The Beginning of the Novel Project.

Well my adoring fans, today I've got a special treat for you. It is a selection from an idea for a novel I've been kicking around for a while. Aren't you lucky!!!

It's a fictional tale of Stephen Tacoma "Toc" Gallagher, a young student with a genius IQ from a dysfunctional but wealthy New Jersey family who decides to take his Christmas vacation in Florida instead of with his family. While there, he meets a strange and beautiful girl named Lily, who he has a one night stand with. A few months later a call comes in, Lily's pregnant it seems and is too far along to have a legal abortion, (which doesn't matter since she doesn't have enough money in the first place.) Unfortunately, Toc's family has all but cut him off for skipping Christmas with them so he goes back down to visit Lily, who has been trying to kill her unborn baby with Vodka, X-Rays, and vacuum cleaners. On the way down, Toc hears of a doctor in Canada who will perform late term abortions, but for a hefty price. So Toc and Lily take off to San Francisco to buy some pot to pay for their illegal abortion. On the way, Lily reveals that she is actually a Mermaid, and was cursed on her 20th birthday to walk the earth until she had a human born child, who she would take back into the ocean and rule the seas together, fulfilling an ancient prophecy. Unfortunately Lily does not want to go back to the ocean, having become addicted to cigarettes, and daytime TV. Toc is skeptical of course but finds that when she jumps into the ocean she indeed does turn into a mermaid, though in form only, for she is still dependent on air, cigarettes, and daytime TV. But there are darker, more sinister forces afoot, for unbeknownst to the two travelers their quest to kill their unborn child carries repercussions far greater than they could have ever imagined.

Get the picture? So this scene takes place on their way to San Francisco to buy the pot. This, like a lot of the story, involves them waxing philosophic about things and ideas that are largely inconsequential to the greater narrative. Anyway, enough chatter, here's the story

Driving the PCH

Perhaps it was some higher power, some enthroned deity who had at the wave of a hand shaped the mountains and fields as a testament to his benevolence. It certainly was picturesque, a 360 degree panorama of floral decadence that was inviting to the point of becoming imposing. The dandelions and wild vegetation formed in a yellow-green mass that carpeted the rolling hills before stopping reverently at the base of the Anges. The rich mane of grass and flower bobbed slightly in the breeze from the adjacent ocean. Clouds, like ghostly manatees, hovered over frozen mountain tips, throwing abstract shadows on the grass canvas below. It was as though the entire continent had been shaken and its treasures trapped amongst the mountains of the Pacific coast. With one hand on the wheel Toc took a bite from his bacon-cheddar-ranch burger.

“I don’t know about you,” he said to no one in particular “but I’m starting to get sick and tired of all this beauty.”

“What are you talking about," said Lily, putting down the camera, "we’ve been on the PCH for all of 15 minutes.”

“Well,” Toc said with a mischievous grin, “you don’t exactly need a PhD to see my ADD is killing the PCH for me.

“Oh that’s lovely.” She replied, rolling her eyes and resting her hand on her chin.

"You see, the MP3's on MTV rocked the ADD out of my HMO"

"Why do you keep talking?"

"Why aren't you down with OPP?"

She glared at Toc behind two slits. "…I hate you."

For a second they remained silent in mock contempt until Lily ventured her big, beautiful eyes from the window to Toc, letting a smile escape her naturally crimson lips. He couldn’t help but return what turned out to be more of a smirk than a smile.

"I’m serious though,” Toc continued, “all this beauty could really start to get on your nerves.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, let’s say, for example, I decide to move out here, and every day I have to drive to the top of that mountain,”

“Which one, that one?” she said pointing.

“No not that one, that one, over there.”

“That one?”

“No not- look it doesn’t matter. So every day I need to drive to the top of ah mountain.”

“Why would you need to do that?”

“I don’t know, maybe I have a weather satellite up there, maybe I get fellatio there on the regular, but every day, I’d have to drive up this beautiful mountain road, past the flowers and such and every day, I'd be expected to think ‘Gee look at all this natural beauty, isn't life grand?’”

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, wouldn't it eventually start to get old? Every day I'd be driving up this mountain and eventually I'd get used to seeing all this natural beauty and it would lose its novelty and just become commonplace. Every day it would be, wake up, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, then get in my car and drive up Mount Beautiful. Every-single-day, getting up and diving 5,000 feet up the slope of Mount Beautiful. Well, eventually Mount Beautiful would just be Mount Whatever, and the whole time I'd have people telling me, 'Wow, you live on Mount Beautiful? That must be awesome, being around all that natural beauty every day.' And I'd feel like shit because the whole time I'd be thinking to myself 'You have no idea what it's like to have to drive up that fucking mountain every morning.'"

“How do you know it will get old? I spent my whole life in the most desolate part of the ocean but every time I ventured to outskirts of the city and looked out into the vacuous space I felt dwarfed by it's size. Even now, looking at the coastline brings me back to that feeling.”

“That's just nostalgia. It’s not like you’re having some totally new experience of the

ocean, you’ve seen it too many times. You’re just revisiting something that’s familiar and that produces a pleasant response.”

“Well the pleasant response would certainly be a totally new experience since being in the car with you is becoming insufferable.”

"I'm not trying to...gah, ok, let me explain this a different way... There are only two reasons you think this drive is beautiful: one, because it fulfills a certain number of beautiful aesthetics and two, because it’s new. I mean, you've got the ocean, the mountains, the flowers, it's every single Window's default wallpaper rolled into one. And since were driving, it's always changing, every few minutes you get a new view. But once it looses that novelty, all you have is the aesthetic. As soon as you become familiar with that aesthetic, it’s only beautiful in relationship to that first experience of it. “

“So you’re saying there is no way to continually find novelty in multiple experiences of the same aesthetic?”

“Yes because the aesthetic hasn't changed, you have. After you've had that initial experience, any novelty you’re experiencing in later ones is either nostalgia or a reflection of self change. The only novelty that exists exists inside you, not in the aesthetic being observed.

“Well, there are always subtle degrees of change in each observation. Every time I look at the ocean there's always something different about it, minute though it may be."

"Ok, but how about the moon? It continues to inspire people but any changes on the moon itself would be indiscernible to someone on earth."

"Ok, but there's still a major hole in your argument. Why can’t feelings of nostalgia and revelations of self change be beautiful? Why is this beautiful status only ascribed to the original experience? When you first experience something, it becomes a memory, just as each subsequent experience of the same thing becomes a memory. Whats more beautiful than having memories that you can revisit and love as many times as you want? Memories are who we are, they're all we have. If we spend all our time focusing on our first experiences of something wheres the opportunity for personal growth? The more strive to expereince life with fresh eyes, the closer we get to understanding the true nature of the universe and ourselves."

"Oh, and I take it you’re the type of person that ascribes to all that truth is beauty garbage, right? Bullshit. See, if truth is beauty, that implies that there’s some fundamental order to everything and that each time we cut through our own subjective bullshit and catch a glimpse of that order we have a quote ‘beautiful

moment’ end quote. But even if the most infinite secrets of the cosmos were opened up to you in some

divine moment of revelation, the only person having that revelation is you, the ideas and laws that govern the universe will still be coming to rest in the gray matter inside your skull. There's no way for us to really know if what’s true for us is true for everyone. Therefore that which we call beauty is just novelty. It’s just something, be it as banal as a shiny piece of tin foil to the elaborate social apparatuses that govern the way we interact with others, that distracts us from the fact that we’re all basically alone.”

There was a moment of silence. Lily looked down so her bangs obscured her face while Toc chewed on his lip intently. Outside the window, the world rushed by, bisected by asphalt cutting all the way to the top of the next hill where it vanished into blue sky. After a few seconds, Toc, became aware of the half eaten burger still in his hand.

“And why do they have to say ‘Truth is beauty, beauty truth.’" he said through a mouthful, "No shit Sherlock, if it goes one way it goes the other, that's the way synonyms work."

"Toc-"

"No, it's insulting to my intelligence. I don't know who the hell Keats thinks he is bu-"

"Toc!" she shouted pointing at the road

As the car zipped down the highway at 80 mph, a shadowed figure had congealed from the sweltering air above the pavement a few feel in front of the car. Dropping his burger, Toc grabbed the wheel and swerved violently to the left as it scampered into the undergrowth. With a lurch that almost took two of the wheels off the ground the car jumped back to the right, pin-balling between the two sides of the road before sliding off into a patch of wildflowers and clover in the median.

The dust settled in a thin layer on the windshield, darkening the inside of the car.
“Ohmygodohmygodohomygod!” Lily continued in a steady mantra.

Toc's hands were still firmly attached to the wheel.

She was silent for a second, giving the tears enough time to well up behind her eyes before erupting in a final “Oh my gawd!”

Again, Toc sat and watched as The Mermaid sobbed endlessly into her bosom. He opened his mouth to say something, but instead opened the car door and went outside to asses the damage.

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Well, that's all folks! Hope you liked what you read. Please make suggestions, particularly about parts where you felt bored or lost. I realize a lot of this is fairly convoluted and confusing but once I write some more I think it'll be a little clearer.

On a final note, I'd like to briefly comment on the recent BP oil spill, specifically to express my frustration that the moratorium on off-shore drilling was shot down by congress. Also, I don't know why Mayor Jindal thinks that shutting down drilling is going to hurt the oil production business when those rigs AREN'T PRODUCING OIL, or why he keeps calling for federal aid when he has literally thousands of National Guardsmen at his disposal that he is just sitting on. You know what, fuck the oil companies, if their supply goes down it's not going to affect the demand for oil so how exactly is stopping drilling while we clean up this mess going to sink the oil business? If we have another disaster like this, there will be ZERO resources to control it and we will all be in very, very deep shit. The only drilling that should be going on is for the relief valves around the leak.

Look at this. LOOK AT IT!

To end on a positive note, at least BP was diligent in it's plan to evacuate walruses from the Gulf.

And to you, the reader, remember to always stay classy.