Midnight Warrior

Have you ever been afraid to go to sleep for the chance that you might wake up a bit more stupid? Maybe I drink too much, or maybe I talk too much, or maybe I think too much. I have it in my head that I am a very smart person, but for the life of me, I can't seem to remember why. I go to bed sure that I have discerned the best way to keep paper from becoming obsolete in the digital future, and I wake up only remembering how great it felt to be flying in my dreams.

Most recently, I have been hypnagogically imbued with superpowers (or imbued with hypnagogic superpowers depending on how you look at it). Firstly, as I recently found out, it's the Prozac. Apparently my therapist forgot to warn me that head meds encourage extremely adventurous and vivid dreams. I have suddenly become a nocturnal warrior, righteous to the core. Evildoers, beware! Nene Leakes, who when the sun is up is one of my heroes, once tried to put a hit out on me via drive-by shooting. I survived, but I called that bitch up and we had a conversation.

N: "Hello?"

B: "Oh haaay Nene, what's up girl? How are you?"

N: "You know, I'm doin' reall good--"

B: "Well that's nice. Now what in the FUCK do you think you're doing? You missed, bitch, and I know it was you. If I ever, and I mean EVER see you out again, I will rip your twat off. I will literally, with my bare hands, grab your vagina and rip it off."

Around this time I start to wake up and realize that I am speaking these words out loud, successfully freaking the shit out of the scantily-clad person in bed with me. When the door closes, I am confident that I will never see that face in my bedroom again. Another one bites the dust. Le sigh.

But all Prozac dreams are not bad. The aforementioned confrontation with Nene left me well-rested and void of the tiny smidge of aggression that had been hiding out between two vertebrae in my neck. As always, Nene knew just what I Neneeded.

To clarify

To clarify, I'm going to start writing again. If you couldn't tell by the ominous tone in the previous post, I have begun seeing a therapist (yay!), and let me tell you, head meds are the best. But I'm past the point of woe-is-me and more into the let's-expand-our-minds-and-pretend-that-half-of-what-I-say-wasn't-induced-by-weed. I think therapy is wonderful. I think more people should try it. I think it is not something to do only when one is in crisis, but rather can be useful to anyone at any time. So, yeah. I'm back. Or still here, however you look at it.

Dedication to an Unwritten First Novel

To be a writer, one must keep a journal. This book is dedicated to Sylvia Plath and any other writer who went bat-shit crazy for their craft. This book is dedicated to Dr. Dosanjh and Travis Brown who walked me through hundreds of mind-fucks and kept me from going bat-shit crazy. This book is dedicated to itself for revealing itself to me.

To be a writer, one must keep a journal. At first, everything seems sporadic and disjointed, as if you were being born and seeing the world for the first time. Everything is a first impression: a doctor's face, a random tirade, a slap on the ass, a love letter. After some time, it all starts to fit together and progressively makes more sense. Words take on meaning and evolve into sentences; entries begin to lead to subsequent entries. A book is a life; living; alive.

Perhaps this is how a parent sees a child. How much that child develops and grows and learns is or seems directly connected to the parent. Direct responsibility. But that is never the case. The child starts growing on its own, learning from its peers. That is why to be a good parent, an author must continue reading new books. A child bumps into walls, falls off coffee tables, and swallows half of a mozzarella stick while the other half is still connected to the outer world by a white, gooey string. Books also have their own injuries and their own amazing victories, and they learn from all of it. What results is a combination of expectancy and surprise -- expectancy from what you taught and surprise from what it learned, and it is absolutely beautiful.

Perhaps this is why they say that being a parent changes your life. You end up learning much more about yourself than you ever imagined.

This book is dedicated to my parents.

-Benton Thomas Ferguson

Only one day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorations are everywhere

A man walks in. Scratch that -- a McKibbin Male walks in. Bless the hippies and their gender bending, but this specimen is a horse of a different color and a mixed metaphor all wrapped up in one. He walks in with nice boots, topped by bright red skinny jeans and a faux-fur (I assume) vest, underneath which I soon realize lies the rest of his pant-suit: a very form fitting red blazer. I wonder, did he buy these pieces together or separately? I can't draw a conclusion as to what either choice would signify, but it's something to not-to-ponder. His head is hugged by a russian-style faux-fur cylindrical prism (yeah 10th grade geometry!), from which tumbles a mane of gold. Why do I write so boldly about somebody who could be the nicest guy in the world? Because he is currently oscillating between looking at me and scribbling furiously on neon pink sheets of paper freshly sprung from their plastic wrap. He. Means. Business. And so do I, motherfucker. At times I worry about the ethical ramifications of borrowing somebody's life for art, especially when my prose so often shows such little remorse for my subjects. That's right, I just called this shit prose. Ben-prose. Only now do I realize how fitting my "horse of a different color" metaphor is (see: Clifford jumpsuit and long braidable locks). Oh balls, he just caught me picking my nose. That's going to show up in a book somewhere, probably long before I send out my first story.

So this is how it begins. Motivation. I will beat this ghost of christmas irony. Only he won't catch my eyes darting back and forth nor shake his head at my chicken-scrawl. His story may be entirely forgiving. He may not even be aware of this coffee shop rivalry. What does that say about me? Probably a few things that aren't so attractive. But I do know that if this is what it takes -- if being the meanest caffeine addict in here is what it takes to get me writing, I can not pass up the opportunity.

Today's reading: Terese Svoboda -- Trailer Girl