore has thawed.

Beibs: It’s my stick from…when…that’s when I left her. O my cursed heart! Tut; Ogi, let me show you where we’ll find the final ingredient. We must hurry back to the old one! (they scurry up the mountain, past the falls, and beneath the water surface to face their next step) We have what you requested gray tail.

Gordie: Do you now? If this is so then leave behind nineteen liters of the nectar. You’ll need only one. Grab one stick, your favorite stick, and leave behind the other nineteen. And what of the lock?

Beibs: Actually, you said you would show me where to go next, and the only place to go is to Ogopogo, and if my logic follows then for there to be a loch ness monster-thing then there must first be a loch. (they begin to walk, Tuttle and Ogi following further behind) But it was the tree sap, the reverent maple syrup, that gave me knowledge.

Gordie: So you see the significance of this sweet condiment. But how?

Beibs: Long ago Celine Dion once told me that “my heart will go on.” That was a sappiest thing I’d ever heard till I realized what exactly she was singing—it goes ‘MY HEART’; and if her heart is my heart then that would mean there’s a little Celine Dion in all of us!

So now all I need is for you to bring me to the loch and you’ll get your hair—a lock of my long lost wavy hair.

Gordie: We’re close. Ready your syrup. Ah! Here we are. (As they come to the lake Beibs sets the syrup on the shore, sees Ogopogo, and turns back into his human form. He chops off a small chunk of hair and gives it to Gordie as the monster takes the offering and leaves in peace) Do not speak of this back in your world! The monster is to remain only known in nature.

Beibs: Thank you wise one! And as for my Tuttle and Ogilthorpe, stay classy.

Tuttle: By that do you mean to say stay put at our lowly and ignoble stature in the animal kingdom?

Ogilthorpe: Or are you just calling us ugly? (They all laugh)

Beibs: I love you guys just the way you are! Maybe I’ll see you on the other side someday.

(Beibs returns home to Forsberg who’s watching a hockey game on)

Beibs: Hey hey hey uncle who’s playing?

Forsberg: Oh my child! Where have you been? I thought you were dead. Violet showed up with your purple hat and I was wrecked. OH my god what will your father say…anyways come in, hurry he’s playing right now. He’s been playing so hard since he heard about—and well his team’s in the Stahnlehh Coup. It’s game seven and they’ve gone into overtime!

Beibs: This is exciting! So have you heard anything from Violet.

Forsberg: Not since the funeral. I’ve only seen her around the church’s convent.

Beibs: No! She can’t become a nun! I love her! (he runs out of the room)

Forsberg: But your father’s game! Ugh, here we go.

 IMPROVISATION FROM HERE ON OUT...

(Beibs crossdresses as his lover, ‘look at the hair’ and returns to Violet whose praying and thinking of being a nun)

(Forsberg is defiant and present when Beibs proposes, but we won't get to that...) 

(Orr returns for the wedding, they live happily ever after and Violet turns pretty, CUE FAN AND MUSIC AS EVERYONE BREAKS INTO SONG!)

L is for the way you look at Beibs
O is for the only one I see
V is very, very extraordinary
E is even more than anyone that you adore can

Love is all that I can give to you
Love is more than just a game for two
Two in love can make it
Take my heart and please don't break it
Love was made for me and you

Sinbad and his seven shipwreck stories

Today I would go out to breakfast and start reading more for this class. At Main Street Overeasy I ordered Earl Grey tea w/ cream, chicken fried steak, eggs, hash browns, and and English muffin of course. I was well on my way when I started Sinbad and his seven tales this goodly Thursday. I was most impressed with the fourth, fifth, and seventh stories from his tellings. Although before I dive into my thoughts I must note that I was very interested with the storytelling structure. I'm not usually one to address structure (I think..), but this class has got me thinking [quite confusedly] about what is necessary in the structure of a romance and where it works. It's formulaic thinking, and it's fascinating. Each of the seven tales has a few things in common. Sinbad is the narrator [think of Frye, "de te fabula: the story is about you" (186)] who's telling the tale. Sinbad always starts off great, then Sinbad always is shipwrecked, then Sinbad finds a fruitful and providential island, then Sinbad finds his way off the island, and then finally he convinces his audience to come back the next night for his next, more exciting tale. Yes, these facts are very generic, apparent, repetitive, and they remind me of the oral tradition. That's why they're there. Although when it comes to his tales it seems that it's not a romance, if we may digress into the meat of matter in this class. Sinbad himself has [at least] a couple of romantic relationships in the story. He has two wives for sure; he's a widower until marrying the king's daughter in the end. And he's a man of God, luck, and providence.

Oh, I won't go on for much longer. Earlier today I thought that I'd center my thesis paper around Sinbad, but because of what I've read in his tales I think that there's not enough romance in his stuff. So...to the forty thieves...

Concerning digressive thoughts

This blog post could easily [and quite literally] post for Professor Sexson's other oral traditions class, but some reason my sense of urge has me writing into this particular ocean of stories. This is so for the simple fact that I've learned a lot more about fantasy in this class than mastering your memory with a factual fortitude of creation--ironically being fantastical conjures constructed by the marriage of language (of the clearly communicable recollection...) and...living? (...within the continuum of experiences)--wherein my memory palaces. We're reading The Art of Memory by Frances Yates in our other class and after our first class ending at two o'clock I got to reading more of Yates prior to Ocean of Stories. In reading the first few pages of chapter 16, which focuses on correlations betwixt Shakespeare playwrights and the mnemonic systems of Fludd, Bruno, and Camillo [comparing The Globe Theatre with , then Walter walks through the door. He cordially waves while setting his stuff down. I salute him. We both have on our headphones.

The day before he said something that struck me--something along these lines so I'll paraphrase--, something that I can completely relate to,

"You're in The Ocean of Stories class? I didn't even know because I get our two classes mixed up. I'm reading one thing for three-thirty-seven and it applies moreso to something we're discussing in four-thirty-eight." I know how you feel, man; seeing as I'm going to now offer several quotes from Frances Yates book to mull over while they might seem completely frivolous, but consider my proposition beforehand--'Every aspect of the real world, from the societal to the natural, is playfully notioned, put in motion, and evidentally present in each of plays Shakespeare has written and henceforth been performed in The Globe Theatre--famous for it's variety of possible entrances, square stage, and circular hole in the ceiling (if I'm not mistaken, although no one else seems to be sure after reading Yates' historical research). One play, theoretically, contains a fair representation of the universe in and of it's prudential production.':

"...the Vitruvian figure inscribed in a square and a circle became a symbol of hte mathematical sympathy between microcosm and macrocosm. How could the relation of Man to god be better expressed...than by building the house of God in accordance with the fundamental geometry of square and circle?" (359)

"And the Globe...shows that the Shakespearean theatre was not imitation but an adaptation of Vitruvius...there was a basic change introduced by the multilevel stage. The old religious theatre showed a spiritual drama of the soul of man in relation to the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise." (363)

""All the world's a stage."" (364)

Then something else comes to mind, something having recently occurred within the confines--if I may elegantly gloss--the pages of the washroom's literature. A book also referenced in my 337 blog (crap, how will I ever get around to my point for this class?), titled Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, and Cosmology. On page 112 they talk about a triangular vesica-based--(in geometry it's like a trinity-venn diagram) influence on architecture, namely showing the floor plan of Winchester Cathedral (pictured above). From what I can gather, this is a church we see above is obviously a cross. The two short sides, which I'm assuming are facing east and west, are equal in volume so that there can be more room for the lead priest's stage (with a large backstage) and an even vaster space for a plentiful congregation to fill the pews. Look at a triangular vesica--when I did all I could think of was the rule of three and all it's derivatives; there's Father-Son-Holy Spirit--Heaven-Hell-Purgatory--Priest-Farmer-Warrior--A-B-C. Furthermore, on the offhand, I think that a preached sermon is as much a performance as a playwright itself--something I realized by watching my most recent, brilliantly persuasive, and rather--pardon my insensitivity--superficial minister of the Trinity Presbyterian Church. Nevermind that because too soon another Yates quote oncomes to mind reminding me of the short sides,

"When these 'heavens' cover the stage, we learn that the stage was at the east of the theatre, like the altar in the church." (364)

Anyways, reading the previous quote along with rummaging through Quadrivium this evening really got me thinking about the significance of geometry as well as drama, it's elements being tragedy and comedy, a dichotomy of genre instead of the genre quartet we addressed in class early this semester (Romance, Comedy, Irony, Tragedy). I'll be honest, this whole numbers game confuses me so by reasonably quantifying the concept of genre it makes it a whole lot easier for me to understand our classes main theme of "Romance."

Which again gets me thinking of something Walter said this afternoon before class--and I'll once again paraphrase--"The romance in people mostly goes unsaid. People think about what they're going to say--let's say it's to someone they really like or think is awful cute--and they give what they want to say a lot of thought. But we hardly ever say what we think, so people never quite can be defined as romantics if they don't speak it."

This thought rung to the tune of one of Frye's final declarations in The Secular Scripture when he says that "in our greatest romance that we begin to say that we have earned the right to silence." (188) Now let's think about this-- let's reflect with a 'moment of silence'.

Anyways, I guess my initial thought was that Romance is a derivation of Comedy because this is the realm of 'happy endings' as opposed to the tragic endings where like--the hero dies. Our final project is to present the 'perfect romance'--something our group has began to work on--and it's quickly turning into a comedy.

Now, let's look back one of the Yates quotes describing the difference between imitation and adaptation. This story we're developing seems like it's becoming an imitation of romance because it's turning into a comedy, but--by incorporating the essential elements of romance, yes?--that's fine. I've discovered that between the drama, the historical figures, my fellow classmates--on top of the rich teaching--and other thoughts at the tip of my tongue which creep into the back of my mind that, well shit I guess, that romance is an elementally supplementation itself. Simply, it's secondary.

My argument here goes back to Irony. A couple years back when I took Mythologies our final group presentation was an adaptation of the story of Oedipus--one of the the most amazing plots I've ever read. It's perfect, but what genre does it belong to? Tragedy! I say 'yeah, and romance. The fling between Oedipus and Jocasta happened out of love! But Oedipus doesn't end happily. Oedipus is probably a tragedy, but there is without dispute a romance in and of the play (engulfed in irony [thus, associated and undertoned with in comedy?])'

Well in celebration of this combination of Professor Sexson's classes I'll end with a couple of my favorite quote from Frye which apply directly to Oral Traditions:

"William Blake once said 'imagination has nothing to do with memory.'" (175)

"...all memory is selective, and the fact that it is selective is the starting point of creation." (175)

"...heaven and hell have been written but the great poem of earth has still to be written." (171)

And of the call

Our assignment over spring break was to 'see the call to adventure,' we were given specific instructions to let the adventure present itself to you--not for you to seek it. My oh my did the adventure find me, and Frye's thoughts in his final chapter "The Recovery of Myth" has a lot to do with the antics that were presented. The end of spring break, St. Patrick's Day weekend in Butte, America, was nothing short of storybook--I mean I did grow up there after all having lived a good 14 or so years there total--and not until this weekend did I get the chance to witness the bizarre and unique night life. When I was younger my parents always insisted that we--my brother and I--stay downtown on St. Patrick's Evening because Butte becomes much more wild than Butte usually is centering around this rather small holiday. Most people around here know all about it, but what most people don't know are the more personal stories that encountered me this past weekend.

It's been almost six years since summer 2006 when my family relocated up to Anchorage. Butte and the people I'd come to know so well had become a memory in the back of my mind--I'd become happy with my new life beyond that once hometown--but it's only natural that coming to school an hour from where you grew up will trigger some of that hidden nostalgia. Anyways, it wasn't until this year that I got the chance to experience a St. Patty's Day back there, and my was it adventurous. Not only that, my two-and-a-half day span spent there gave me a chance to recovery some sort of lost identity that had been long forgotten.

I stayed with some family friends who I'd never really known that well, but they were incredibly generous by giving me a place to sleep and eat (damn was their corned beef & cabbage meal tip top). Justin, who's from Butte but goes to school here, and I after supper went up to Maloney's bar to find our group of friends who'd traveled over from Bozeman. We found them conveniently at the back of the bar where we stayed for a good hour or so--time hereafter gets a little blurry although I clearly remember the enormous amounts of people emerging from uptown crevices I never knew existed after we exited the back of the bar and returned out to the completely littered streets. The sidewalk trash cans were overflowing with empties as queue lines of people for the bars. We're at the corner of Main and Broadway and we'd lost some of those in our group, but they couldn't have gone far so we decide to head to Metal's--an old bank turned sports bar. On the street I see Lance, which reminds me of Lancelot in the old Celtic tradition at the time, who was the quarterback back in elementary school. He doesn't know who I am. Same goes for Zach, who was telling an older drunk guy to move along and out of his face. The older guy raised his fists--he would be trying to fight a former hockey teammate of mine--but he wouldn't do anything. I can only think about Frye when he says that in romance "violence becomes melodrama." (183) After the older guys moves along I go up and say "Hi" to Zach, it takes a moment for him to recognize me. It's been a while. Thereafter we go into Metal's and one of the first people I come across is Sarah--this story all of a sudden becomes a romance, what a coincidence. We hadn't kept up for a while, but she was the first friend I had in Butte. She became more than just a friend as we grew older, but she never knew that about my feelings for her--that 'first crush' type of thing, and now here we are. I hadn't seen her for over five years, let alone had a decent conversation with her. It seemed she had moved on like me because she wasn't with any Butte people, only with her friends from school in Missoula. But here we--the Bozeman people and Missoula people--were together in the middle. The Middle you say, eh? Anyways, we decided to head to the lounge in the Hotel Finlen, one of the most historically rich hotels in Butte which I had never been in--funny that it was my first time because you can seen the sign all the way from the other side of town. This is when my initial groups began to disintegrate. We weren't all sleeping in the same place, and naturally the drinking wasn't helping. It didn't matter though because what could be better than this, catching up with one of my oldest friends in my original hometown in a bar I'd never even knew existed?

It turns out that however sentimental this all sounds it's not a romance. Although, if we speak of Frye then who knows really? Everything went full circle that night. Also, over the entire night I was trying to catch up with a current coworker from Bozeman. It didn't seem like it would happen. We went back to Maloney's for a little, that's where we lost Sarah. Then we went back down the hill a little to Metal's, the final place we'd go. We found a table this time around because the night was winding down, but then I hear a "Spence!" come from behind me right after I'd made some offhand comment. It was Rob, my coworker, "Haha! Where you been buddy?" "Man, everywhere." What a night, it was only Bozeman people left, at least close around and I'd done everything that I wanted, and much much more. We all had a drink, Rob was with his girlfriend and I with my college crowd, and we all had a brief talk before Metal's was shut down. Then we all went home.

That night was an adventure, and it just came to me although it took some recovering. It was a place I'd never known although I'd lived there for so long. It got me thinking "Quis hic locus?"--or, "what place is this?" (152)--that this is the place I'd been so familiar with, and simultaneously neglected knowing, all along.

Themes of Descent

I'll begin with a thought from his next chapter "Themes of Ascent" where Frye declares, "that the happy ending exists only for readers who finish the book." (134-35) This struck me when put up against something he mentions in the prior chapter in that "life that is a pure continuum, beginning with a birth that is a random beginning, ending with a death that is a random ending, nothing is more absurd than telling stories that do begin and end." (125) If we think about this from a romantic standpoint then it fits that the typical structure of the genre's narrative excludes instances which are considered 'secondary'. These instances include potential pieces of a romance which are unnecessary (yet, ultimately containing qualities and notions of unison) such as birth, rebirth, marriage, sex, a birthing, etc. The substance of romance is interesting because, as mentioned somewhere in the text, there are explicit clues of what's on the horizon embedded in signs throughout the entirety of the story. These reoccurring small, seemingly insignificant, symbols contain within them the secrets of literature's 'big scheme-of-things'. Characters who momentously come into contact with such an image are revealed knowledge of the big picture. These happenings withhold truth of the macrocosm within the confines of a microcosm showing how any common discovery can compound into revelation, the epiphany manifested. Of course, this realization of reality and recollection of memory doesn't come into consideration until the notion of ascension has been undertaken, but then we must reconsider the fact that possibly there is no need for any explicit instance of unification.

Let's take a step back before we come to a conclusion [because, well, that's exactly what's troubling me]. A full-blown conclusion requires the utmost exhaustion and fleshing-out of characters, but in Romance we must consider this alleged requirement of two lovers coming together and unifying as a single-souled organism. This alleged requirement has been deemed unnecessary to our literate eyes which are well-versed at reading between and beyond the lines.

Therefore, all things considered, we must understand that for a story (romance or not?) to exist then a primary protagonist must descend across a threshold of an unknown existence where he unleashes his inner harlequin; "Of the various things Harlequin does, one is to divide himself into two people and hold dialogues with himself." (111) Here the hero meets his second self, his alter ego, his doppelganger; coincidentally this is the manifestation of an anti-hero. With this knowledge the hero has been exposed to both sides of his being, allowing a transcendence from an initial sense of self to take place, which gives them access to a path upwards. Self, that's the key. This 'underworld' or 'other world' is a place of self-reflection, a place where one finds love for oneself, not where two characters are unified. Finally with that said, Frye's thoughts of the Descent got me thinking that such a place of madness and chaos and sin is, so to speak, the belly of the beast. So in order to go up you might, furthermore, have to do the reverse and find verily the bottom. There is where our hero is excreted bottom of the belly and here has become "a god-born devil's dung" (119). Here is where we clean things up a bit.

The 'Coy' and 'Quaint'

Today in class I got thinking about a segment from the film Adaptation when "sparagmos" and dismemberment by dogs came up.

Donald Kaufman: Anyway, listen, I meant to ask you, I need a cool way to kill people. Don't worry, for my script.
Charlie Kaufman: I don't write that kind of stuff.
Donald Kaufman: Oh, come on, man, please? You're the genius.
Charlie Kaufman: Here you go. The killer's a literature professor. He cuts off little chunks from his victims' bodies until they die. He calls himself "the deconstructionist".

This is the stuff that men, the rapists and pillagers, come up with since the times of Ovid. Even the nice, pious guys like Saint John lose control over themselves, and who's fault is it? In John's case, he thinks it's his fault after the deed is done because he punishes himself by becoming bestial, which is the nature of raping and pillaging, and walking on all fours. On the flip side Frye might say it's the woman's fault in that "her policy of lying is advantageous to the author...craft and fraud is the animating spirit of the comic form" (74) and prolong the current adventure or creates another challenging adventure which the characters are "threatened by disaster" and yet they get away. By Frye calling this misadventures 'comic' this makes me think that the nature of 'Romance' is assembled by an accumulation of comedic happenings. With this said in "A Pagan Hero and A Christian Saint" the first sexual act happens before the end which Frye says should be postponed "at least, until after the birth mystery in the plot has been solved." (72-73) In this case what would we call "A Pagan Hero and A Christian Saint"? I surely didn't find it romantic nor comedic. More allegorical or dramatic.

With all this said I'll point out one last passage from Frye, page 77, who shows Rosalind's character from Shakespeare's As You Like It; "Her remark at the end of the fourth act might be a motto for such heroines: 'I shall devise something: but, I pray you, commend my counterfeiting to him.'" This points shows true in APH&ACS in that there's an apparent death and the violated woman after having been shoved off a cliff was saved by God who "'bore me up, so that I came to no harm." (59) That makes Frye's contention fit in a bit better.

A Displaced Fairy Tale: Reworked and Rather Realistic

Before I get to the displaced tale and augmented adaptation there are some other tidbits to should stick in our back pocket.

The Necessities of Romance: (1-Primary, Basic//2-Peripheral, Secondary)

1-Happy ending, quest, apparent death/last-minute substitution, revelation/remembrance/apocalypse,

2-Marriage/sex, misogyny, cross-dressing, birth and attempt to kill/adoption/exposed infants, senex/wisdom, intoxication/hypnotism, pirates, oracles, violence/rape, idyllic, seasonal cycle

Romantic lingual mantras (well, something to think about at least):

Chaste/Chase[d], Naive/Knave/Knive, Wooed/Wood, Eros/Arrows

Art:Nature::Heaven:Earth

The Displaced Tale

There is a farmer living the middle of the state somewhere in a valley who bears a plot of farmland, a crop providing immense sustenance for the immediate area distributing produce such as corn, potatoes, carrots, and lettuce for a small taste of what’s in store. The value of his assets grew so quickly that he established a beautiful country home along with his fruitful countryside. Life was good, complacently good until one summer day when doing rounds in his large garden he found a single dandelion and without hesitation picked it from the ground because he doesn’t like this particular flower knowing it’s essentially a weed. In the business it’s a rule of thumb: mow it if you want to grow it, pluck it or you’re stuck with it. This specific particular dandelion was dead so without panic and failure he brought it straight inside his house and threw it in furnace so it couldn’t spread like wildfire. All he could think was ‘be agile and be nimble, it’s fragile and it’ll kindle.’ Then somehow enlightenment came upon him, he thought about how much his business ran his world and what needed to change. The dead flower’s spherical shape of fluffy seeds reminded him that he doesn’t have enough fluff in his life, and with all that fluff he will be able to fly like any other dandelion sprout. His life is too rooted and weighed down so of course the first thought is to lighten up and get out in the world. And in doing so, naturally he grabs some cash and lightens his pockets by going to town with it [the relatively nearby mountain towns for starters]. Then as any other dandelion does well, he met a lovely, petite blonde lady who he loved verily and spread his seed. In due time she had a son, and together they three permanently settled in their isolated estate for many years and lived in prosperity. The farm’s production increased each year along with the health and growth of their son. He became stronger and smarter until one day near the end of summertime, easily the hottest season in recent memory, the boy was overcome with an unusual sense of curiosity about the outside world beyond home on the range.

So naturally, after home school while harvesting the corn, he asks his dad what he wanted to be growing up. His dad jokes that he only ever wanted to be ‘stalk broker,’ but assures his son understand that there are finer things in life than your job. He suggests that his son find a fine girl and leave the valley behind for some time to do so. His last words were, “When you take off that’s when everything will ignite.” The boy wanted to talk more over supper, and that evening he asked his mom what she wanted to be when she was younger. She instinctively joked that she wanted to be fireman, but then admitted that she just wanted to find true love and maybe also once wanted to be a ski bum is all. She looks over and winks at her worried hubby then utters, “By the way honey this corn is uncomfortably delicious. Its sweetness might keep me up all night! Oh, and honey bee please tell more about what you and your father have talked about.” The boy talks of plans to find a wife and stuff, plans he’s plotted since their prior chat. His father suggests that if he leaves so soon then he do it for the three winter months and return to his duties on the farm come the fourth month whether he has a wife or not. On a warm November day the family went to town for business, to distribute their crop and drop their son off in one of the mountain towns to travel for three months with two full pockets and one small goal.

Unfortunately for much of the winter over much of the land there wasn’t much snow buildup. The winter months came and went, but their typical climate didn’t carry with it and the lack of moisture imminently lead to a drought early in the spring sparking a forest fire nearby a surrounding mountain town which alarmed life on the farm. The son came home soon after, and drought had seemingly stricken his quest and exhausted his thirst for love. The luck wasn’t there, and this trend continues and then one day a flash wildfire threatened some homes in a mountain town forcing much of its community into the nearest valley. Since there was nowhere else to go aside from the plot’s perimeter a small mass of townspeople came to farmer’s home asking for temporary aid. The mom wasn’t too happy with these developments because she hasn’t even got the chance to catch up with her son who has his eyes locked on a pretty girl in the small crowd who catches him staring. As for the dad, for some reason all he can think about is a particular flower and without debate offers his hospitality. Although the family didn’t have enough beds to go around they made makeshift mattresses with resources such as sacks of potatoes, hay bales, and pelt blankets, things of that sort. The boy expresses to his mother his intrigue for this particular girl, but the mother disagrees and extends his comparison;

“She’s just dandy, mom, just dandy like the flower.”

“If she’s a dandelion my dear then she’s a weed and her kind only spreads like wildfire.”

“This sounds like dad’s story, but it’s like negative instead.”

“Well she and her posse are here exactly because of that fact, and now somehow she’s your love? You had three straight months for sport, and now that you’ve come all the way home here is where you’re going to start playing, in front of your mother who hasn’t seen you in three months?”

“Mother, I’m not arguing with you and do I have to remind you that beside those three months we spent my entire life together. Let’s just get a bed ready for her, please.”

“Well then she’s getting a cot stuffed of that awful sweet corn, not potatoes like the others. If you let her sleep in these conditions then I’ll not question her any longer.”

“At least give her extra straw.”

“That’s fine, she’ll need it.”

They halt their bargaining and go greet the pretty girl who allows the mother to show her to bed where she’s insured that her cot is ‘as comfy as peas in a pod.’ Then the next morning after everyone was awake and eating breakfast the mom asked the pretty girl how she’d slept.

“Not well, my back is quite stiff and my dreams were a little eerie.”

“Ah, well I’m so sorry to hear that. There’s nothing like sleeping in your own bed.” She concludes in concession to the wishes of her son who is summoned over.

He anxiously approaches the pretty girl and timidly asks is she’d like to hear a corny joke.