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
