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I'll paraphrase whoever wrote it--"once oneself has commences in an act of writing the self of that oneself is no longer active nor present in what is being written."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