The few of us who have been hammering out fanfiction about CBC shows and our Canadian childhoods has been put together and I am apart of it! If you are interested in checking out more and are too lazy to use my links head over there and check out some of the stuff.
It is at: CBC Fanfiction Webring
Monday, April 7, 2008
New Story!
Here is a short story I just wrote quickly today about the loneliness of being out on the river. Log Driver's after all miss those girls that they dance with. WARNING! I tried to go with something a bit homoerotic and it kind of went places. See what you think.
“She said she would marry me” I breathed helplessly at the long oak wooden table constructed out of haste from the driftwood.
Sam just nodded as the wind and rain smashed against the tarp that hung over us in a constructed tent. Here was home for night. Here was where we would get as much sleep and food as we can before we headed back out onto the river for another Log Driver’s Waltz down the Fraser to who knows and who cares.
“I’m never going to see her again, I just know it,” I huffed my facin going stern and defeated.
Water fell in droplets from the edge of chiseled chin and my plaid shirt was slick against my thickened body. The same body that Sam was staring right on through He was staring right through me like I never knew Sam could do and pushed a cloudy mud dried bottle towards me that was sloshing full of dark rum.
“Just have a drink, Tom,” he spoke in a gruff manner, his hands still clutching the bottle that he pushed towards me.
I seized it from him like a trembling woman and downed a good lot of it.
“Her freckles were dancing with the music, dancing while we danced, and her breast were against me,” I said wiping my chin, “not like the way any of the girls in the towns push their breasts into you and you don’t care, but she was pressing them into me and I suddenly felt aware of them in a way that was all different.”
Sam frowned. I could tell he wasn’t in the mood for me talking like that. It was lonely out here in the night with just the two of us, driving the logs down the Fraser.
You worked in teams like this. There were camps all the way down the river and you had bits of territory along the river and as logs came into your area, you and your partner would make sure every last one was driven down into the next territory before you moved on down stream assuming someone else’s old spot down the chain and so on. This is how you moved them. This is how we moved down the Fraser for as long as I could remember now.
“I don’t think I can remember how breasts felt,” Sam said, which took me aback, “I don’t remember how they felt.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about them,” I managed to say after another big drink of rum.
“I never said that,” he replied.
“But you glared at me when I spoke of Molly’s against me,” I pointed out.
“Listen. I know we are alone out here and everything and I did glare at you and as much I don’t want to hear about it, I still thought that I should tell you I can’t remember about no breasts,” Sam said, his facing inching forward towards mine from where he sat at our little table.
I put down the bottle, which he grabbed and he finished the rest of the rum in one long gulp and smacking his lips he tossed it out of the tent and into the darkness outside. I listened for the sound of it landing, but it never came. The rain was too loud.
“What do I do with her, Sam?” I asked.
Sam sunk back on the stump he was using as a chair.
“You shouldn’t of said yes,” he said.
I nodded in defeat. Marrying her would mean the end to this. Marrying Molly and her perky breasts would mean I would have to leave the Log Driving and settle down in that town back there where I had met her at one of those community dances. I would have to support her as a man and a husband. I couldn’t do that as a Log Driver.
“I will miss you,” Sam said.
I bit my lip the way I should have done when Molly asked me to marry her.
Sam suddenly dove across the table and embraced me. I could feel his hands on me like I never thought I would feel.
“I will miss you,” he said.
His hands pawed at my wet body as if he was trying to hold me back, as if he was trying to keep me here in this space, in this free life of movement, up and down the river, of dances, and breasts that weren’t Molly’s, and sharing bottles of muddied rum together under rain swept nights in our tent.
I grabbed back at him sinking down to our bedding and into his warmth. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t care. We were soon naked and wet. The rain was getting inside the tent and it hammered onto our nakedness. I could feel it running down from his face onto mine as he held me desperately. I squeezed back and my breathing became quicker. It matched his, which was now long since ragged.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t.”
“No,” I replied, “Don’t ever be sorry, ever.”
I could of cried but I didn’t. So did Sam. I thought he would have but instead we just kept nakedly pressing ourselves one another. His ragged breath was tearing into my ears as he thrust over and over again against the length of me.
We had met each other four years ago, both veterans of the waltz, the log drive down the Fraser towards the coast. The foreman had matched us because of our skill because he knew we could handle anchoring the run. Sam was tough and soft spoken. I would often nervously babble to him along the river as we drove the logs. It was how I waltzed. He however would never say a word until we were sitting in camp. It was here I learned that he liked rum as much as me, and was here that we began to talk.
Never before were we closer than right now as he moved on top of me and firmly stroked his muscular body along my length. I ran my hands along his bulging back muscles as I o matched his movements. It was a dance. A waltz together for the first and last time.
“Molly,” I moaned softly as we both reached climax together and sank down to the ground, being pelted by the never-ending wetness of the rain.
By JBomb
“She said she would marry me” I breathed helplessly at the long oak wooden table constructed out of haste from the driftwood.
Sam just nodded as the wind and rain smashed against the tarp that hung over us in a constructed tent. Here was home for night. Here was where we would get as much sleep and food as we can before we headed back out onto the river for another Log Driver’s Waltz down the Fraser to who knows and who cares.
“I’m never going to see her again, I just know it,” I huffed my facin going stern and defeated.
Water fell in droplets from the edge of chiseled chin and my plaid shirt was slick against my thickened body. The same body that Sam was staring right on through He was staring right through me like I never knew Sam could do and pushed a cloudy mud dried bottle towards me that was sloshing full of dark rum.
“Just have a drink, Tom,” he spoke in a gruff manner, his hands still clutching the bottle that he pushed towards me.
I seized it from him like a trembling woman and downed a good lot of it.
“Her freckles were dancing with the music, dancing while we danced, and her breast were against me,” I said wiping my chin, “not like the way any of the girls in the towns push their breasts into you and you don’t care, but she was pressing them into me and I suddenly felt aware of them in a way that was all different.”
Sam frowned. I could tell he wasn’t in the mood for me talking like that. It was lonely out here in the night with just the two of us, driving the logs down the Fraser.
You worked in teams like this. There were camps all the way down the river and you had bits of territory along the river and as logs came into your area, you and your partner would make sure every last one was driven down into the next territory before you moved on down stream assuming someone else’s old spot down the chain and so on. This is how you moved them. This is how we moved down the Fraser for as long as I could remember now.
“I don’t think I can remember how breasts felt,” Sam said, which took me aback, “I don’t remember how they felt.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about them,” I managed to say after another big drink of rum.
“I never said that,” he replied.
“But you glared at me when I spoke of Molly’s against me,” I pointed out.
“Listen. I know we are alone out here and everything and I did glare at you and as much I don’t want to hear about it, I still thought that I should tell you I can’t remember about no breasts,” Sam said, his facing inching forward towards mine from where he sat at our little table.
I put down the bottle, which he grabbed and he finished the rest of the rum in one long gulp and smacking his lips he tossed it out of the tent and into the darkness outside. I listened for the sound of it landing, but it never came. The rain was too loud.
“What do I do with her, Sam?” I asked.
Sam sunk back on the stump he was using as a chair.
“You shouldn’t of said yes,” he said.
I nodded in defeat. Marrying her would mean the end to this. Marrying Molly and her perky breasts would mean I would have to leave the Log Driving and settle down in that town back there where I had met her at one of those community dances. I would have to support her as a man and a husband. I couldn’t do that as a Log Driver.
“I will miss you,” Sam said.
I bit my lip the way I should have done when Molly asked me to marry her.
Sam suddenly dove across the table and embraced me. I could feel his hands on me like I never thought I would feel.
“I will miss you,” he said.
His hands pawed at my wet body as if he was trying to hold me back, as if he was trying to keep me here in this space, in this free life of movement, up and down the river, of dances, and breasts that weren’t Molly’s, and sharing bottles of muddied rum together under rain swept nights in our tent.
I grabbed back at him sinking down to our bedding and into his warmth. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t care. We were soon naked and wet. The rain was getting inside the tent and it hammered onto our nakedness. I could feel it running down from his face onto mine as he held me desperately. I squeezed back and my breathing became quicker. It matched his, which was now long since ragged.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t.”
“No,” I replied, “Don’t ever be sorry, ever.”
I could of cried but I didn’t. So did Sam. I thought he would have but instead we just kept nakedly pressing ourselves one another. His ragged breath was tearing into my ears as he thrust over and over again against the length of me.
We had met each other four years ago, both veterans of the waltz, the log drive down the Fraser towards the coast. The foreman had matched us because of our skill because he knew we could handle anchoring the run. Sam was tough and soft spoken. I would often nervously babble to him along the river as we drove the logs. It was how I waltzed. He however would never say a word until we were sitting in camp. It was here I learned that he liked rum as much as me, and was here that we began to talk.
Never before were we closer than right now as he moved on top of me and firmly stroked his muscular body along my length. I ran my hands along his bulging back muscles as I o matched his movements. It was a dance. A waltz together for the first and last time.
“Molly,” I moaned softly as we both reached climax together and sank down to the ground, being pelted by the never-ending wetness of the rain.
By JBomb
Writing Software
Sure I know most of you use Microsoft Word to smash out any form of fiction on a computer, but have you ever considered scanning in pages? Or have you considered using another text program? Or in the case of blogs do you just hammer out the story with in the box of you posting script? Wel since I was reading a bit about the ideas on the CBC Fanfic peoples that I have in my link the topic of open source literature or fiction came up so I thought I would post some open source text writing software so we can bathe in the wonders of freedom. Or whatever.
http://www.abisource.com/
Probably my favourite. It is a stand alone text program in which you can save multiple file extensions like .doc and .txt that are common with programs. It also is the closest I have seen to actually matching Word's on the fly spell checker, which is ever so handy!
openoffice.org
The grandaddy of open source office software. It comes built in to many linux builds like ubuntu and is probably the program responsible for the new .docx extension the new that bloody MS Office uses for Office 2007 that not only screws over anyone using some of these great bits of free software, but also those who do not have a windows based computer. Anyways, open office is a huge multi faceted open source office sweet that is just as powerful as MS Office. The only drawback is that it does not have those on the fly spell checkers and grammar checkers. You know the ones that give you squiggly green and red lines under certain words as you write? However, as a free piece of software one simply can not complain. Sure we all download illegitimate OG bootlegs of Office anyway, but why not support open software like this? Go check them out!
http://www.abisource.com/
Probably my favourite. It is a stand alone text program in which you can save multiple file extensions like .doc and .txt that are common with programs. It also is the closest I have seen to actually matching Word's on the fly spell checker, which is ever so handy!
openoffice.org
The grandaddy of open source office software. It comes built in to many linux builds like ubuntu and is probably the program responsible for the new .docx extension the new that bloody MS Office uses for Office 2007 that not only screws over anyone using some of these great bits of free software, but also those who do not have a windows based computer. Anyways, open office is a huge multi faceted open source office sweet that is just as powerful as MS Office. The only drawback is that it does not have those on the fly spell checkers and grammar checkers. You know the ones that give you squiggly green and red lines under certain words as you write? However, as a free piece of software one simply can not complain. Sure we all download illegitimate OG bootlegs of Office anyway, but why not support open software like this? Go check them out!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
I was watching the video again for like the millionth time and I totally got the urge to write another story. Pictured is the scene that made me totally think. How does the log driver go for a live action to a cartoon? Only one of them too? Is this some sort of liberation or extension of log driver's body and identity? It kind of reminds me a bit of the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie where she and Anthy bust out of the chains of expectations and learn to be themselves by visually and physically breaking out of their worlds. This totally makes me see the Log Driver as a rebel. What do you guys think? I am kind of stuck with some of the thematics and not really sure where to go!
Links!
If you have noticed to the right of the page, I have posted some links to some various blogs that are attempting to get in on the fan fiction end of things through other CBC mainstays like Strombo on Sesame Park, and Mr . Dressup. I am totally all for this, but I thought I would post a bit of a review of each of them just because.
Tickle Trunk Creations
http://tickletrunkcreations.blogspot.com/
This blog is centered around Mr. Dressup which seems quite popular for fan fiction lately. 3 whole blogs! Well perhaps there is more but you know, laziness is a state of mind. Anyways, this blog has quite a lot of bite to it as the writer seems quite obsessive with theoretical wanking. I like Mr. Dressup, and the idea of doing some fan fiction of it is quite awesome, but there seems to be quite an idealistic take on the whole cannon of the show by the blogger. Chill out dude!
CBC Poet
http://cbcpoet.blogspot.com/
Not much of a poet, just one short haiku using the tickel trunk as some sort of emo image. It kind of makes me think the tickel trunk is empty and perhaps it has been since Ernie Coombs has left us, but I really doubt it. The tickel trunk is still filled with all the wonder of the world. I made a rather sarcastic comment on their pretending to be emo. I hope the loser who wrote this three lines of syllabic prattle posts more. Really I do. Nevertheless, I linked him or her or it or whatever. Gotta support like minded individuals even if there is very little in that mind.
Terence Fan Fiction
http://terencefanfiction.blogspot.com/
Quite a broad title for a short little one posted blog about Strombo visiting Sesame Park! It would be cool if there was more but in the meantime I totally could see this being made into a play and taking youtube by storm. I totally sent an email over that way hoping to seriously work things out. I don't know if I could pass as Strombo, but I can do a bit of puppetry and if all else fails I know some cosplayers that could totally do this. It would so make us internet superheroes.
Distopic Tree House
http://distopictreehouse.blogspot.com/
Spelling distopic instead of dystopic must be some sort of way to get attention by spelling wrong, but seriously who cares. I FEEL YOU DISTOPIC!! Or whatever. Another great Mr. Dressup writer (told you there was lots!) who seems to be having a bit of a post shout off with Tinkel Trunk Creations that could totally degenerate into a flame war faster than a Log Driver's Feet on a can of Red Bull! I gotta admit though, I swear I get some sort of pleasure from watching two people flame the poop out of one another over their fiction. They both make good points though I guess. My opinion is though that supposing Casey and Finnegan were able to grow up seems kind of strange considering they were already grown up and living on their own. Sure they were a bit shy at times, but they had Mr. Dressup and were all down with being able to extend themselves into different identities and that whole bit. Speaking of which it would be pretty sweet if we could get a mosaic shot of Casey and Finnegan in a hundred different costumes all covering the screen at once in some sort of warped cubist explosion. I would be down. I hope these guys think that would be cool too. Actually they better think it is cool. I know what is good for them.
Tickle Trunk Creations
http://tickletrunkcreations.blogspot.com/
This blog is centered around Mr. Dressup which seems quite popular for fan fiction lately. 3 whole blogs! Well perhaps there is more but you know, laziness is a state of mind. Anyways, this blog has quite a lot of bite to it as the writer seems quite obsessive with theoretical wanking. I like Mr. Dressup, and the idea of doing some fan fiction of it is quite awesome, but there seems to be quite an idealistic take on the whole cannon of the show by the blogger. Chill out dude!
CBC Poet
http://cbcpoet.blogspot.com/
Not much of a poet, just one short haiku using the tickel trunk as some sort of emo image. It kind of makes me think the tickel trunk is empty and perhaps it has been since Ernie Coombs has left us, but I really doubt it. The tickel trunk is still filled with all the wonder of the world. I made a rather sarcastic comment on their pretending to be emo. I hope the loser who wrote this three lines of syllabic prattle posts more. Really I do. Nevertheless, I linked him or her or it or whatever. Gotta support like minded individuals even if there is very little in that mind.
Terence Fan Fiction
http://terencefanfiction.blogspot.com/
Quite a broad title for a short little one posted blog about Strombo visiting Sesame Park! It would be cool if there was more but in the meantime I totally could see this being made into a play and taking youtube by storm. I totally sent an email over that way hoping to seriously work things out. I don't know if I could pass as Strombo, but I can do a bit of puppetry and if all else fails I know some cosplayers that could totally do this. It would so make us internet superheroes.
Distopic Tree House
http://distopictreehouse.blogspot.com/
Spelling distopic instead of dystopic must be some sort of way to get attention by spelling wrong, but seriously who cares. I FEEL YOU DISTOPIC!! Or whatever. Another great Mr. Dressup writer (told you there was lots!) who seems to be having a bit of a post shout off with Tinkel Trunk Creations that could totally degenerate into a flame war faster than a Log Driver's Feet on a can of Red Bull! I gotta admit though, I swear I get some sort of pleasure from watching two people flame the poop out of one another over their fiction. They both make good points though I guess. My opinion is though that supposing Casey and Finnegan were able to grow up seems kind of strange considering they were already grown up and living on their own. Sure they were a bit shy at times, but they had Mr. Dressup and were all down with being able to extend themselves into different identities and that whole bit. Speaking of which it would be pretty sweet if we could get a mosaic shot of Casey and Finnegan in a hundred different costumes all covering the screen at once in some sort of warped cubist explosion. I would be down. I hope these guys think that would be cool too. Actually they better think it is cool. I know what is good for them.
Log Driver Poetry
I was just reading the great CBC Poet blog and I thought it would be a cool idea to try my own hand at writing some poetry about the Log Driver's Waltz. So here it goes...
"Expectations"
The crispness
feet hanging like embers on the wet
a cusp of a horizon
broken open by speed
a twirl and a waltz left open
on some maiden's lips
a pool about her feet like her parent's expectations
"Plaid"
The shirt riddle slick with old mustache hairs
mean old mister mustache
no pixels for a mouth
just whir of the old zoetrope propped in the corner
citizens of the dead
the frost coming in but kept out by the bars
that cross and line in formation among my tattered collar
I wear it logging on the rivers
I wear it riding the century old phantoms that are broken
like embers with the slightest of shrugs
The voices of the men saying duck and hold
as the log keeps spinning
the log keeps living
the river thick with sap
thick with our gliding macabre
-------------------
I know they suck. What do you think?
"Expectations"
The crispness
feet hanging like embers on the wet
a cusp of a horizon
broken open by speed
a twirl and a waltz left open
on some maiden's lips
a pool about her feet like her parent's expectations
"Plaid"
The shirt riddle slick with old mustache hairs
mean old mister mustache
no pixels for a mouth
just whir of the old zoetrope propped in the corner
citizens of the dead
the frost coming in but kept out by the bars
that cross and line in formation among my tattered collar
I wear it logging on the rivers
I wear it riding the century old phantoms that are broken
like embers with the slightest of shrugs
The voices of the men saying duck and hold
as the log keeps spinning
the log keeps living
the river thick with sap
thick with our gliding macabre
-------------------
I know they suck. What do you think?
Fan Fiction
I have written a piece of fan fiction to help glorify the awesomeness that is The Log Driver's Waltz. I have been reading a lot about speed and the transmission of culture lately so I tried to work some of that in. Let me know what you think. It would be cool if there was more fan fiction like this so let me know what you think.
The Log Driver's Waltz
By The Log Driver
There was no dance I could not master. Jump, hop, jitter, mash potato, I could even twist. Some say I invented the twist, that Chubby Checker, Dick Clark, and the entirety of the Peppermint Lounge would steal it from the silent moving pictures filmed of me in my youth along the rivers. Whizzing past their eyes like a blur of jack hammer moves with my pole in my hand and moving moving moving. Down the Fraser, up the Thomspon, through the Peace and round about and beyond Hope to the edge of Hell's Gate.
Those bits of film are etched in my memory like those days when I was slow enough to be captured. Those grainy bits of me and other men, hunched men, silently squittering movements of minuets, baltas, charlestons, electric slides, jives, struts, saunters, and waltzes, from log to log from eveery town I cared to set foot on, wherever there was a damn good band that would let me rest my pole and indulge my neverending dance.
Me in my checkered shirt, those men, and the narrow chin, with a rounded nose, jittering along the logs under feet and pole, we would zip off with the final note of the damn good band, and off again onto the river where the dance steps no longer were imprisoned by the music, but became intwined with the movement of the water. All this with only the slightlest flicking of a pointed toe on the white capped current.
I didn't even wear spikes. I did when I began, but eventually they got in the way, interrupted the feel. Feel being crucial to the elegance, the sensation, the coldness of the air and water, the movements of the log, the moves of the body all becoming one in sweet sensation. Like a band. Music. Comics. Pictures and words, music instruments, me and the river water. It was here that the story began in a place called Alexandria Bridge.
There were only two crossings of the Fraser in them days, with in a short span before Spence's Bridge. Alexandria Bridge was one of them, by the failed echoes of Emory Creak that was dying slowly under the waits of its investors expectations, unable to grab hold of the movements that I danced along endlessly, watching as others would cross the bridge and rest, but not me. I had been coming through from Spence's Bridge with my head in the air and watching the traces of the sky that reflected downward in the murkiness of the Fraser. All that dirt and silt flecked off and grasped against my body and the logs that we were driving down to the coast.
The gold mines were fading now and so were the people. The river never died like those buildings that were now beginning to fade like a an evaporating stream in the blinding thirst of a hot mid summer sun that always threatened to trap you on a long slow dance through the back hedges and brooks on nothing more than a branch. Sometimes you would lose the twig and launch about into the mud of the shore and keep moving like a cannon as I would launch again into a dance on land.
Ever since I was a child I had wanted to dance. I was about five in my earliest memory. A waltz leaked out of the Church by the river in my hometown. It was all violins and horns in a sort of jazz that came before jazz, and a kind of rock and roll before rock and roll. There was a drum going 1,2,3 in the three three time, and it rolled along the current of the river in the hometown I now forget and have long forgotten the name of. My feet began moving 1,2,3. 1,2,3. 1,2,3. 1,2,3, swaying in time and instantly at five years old and my feet suddenly found themselves not only dancing, but were rolling out onto the river. I was in Yale before I dared to look up, and the pleasure took over for real as the old trance faded and I knew it where the rapids curved from the Thompson River, and broke about like the Nikomekl does before it buckles towards the coast. It was shooting white water into the Fraser that replied with the shooting of its mirkiness . I didn't stop dancing forward just as I did now as I danced forwards off the tip of the log that sank beneath the rapids like a stone and the air hit me in the face as I toed the protruding shore.
I laid my pole on the ground as I spun around, kicking my feet about as I removed the extension of own arm down to the ground. The outcropping of ground lapped by the Fraser without stopping and without skipping a beat. It was like a metronome keeping time for the band that was yet to play, yet to launch as I slid into more turns, more spins, and more toeing of the grass, the rocks, and the pavement that slathered about on the ground that now held my feet.
Coming into my ear was the sounds I knew I could hear from kilometres down the river; the sound of a band tearing up into the waltz and shaking the foundation of an old run down hall in a run down town. I think this was Yale. I think this was along the Fraser. I frequently lost track of these things, but didn't care anymore as I probably once used to. There were too many towns dying now. Just as this one was and when the hall with the echoing sounds of the band's dirge came into view it too was sagging from the weight of the waning ways of the gold rush that was now giving way to new commerce. New modes, and still it would be the river. Always the river that it seranaded and it was favourite god damn song.
Soon all that would be left was me dancing, me moving, me heading to a new scene to a new river, and a new cacophony of noise that would become a new style. A new rag time or sloppy blues that would pass by over the decay that was now all around me. This town and this hall were sagging and were soon to nothing more than a scrape. But in the now was the sound. In the now were my feet and despite being everywhere and anywhere there was no time and reason because where I wantd to be was here. Sliding in the old 1-2-3 towards the waltz that was slamming about every pore, every nook and cranny of this place and this hall where everyone was gonna be and had to be. I couldn't wait to be in it, and couldn't wait for it to hit me square in the face as I made way without losing a drop of time towards the enterance. THIS BAND WAS AWESOME.
“Have you met Tom Stevenson, Clarice?” her father guffawed and wheezed as he directed her towards a thing suited cartoonish man who smiled with a faint whistle from his oversized front teeth.
She was almost blinded by the whiteness of those choppers like two big ivory polished piano keys that were stapled into his mouth.
“”How do you do,” she said with a faint nod of her, “My name is Clarice Parker.”
Clarice turned to look back at her father who kept his hands at his side like a proud sentry.
“Would you mind a dance?” Tom Stevenson, the numer two merchant in town behind Phillip Paulsley who was watching from across the dimly lit hall, but was busy pretending to talk with Clarice's mother.
“She's a beautiful girl. Poised and honourable. We are really ever so proud,” Clarice's mother babbled, her stout bulbous figure barely containing itself.
Mrs. Parker's lips however could not help but smack louldy as they sone like dusty grapes in and about the candle light that was now being ever so increased in about the building as it was growing ever darker.
“One day we will have electricity piping in here,” spoke Daniek Fenton, the vice chair of the town booster committee, “we will be the provincial capital.”
There were banners about all in black and white, the only paints in the town, on giant pieces of blankets proclaiming the glory of the little dying town in giant optimist letters like a screaming cow about to crushed into meat.
Below one of those banners was a classmate of Clarice's named Elly who was all in curls and was studying Clarice carefully. She knew Clarice could see her curls and was deeply envious of the way she had it up because she had given her that look while she danced with Tom Stevenson the number two merchant in all of town behind Phillip Paulsley who had escaped Clarice's mother, swerved past Clarice's father and now was trying to chat up Elly, who was being prodded by her parents.
“He wants to dance with you, Elly, you should dance with Mr. Paulsley, and then maybe one of the doctors or that lawyer, Mr. Kent,” her thin rake of a mother hissed at her.
“I don't want to dance with him mom,” she said through smiling lips and she gave a nod to Mr. Paulsley who backed up a bit fidgetting.
Mr. Paulsley retreated towards Elly's father and with his cap in hand like a begger rather than the top merchant in town, and he began to strike up conversation with the man.
“The weather sure has been good. Got a large shipment going in and out. Good prices. Good prices. This town is really coming around. Money to be made. Home steaders should be coming in. Cattle business and livestock,” spoke Mr. Paulsley, the words rolling off his tongue to Elly's father who nodded approvingly.
“My feet are still soar from him and that lawyer stamping on them and nearing twisting my ankle last week at the Green Grass,” Elly moaned without breaking her smile.
“Don't dishonour me and your father,” hissed her mother coldly, “these are your opportunities!”
Elly's mother itched at her wedding ring that flopped about on her bony fingers, which she always did when she said those exact lines. Elly of course always noticed this and it made her itch in and around the tight neckline of her blouse.
On the dance floor Clarice suddenly fell awkwardly as Tom Stevenson coiled his cumbersome legs about her, sending her sprawling with a muffled scream to the floor causing Doctor Reinhardt to blaze in with his feather duster mustache flared over his mouth, not passing up on the chance to get his hands on Clarice's now twisted leg.
Tom Stevenson, his pride wounded stood watching behind the doctor's back with his arm outstetched as if he wanted to offer a hand but could not find the words to speak. His thoughts instead turned to the shipment of soap that he knew was coming in by the ferry in the morning.
The rest of the hall all began milling about as if they were concerned for the poor Clarice who was hardly injured and was frowning a bored expression that made Elly smirk and hum to herself. Before she knew it words came to her lips and the band heard her and they played in time. It was like an explosion that only a log driver could dare to dream of.
I burst in with my feet still moving, my eyes wide, and that song that was now coming from the band and the lips of a girl who was all in curls and it was just what I needed. I could see her singing and in my arms as we raced down the long rivers and streams on one log together at the speed of sound and light all at once. Singing that song. I am the log driver.
I grabbed her in my arms not asking her name and not wanting to hear it and she kept singing. We went down and down and along white waters, we were waltzing here in this tired little town, in this tired little hall but with a rocking band that we rocked to in the that three step time. 1,2,3. 1,2,3. 1,2,3. Over and over and over the bodies of her angry parents who wanted her to dance with the merchants and lawyers who wanted her to marry them and flick their itchy wedding fingers in anxiety every time they spoke to her about the goodness of the men that twisted Clarice's ankle.
They lept over Clarice who smiled and joined them. Singing in the song that pushed aside the doctor and pushed aside Tom Stevenson and Phillip Paulsley and those angry parents.
There would definitely be a meeting of the morality committee in the rickety Church this Sunday.
“Our youth are going to the devil by that waltzing theiving bop!” screamed the preecher.
“They have hynotized us with their rhythms and their feet that tempts us to sin. To lewdly move our bodies in that satanic fashion that brings us to a lower, baseless, Godlessness that jeopardizes the very existance of this holy community,” screamed the priest.
“And singing with abandon, is hardly the place of a proper woman who does not want to bring herself into the repute of a harlot,” screamed the nun.
They all stood about at the front of the Church at the meeting of the holy morals, which Elly was made to sit at the front of like a defendent in a trial.
She could smell the sweat pouring around their shouting lips, see their unblinking eyes popping out of their skulls like giant gobstoppers she was sometimes given as a treat when she was little at the general store that Mr Phillip Paulsley ran, and who was sitting three rows behind her and nodding approvingly at the fire and brimstone that was being tossed about like aimless music.
“We must protect our youth from the influence of these transient devils going town to town on their logging roots, hynotizing our youth with their dangerous rebellion that threatens the stability of this beautiful little town,” hissed the mayor.
A poster reading LOG DRIVERS FORBIDDEN was plastered about by the river and all dances soon came to stop. No more bands. No more singing. Just the quiet mundane life of nothing to do in a town that was doomed to wash back into the river that it now looked at with scorn.
Weeks became months and Elly found herself staring out at the vastness of the river, wondering where he was, that log driver, who had gone down and long white waters and over top of the foolish Tom Stevenson and the ridiculous Phillip Paulsley.
“That is where he learned to step lightly,” she smiled to herself, “along those long ever flowing rivers that stretch on as far as I can see.”
She remembered being little and making sail boats with Clarice and they would race them down the river and how they would always eventually disappear and how they never knew who won. They used to argue endlessly that their's was the fastest that their's was the quickest even though the river went further on than they could see, they had won.
“I wonder where it goes,” she hummed to herself, “I wonder where it goes.”
The next day in the twilight of the evening Elly wandered down to the river bank with a boat in her hand that she plunked down in the river. She gave it a small push as it sailed down into the currents and down into the white capped rushing noise that filled her ears. She couldn't remember the river ever being this loud, ever being so much like a band playing their instruments all at once.
The band that had been the toast of the town had left the day after the last dance thanking her for her voice, for her dancing.
“Like an angel,” the saxophonist said, which drew a slap on the back from the banjo player who ushered him on over to the river where thy climbed aboard the ferry that brought in Tom Stevenson's soap order, which he was to ship back upstream in a few days to a merchant in another town that would be dead by the time the soap would arrive and he would lose a sizeable sum.
Elly watched now as her little sailboat that she had made out of twigs and bit of the LOG DRIVERS FORBIDDEN sign that she had torn down with zeal. She had folded it and molded it in the way she had done as a little girl with scraped knees and Clarice ,whom was playing up her twisted ankle about town the past week.
She was doing that just now in Tom Stevenson's store. Her leg was wrapped in tight bandages that bulged about over her stockings, and she was propped up a pair of wooden crutches that her father had hastily made her in order to “keep her mobile.”
“I never knew Elly could be so disgraceful,” she said to Tom Stevenson who ws fidgetting over his lost soap order in his store, “I've known her all my life and didn't think she would turn out so improper.”
Tom Stevenson smiled faintly and scratched about on his note pad trying to figure out some way he was going to possibly collect. His eys kept darting back and forth to Clarice's ankle from the notepad he was busily scratching out notes, plans, directives, and the fragments of a note to Mr. Kent, his lawyer and advisor in hopes of getting some sort of collection on the loss of the soap.
Back by the river, the sailboat slowly sailed out of distance and Elly wrapped her arms around herself. Remembering the touch of the log driver and the movements of his feet that she could feel as if they were a part of her own body.
“Synchronicity,” sh sighed as the boat slipped out of her sight, bobbing up and down in the beat of the river.
I keep that sail boat with me as I move faster than sight now. Up and down the rivers and in and through halls and in and around the sick, flared out grooves of every band, singer, and musician, and down the rivers of the entire world. I dance with people who don't know I am dancing with them. I danced with myself n lonely corners and rooms, bars, pubs, underground gatherings, and sock hops. They are just logs for my feet to glide up and down those rivers that I now drive alone.
I still wear the same clothes as they caught me in for that moving picture film; that flannel plaid shirt and a toque that droops down to eyebrows. The only difference was now I hug that sail boat that Elly made against my very soul.
It makes me go faster. It makes me want to be a song that came from her mouth and deep from with in her throat on the last dance in that little bull shit town on that day that was god knows how many years ago. It still echoes about me, that Log Driver's waltz, that only that sail boat keeps me from fully exploding into a hail of disconnected atoms.
I had gone back to that town the moment I had found that little boat and appeared like a spirit from under a rock where only Elly could see me. We danced again, and again I heard her sing and the way she held me I knew she too was going to be climbing onto the river just as I had done when I was five years old and had never looked back.
There was screaming all around us as Clarice had alerted the whole town. People came storming out with pitch foks to stop the devil that had shown up again on their shores. We ducked and weaved around them, still in our waltz time of three and three. Their swings of weaponry only flashed by us, deflecting off the air and smiles that tore holes in their battle.
“She has gone to the dogs,” Elly's mother grunted, clenching her fist.
We moved back to the hall and onto the same floor as where we had first began this movement, and I managed a half bow as I could hear the sounds of the river now calling me back. The sounds of another band down the long water way now calling me to some place else that I had to be, that I had to check out. I dropped her arms, and kept spinning and laughed as she too kept weaving, spinning, and singing louder and louder filling up the entire hall with her voice.
Outside the rest of the town was now trying to encircle us to close us in, but they could not stop us. Those fools could only watch. We were already gone from them.
“Never stop singing,” I told her.
“Never stop dancing,” she said, but I was already gone, merging with the light and her voice singing and laughing and launching grenades and explosives in and about Tom Stevenson, Phillip Paulsley, and that muffle duster doctor who had gleefully touched Clarice's twisted leg.
The Log Driver's Waltz
By The Log Driver
There was no dance I could not master. Jump, hop, jitter, mash potato, I could even twist. Some say I invented the twist, that Chubby Checker, Dick Clark, and the entirety of the Peppermint Lounge would steal it from the silent moving pictures filmed of me in my youth along the rivers. Whizzing past their eyes like a blur of jack hammer moves with my pole in my hand and moving moving moving. Down the Fraser, up the Thomspon, through the Peace and round about and beyond Hope to the edge of Hell's Gate.
Those bits of film are etched in my memory like those days when I was slow enough to be captured. Those grainy bits of me and other men, hunched men, silently squittering movements of minuets, baltas, charlestons, electric slides, jives, struts, saunters, and waltzes, from log to log from eveery town I cared to set foot on, wherever there was a damn good band that would let me rest my pole and indulge my neverending dance.
Me in my checkered shirt, those men, and the narrow chin, with a rounded nose, jittering along the logs under feet and pole, we would zip off with the final note of the damn good band, and off again onto the river where the dance steps no longer were imprisoned by the music, but became intwined with the movement of the water. All this with only the slightlest flicking of a pointed toe on the white capped current.
I didn't even wear spikes. I did when I began, but eventually they got in the way, interrupted the feel. Feel being crucial to the elegance, the sensation, the coldness of the air and water, the movements of the log, the moves of the body all becoming one in sweet sensation. Like a band. Music. Comics. Pictures and words, music instruments, me and the river water. It was here that the story began in a place called Alexandria Bridge.
There were only two crossings of the Fraser in them days, with in a short span before Spence's Bridge. Alexandria Bridge was one of them, by the failed echoes of Emory Creak that was dying slowly under the waits of its investors expectations, unable to grab hold of the movements that I danced along endlessly, watching as others would cross the bridge and rest, but not me. I had been coming through from Spence's Bridge with my head in the air and watching the traces of the sky that reflected downward in the murkiness of the Fraser. All that dirt and silt flecked off and grasped against my body and the logs that we were driving down to the coast.
The gold mines were fading now and so were the people. The river never died like those buildings that were now beginning to fade like a an evaporating stream in the blinding thirst of a hot mid summer sun that always threatened to trap you on a long slow dance through the back hedges and brooks on nothing more than a branch. Sometimes you would lose the twig and launch about into the mud of the shore and keep moving like a cannon as I would launch again into a dance on land.
Ever since I was a child I had wanted to dance. I was about five in my earliest memory. A waltz leaked out of the Church by the river in my hometown. It was all violins and horns in a sort of jazz that came before jazz, and a kind of rock and roll before rock and roll. There was a drum going 1,2,3 in the three three time, and it rolled along the current of the river in the hometown I now forget and have long forgotten the name of. My feet began moving 1,2,3. 1,2,3. 1,2,3. 1,2,3, swaying in time and instantly at five years old and my feet suddenly found themselves not only dancing, but were rolling out onto the river. I was in Yale before I dared to look up, and the pleasure took over for real as the old trance faded and I knew it where the rapids curved from the Thompson River, and broke about like the Nikomekl does before it buckles towards the coast. It was shooting white water into the Fraser that replied with the shooting of its mirkiness . I didn't stop dancing forward just as I did now as I danced forwards off the tip of the log that sank beneath the rapids like a stone and the air hit me in the face as I toed the protruding shore.
I laid my pole on the ground as I spun around, kicking my feet about as I removed the extension of own arm down to the ground. The outcropping of ground lapped by the Fraser without stopping and without skipping a beat. It was like a metronome keeping time for the band that was yet to play, yet to launch as I slid into more turns, more spins, and more toeing of the grass, the rocks, and the pavement that slathered about on the ground that now held my feet.
Coming into my ear was the sounds I knew I could hear from kilometres down the river; the sound of a band tearing up into the waltz and shaking the foundation of an old run down hall in a run down town. I think this was Yale. I think this was along the Fraser. I frequently lost track of these things, but didn't care anymore as I probably once used to. There were too many towns dying now. Just as this one was and when the hall with the echoing sounds of the band's dirge came into view it too was sagging from the weight of the waning ways of the gold rush that was now giving way to new commerce. New modes, and still it would be the river. Always the river that it seranaded and it was favourite god damn song.
Soon all that would be left was me dancing, me moving, me heading to a new scene to a new river, and a new cacophony of noise that would become a new style. A new rag time or sloppy blues that would pass by over the decay that was now all around me. This town and this hall were sagging and were soon to nothing more than a scrape. But in the now was the sound. In the now were my feet and despite being everywhere and anywhere there was no time and reason because where I wantd to be was here. Sliding in the old 1-2-3 towards the waltz that was slamming about every pore, every nook and cranny of this place and this hall where everyone was gonna be and had to be. I couldn't wait to be in it, and couldn't wait for it to hit me square in the face as I made way without losing a drop of time towards the enterance. THIS BAND WAS AWESOME.
“Have you met Tom Stevenson, Clarice?” her father guffawed and wheezed as he directed her towards a thing suited cartoonish man who smiled with a faint whistle from his oversized front teeth.
She was almost blinded by the whiteness of those choppers like two big ivory polished piano keys that were stapled into his mouth.
“”How do you do,” she said with a faint nod of her, “My name is Clarice Parker.”
Clarice turned to look back at her father who kept his hands at his side like a proud sentry.
“Would you mind a dance?” Tom Stevenson, the numer two merchant in town behind Phillip Paulsley who was watching from across the dimly lit hall, but was busy pretending to talk with Clarice's mother.
“She's a beautiful girl. Poised and honourable. We are really ever so proud,” Clarice's mother babbled, her stout bulbous figure barely containing itself.
Mrs. Parker's lips however could not help but smack louldy as they sone like dusty grapes in and about the candle light that was now being ever so increased in about the building as it was growing ever darker.
“One day we will have electricity piping in here,” spoke Daniek Fenton, the vice chair of the town booster committee, “we will be the provincial capital.”
There were banners about all in black and white, the only paints in the town, on giant pieces of blankets proclaiming the glory of the little dying town in giant optimist letters like a screaming cow about to crushed into meat.
Below one of those banners was a classmate of Clarice's named Elly who was all in curls and was studying Clarice carefully. She knew Clarice could see her curls and was deeply envious of the way she had it up because she had given her that look while she danced with Tom Stevenson the number two merchant in all of town behind Phillip Paulsley who had escaped Clarice's mother, swerved past Clarice's father and now was trying to chat up Elly, who was being prodded by her parents.
“He wants to dance with you, Elly, you should dance with Mr. Paulsley, and then maybe one of the doctors or that lawyer, Mr. Kent,” her thin rake of a mother hissed at her.
“I don't want to dance with him mom,” she said through smiling lips and she gave a nod to Mr. Paulsley who backed up a bit fidgetting.
Mr. Paulsley retreated towards Elly's father and with his cap in hand like a begger rather than the top merchant in town, and he began to strike up conversation with the man.
“The weather sure has been good. Got a large shipment going in and out. Good prices. Good prices. This town is really coming around. Money to be made. Home steaders should be coming in. Cattle business and livestock,” spoke Mr. Paulsley, the words rolling off his tongue to Elly's father who nodded approvingly.
“My feet are still soar from him and that lawyer stamping on them and nearing twisting my ankle last week at the Green Grass,” Elly moaned without breaking her smile.
“Don't dishonour me and your father,” hissed her mother coldly, “these are your opportunities!”
Elly's mother itched at her wedding ring that flopped about on her bony fingers, which she always did when she said those exact lines. Elly of course always noticed this and it made her itch in and around the tight neckline of her blouse.
On the dance floor Clarice suddenly fell awkwardly as Tom Stevenson coiled his cumbersome legs about her, sending her sprawling with a muffled scream to the floor causing Doctor Reinhardt to blaze in with his feather duster mustache flared over his mouth, not passing up on the chance to get his hands on Clarice's now twisted leg.
Tom Stevenson, his pride wounded stood watching behind the doctor's back with his arm outstetched as if he wanted to offer a hand but could not find the words to speak. His thoughts instead turned to the shipment of soap that he knew was coming in by the ferry in the morning.
The rest of the hall all began milling about as if they were concerned for the poor Clarice who was hardly injured and was frowning a bored expression that made Elly smirk and hum to herself. Before she knew it words came to her lips and the band heard her and they played in time. It was like an explosion that only a log driver could dare to dream of.
I burst in with my feet still moving, my eyes wide, and that song that was now coming from the band and the lips of a girl who was all in curls and it was just what I needed. I could see her singing and in my arms as we raced down the long rivers and streams on one log together at the speed of sound and light all at once. Singing that song. I am the log driver.
I grabbed her in my arms not asking her name and not wanting to hear it and she kept singing. We went down and down and along white waters, we were waltzing here in this tired little town, in this tired little hall but with a rocking band that we rocked to in the that three step time. 1,2,3. 1,2,3. 1,2,3. Over and over and over the bodies of her angry parents who wanted her to dance with the merchants and lawyers who wanted her to marry them and flick their itchy wedding fingers in anxiety every time they spoke to her about the goodness of the men that twisted Clarice's ankle.
They lept over Clarice who smiled and joined them. Singing in the song that pushed aside the doctor and pushed aside Tom Stevenson and Phillip Paulsley and those angry parents.
There would definitely be a meeting of the morality committee in the rickety Church this Sunday.
“Our youth are going to the devil by that waltzing theiving bop!” screamed the preecher.
“They have hynotized us with their rhythms and their feet that tempts us to sin. To lewdly move our bodies in that satanic fashion that brings us to a lower, baseless, Godlessness that jeopardizes the very existance of this holy community,” screamed the priest.
“And singing with abandon, is hardly the place of a proper woman who does not want to bring herself into the repute of a harlot,” screamed the nun.
They all stood about at the front of the Church at the meeting of the holy morals, which Elly was made to sit at the front of like a defendent in a trial.
She could smell the sweat pouring around their shouting lips, see their unblinking eyes popping out of their skulls like giant gobstoppers she was sometimes given as a treat when she was little at the general store that Mr Phillip Paulsley ran, and who was sitting three rows behind her and nodding approvingly at the fire and brimstone that was being tossed about like aimless music.
“We must protect our youth from the influence of these transient devils going town to town on their logging roots, hynotizing our youth with their dangerous rebellion that threatens the stability of this beautiful little town,” hissed the mayor.
A poster reading LOG DRIVERS FORBIDDEN was plastered about by the river and all dances soon came to stop. No more bands. No more singing. Just the quiet mundane life of nothing to do in a town that was doomed to wash back into the river that it now looked at with scorn.
Weeks became months and Elly found herself staring out at the vastness of the river, wondering where he was, that log driver, who had gone down and long white waters and over top of the foolish Tom Stevenson and the ridiculous Phillip Paulsley.
“That is where he learned to step lightly,” she smiled to herself, “along those long ever flowing rivers that stretch on as far as I can see.”
She remembered being little and making sail boats with Clarice and they would race them down the river and how they would always eventually disappear and how they never knew who won. They used to argue endlessly that their's was the fastest that their's was the quickest even though the river went further on than they could see, they had won.
“I wonder where it goes,” she hummed to herself, “I wonder where it goes.”
The next day in the twilight of the evening Elly wandered down to the river bank with a boat in her hand that she plunked down in the river. She gave it a small push as it sailed down into the currents and down into the white capped rushing noise that filled her ears. She couldn't remember the river ever being this loud, ever being so much like a band playing their instruments all at once.
The band that had been the toast of the town had left the day after the last dance thanking her for her voice, for her dancing.
“Like an angel,” the saxophonist said, which drew a slap on the back from the banjo player who ushered him on over to the river where thy climbed aboard the ferry that brought in Tom Stevenson's soap order, which he was to ship back upstream in a few days to a merchant in another town that would be dead by the time the soap would arrive and he would lose a sizeable sum.
Elly watched now as her little sailboat that she had made out of twigs and bit of the LOG DRIVERS FORBIDDEN sign that she had torn down with zeal. She had folded it and molded it in the way she had done as a little girl with scraped knees and Clarice ,whom was playing up her twisted ankle about town the past week.
She was doing that just now in Tom Stevenson's store. Her leg was wrapped in tight bandages that bulged about over her stockings, and she was propped up a pair of wooden crutches that her father had hastily made her in order to “keep her mobile.”
“I never knew Elly could be so disgraceful,” she said to Tom Stevenson who ws fidgetting over his lost soap order in his store, “I've known her all my life and didn't think she would turn out so improper.”
Tom Stevenson smiled faintly and scratched about on his note pad trying to figure out some way he was going to possibly collect. His eys kept darting back and forth to Clarice's ankle from the notepad he was busily scratching out notes, plans, directives, and the fragments of a note to Mr. Kent, his lawyer and advisor in hopes of getting some sort of collection on the loss of the soap.
Back by the river, the sailboat slowly sailed out of distance and Elly wrapped her arms around herself. Remembering the touch of the log driver and the movements of his feet that she could feel as if they were a part of her own body.
“Synchronicity,” sh sighed as the boat slipped out of her sight, bobbing up and down in the beat of the river.
I keep that sail boat with me as I move faster than sight now. Up and down the rivers and in and through halls and in and around the sick, flared out grooves of every band, singer, and musician, and down the rivers of the entire world. I dance with people who don't know I am dancing with them. I danced with myself n lonely corners and rooms, bars, pubs, underground gatherings, and sock hops. They are just logs for my feet to glide up and down those rivers that I now drive alone.
I still wear the same clothes as they caught me in for that moving picture film; that flannel plaid shirt and a toque that droops down to eyebrows. The only difference was now I hug that sail boat that Elly made against my very soul.
It makes me go faster. It makes me want to be a song that came from her mouth and deep from with in her throat on the last dance in that little bull shit town on that day that was god knows how many years ago. It still echoes about me, that Log Driver's waltz, that only that sail boat keeps me from fully exploding into a hail of disconnected atoms.
I had gone back to that town the moment I had found that little boat and appeared like a spirit from under a rock where only Elly could see me. We danced again, and again I heard her sing and the way she held me I knew she too was going to be climbing onto the river just as I had done when I was five years old and had never looked back.
There was screaming all around us as Clarice had alerted the whole town. People came storming out with pitch foks to stop the devil that had shown up again on their shores. We ducked and weaved around them, still in our waltz time of three and three. Their swings of weaponry only flashed by us, deflecting off the air and smiles that tore holes in their battle.
“She has gone to the dogs,” Elly's mother grunted, clenching her fist.
We moved back to the hall and onto the same floor as where we had first began this movement, and I managed a half bow as I could hear the sounds of the river now calling me back. The sounds of another band down the long water way now calling me to some place else that I had to be, that I had to check out. I dropped her arms, and kept spinning and laughed as she too kept weaving, spinning, and singing louder and louder filling up the entire hall with her voice.
Outside the rest of the town was now trying to encircle us to close us in, but they could not stop us. Those fools could only watch. We were already gone from them.
“Never stop singing,” I told her.
“Never stop dancing,” she said, but I was already gone, merging with the light and her voice singing and laughing and launching grenades and explosives in and about Tom Stevenson, Phillip Paulsley, and that muffle duster doctor who had gleefully touched Clarice's twisted leg.
Welcome to the Blog!
This blog is all about the greatness that is the Log Driver's Waltz. Just to refresh your memory, it was a short musical piece created by the National Film Board of Canada and aired frequently on CBC during their children's programming blocks. It is still as catchy and awesome today as it was then. Here is the video of it to refresh your memories:
Now that your memory is refreshed, look forward to worshiping of this great piece of Canadiana that is truly burned into our national consciousness!
Now that your memory is refreshed, look forward to worshiping of this great piece of Canadiana that is truly burned into our national consciousness!
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