A Thesis

Part 1
It’s a hot summer Connecticut day, one of my best friends is about to leave for college. As he gets up to go home and finish his packing he leaves me with a small raspberry tart. This almost depressingly small assortment of dreary molecules is our final goodbye until December. We had been ingesting drugs casually all year so I had an idea of what was actually in my palm; flour, eggs, granola, raspberry jam and butter where the main ingredients. Through careful preparation and a treacherous cooling process this tart had made its way, in a carriage of golden foil to my palm and by now it was dissolving in my stomach acids.
I imagined that it was going to get rather interesting; Because I was alone at Starbucks and didn’t feel like company I ventured to make the whole experience a throwback to Aldus Huxley’s essay, The Doors of Perception. It was going to be a classic affirmation of reality and how truly weird it could be. I tried to get a grip of myself in preparation for my journey. I made mental notes of my surroundings, shiny table, coffee cup, red chair, coffee machines, good I thought I’m maintaining and prepared for anything.
Suddenly, through my tunnel vision, I examined the table in front of me. Could the presents of a junkie account for the mountains and cannels of sugar on the table, the magnificent log cabin made of tooth picks. Why, I must find this architect, this man is genius. Upon standing it occurred to me that my knees where elsewhere, enjoying themselves.
“Give them a break,” I thought “they’ll need all the rest they can get before football starts.”
Sitting back down I noticed the glass like sugar hills and confectionary ravines, the Taj Mahal had been rebuilt! Directly in front of me, the genius who made it did not endeavor to construct his master piece with countless expendable slaves, but he made it out of tooth picks. I must shake his hand, I must. I stood up and looked around, took a step and realized that my coat was wrapped around itself, crouching on the ground, mocking me.
I sat down again to put it back on but something caught my eye. A glass mesa, oh the Hopi Indians would be jealous. Sugar had built up over millennia to form these complex geological phenomena, and all on my table…
Then the sun set with alarming alacrity, orange light replaced the yellow, and red light soon usurped the imposter orange. And I was caught, staring out at the sun reflecting off the shiny new coffee machines, I was in an amber amethyst rock, waiting to be discovered by some strange future archeologist to be studied and put in a museum. My phone went off; I looked at the name, Roy. Hmmmm, I suppose this is as good a name of an archeologist that I will find tonight.

Part 2
He picked me up and Death smiled. We went to his house, we laid plans for the taxi cab of night. It was to be a long night, several houses would not escape our grasp alive. We would land in a fiery crash sliding from the last party to his house to recover our dead from the surrounding hills. He handed me a beer and I woke up on Sunday.

Part 3
Somebody seemed to have drawn a mighty phallic symbol of some sort on my entire arm. Hmmmn, a little soap …and… there we go, its gone. Wait what’s all the burning in my hand and shoulder. Some kind of bite or burn. Burn. Definitely a burn. Cigarette by the smell. Christ the smell. Tobacco and flesh are never a good combination for 5 fried senses to deal with. We indolently walked up the street to a quick breakfast in a sunny outdoor café/deli/gas station. Wiping crumbs from my crumpled shirt I squint into the distance. I realized that the sun was unbearable to my skin, and spying the library across the street I realized that knowledge is power and power is energy and energy is matter and matter has mass. So I began to realize that books have a certain mass and a certain energy to them that seemed wildly appealing at that moment. So I walked in, and felt the stares of the crisp awake bored librarians bore into me like truth seeking moles. They knew something. Upon realizing the absurdity of the paranoia towards the librarians I walked right up to them and I asked them what’s good in the same voice I just ordered an omelet in. They looked up at the greasy, crazy eyed, slack jawed youth asking them for service, and they answered some bullshit mom and pop mystery book. I asked for something deeper in the tone of voice that suggested violence. My vibrations where getting dangerous, but who could blame me. I had been having flawless days of late and these swine where trying to shoo me away with their pig shit. Ray is next to me, radiating helpfulness as people with drugs to hide so often do. Disgusted for no good reason I stalked through the forest of tall books from small trees. Imagining myself in Vietnam or Korea or any place where men distilled their fear and fired at tiny Asians. I crept through the shelves looking for G. G for Ginsberg. I had a book I needed and no money to get it. Without admitting to stealing I felt as though my future taxes would pay for this book of the modern bop apocalypse and if I needed a copy I had the right to steal one. I wasn’t stealing any best sellers, even in its prime Howl was only for the mad. The mad are the only ones who understand it. Intellectuals who act as though their bodies are mere holding cells for their brains tear into it because of its wild aberrance to their laws of poetry. Ginsberg had no pretty speech to make. He had a howl and in humorless protest he upturned an entire civilization with his friends. That’s all I have to say about that.
God damn that fucking Dewey and his rusty shitty decimal system, I thought, Why the fuck cant we just have 26 letters and organize it like that. Fuck this, im pissed its about 1000 degrees outside and under my hat. This is going to get bad before the tiniest rays of light pierce the canopy and nourish my fetal superego. Someone needs to die. On the way home Roy and I convince ourselves like wild hyenas held by there tails that we had to do anything. This took form in vandalism and seeing how far we could fuck with cops till we had to run. Firing my salvoes of orange hate at police cars and mailboxes cools me off by making me sweat. Roy wants to stop and I want to go home.
Part 4
My dog barks in what seems like a slow southern drawl, causing stir amongst the natives and a vicious set of giggles from Roy, the terrible kind that strike you at a funeral when you think of something funny from yesterday. The dog is greeting us properly as we drag ourselves gingerly, high, across the bruised earth. My lawn is laid open with the we sores of a heavy rain, picked at by animals and machines. The dirt is visible beneath the grass. Roy says that we should hang in the basement. Yes the basement, that is where the rest of this day should lonely die.
Upon reaching the cool dark basement, with its strange old rugs that cover the decay that wrecks the entire house, we put on a record. Me and Roy scream with terror and joy at the awakening sound of the opening tones. The song begs us to let go, give up the grudge; in no uncertain terms, no Jack Johnson Dispatch shit, pure energy and art. Roy laughs staring at my hand and palms me something.
Part 5
Christ what did I just eat.
Then a voice struck into my head with cold sudden fury
Crying whispers of bronze and silk
Life is but a dream.
Echo
My love
Echo
My dream.
Reflect
Blossom, cringe
I opened my third eye and blinked running out of the womb.
My dreams are wild and warm,
Falling though glass tables of dogma
Into an ocean of attainable light.
Part 6
Everything that I tell you is true, so imagine my surprise when I open my eyes and realize that I have been talking to you. I’ve told you everything, even the parts I meant to leave out. I shake my hair and I look about. The wild dogs of summer are hungry, they howl in a sharp primeval bark. The dark mountains are Buddha’s brooding in constant prayer over our worries in their kind valleys. The mountains looming to the west of us come down to meet the rising shores of the east. Roy had left sometime during the night going to Bristol his note reads. Well this just leaves sleep and the message to end this part of the story.
Hi deedle dee dee, goddamn the pirates life for me.
I hope any passable god blesses us, the pigs that ran strait away into the water, and their great triumph.
With heretic pride I present this piece.




Thanks:
Hunter s. Thompson for inspiration and the bountiful and shameless plunder his thoughts and stories have brought me
The Mountain Goats for the gift of language, just about all of part 6. I hope my blatant plagiarism will be accepted with humor.
My Friends, don’t worry, in heaven we will have fun and many scores will be settled
To Ginsberg the truest Buddha of time

I'm pretty confused with this. Are the seperate "parts" a series of letters or diary entries the protagonist is writing? I really enjoyed the first part, but from there it got more and more confusing and random.

The first paragraph of Part 3 was too long-it needs to be split up into smaller paragraphs. The second paragraph has so many swear words over a completely minor thing; this makes it seem unprofessional, and it makes the protagonist sound like a depressing loser. That paragraph also was unrelated to the others.

The plot needs more definition-it needs to be going somewhere, shaping and developing the story. At the moment, you've got bits and pieces floating all over the place and as such it doesn't make much sense. I will say that the bits and pieces do have some interesting ideas (the whole 'knowledge is power...' thing.

I'm sorry if that was harsh. I didn't understand a lot of it after the first or second part and I have no idea where the plot's going. It could be a collection of random musings (like a diary) and work very well that way, but it needs to be better organised. I liked the poem in Part 5.

Thankee very kindly, all of your criticism is grokked and will be implemented soon.

Okay! So even before I read the part with Ginsberg mentioned, I realized that you really really liked Ginsberg. Why? Because you were trying to imitate his style. I think this imitation was unintentional, but it really doesn't feel right to me, like you're hiding away from your true style. It feels forced and unnatural and that makes this bit of prose awful.

One of the things that makes it feel forced is that you seem to "lie" about what's really going on. One of the lovely things about Ginsberg is his imagery is so vivid. Ginsberg is never vague, as far as word choice. When he wants to say something, he says it. It may make you cringe and flail around, but that's the whole point.

With that said, when you deal with drug abuse, don't beat around the bush so that it becomes incomprehensible. Be honest. That doesn't mean that you have to tell the reader everything, simply that you must be clear. Don't say, "This almost depressingly small assortment of dreary molecules is our final goodbye until December." It's burdensome and worst yet, it fails to express any details of who this person is, so our picture of him is murky and incoherent. To a certain extent, being murky is not bad, but you have too many loose ends to make us appreciate the murky parts. After all, one only appreciates the depth of the ocean after looking into a clear patch, undisturbed by waves.

Speaking of loose ends, you have all these bits of conflict everywhere, but nothing happens. They only exist once and then they are gone. They don't seem real. And by not real, I don't mean surreal. I mean fake, as if the conflict never existed, either in the mind of the narrator or in his surrounding worlds, wherever they are. After reading this, there is no knowledge of who this person is or who he can be. To us, he might as well be a ghost, an intangible fragment that may or may not exist. After all, if conflicts form a man, then if there are no conflicts, he is shapeless man.

Make the conflict real. Be clear and concise about what you want to say, otherwise you will get trapped in your words and be unsure of what you're really saying. And make the conflict real. Only with conflict does the mind begin to understand the exact meaning of things. And only then does true prophecy ever occur.