If I wash my hands in your dirty water Will your religion make me clean?

Last night Shawn and I went to the movies to see "Zodiac", a movie I would not normally have been interested in seeing. Although true crime interests me in a morbid kind of way, I've always preferred Bill Curtis' documentaries to reenactments and crime dramas. However, with an indie heavyweight cast consisting of Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr., I found myself compelled. Whoever put those three together could have been reading my mind. I'd like to say my own directorial experience would lead me to making similar casting choices, but in my case the decision making process would have all boiled down to lust.

I thought the movie was interesting and I thought the acting and direction was excellent. It's not often than I can sit in a movie chair for two hours and forty minutes (plus previews!) without wanting to walk around or else drifting off to sleep.

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Shawn is still sick although he's gotten well enough to put on clothes sometimes. It seems this pneumonia (or whatever it is) has an even tighter grip on him than it had on me. However, this morning I caught Shawn eating a piece of licorice for breakfast so there may be a rational explanation. I'm urging him to stay home from work again tomorrow but he's feeling determined not to miss any more time since he's missed about six days. Sometimes I am jealous of the fact that he has a job where he can miss work and not have to make plans for someone else to do his job while he's gone. Of course it means all the missed work is waiting for him when he returns.

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This morning I woke up with what my father would call a "mouse" under my left eye. I'm pretty sure that one of the dogs scratched my face last night when we were playing but it didn't hurt enough for me to remember which one to blame for it today. I hope it looks less scary by tomorrow so I can go visit my student teachers without them wondering if I am a battered woman.

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JM sent me some of her poetry to read. She's been writing a lot of poetry lately for the writing class instead of stories. I love reading poetry written by people I know. I guess that's because poetry is so often so intensely personal- and through it she tells me things she hasn't told me in our conversations, as deep as those go. It's like she's trusting me with a document filled with secrets. (Dear Dixie - my favourite poem by you is about God.) JM is coming here for her spring break to visit her nephew, which means we should have some time to get together for bookstore coffee, one of my favourite things in the world to do with JM. She asked me if she should invite Kat too.

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I need to sort out my feelings about Kat. Kat has been one of my closest friends for many many years. We went to university together, we worked together, we traveled together, we performed together, we lived together... and by god, we drank a lot of beer together. I adore her. And yet I seem to have lost track of who she is and I don't know how this happened.

Since I moved, she's spending all her time with B - who's nineteen... and a former student. I know things aren't simple but I have trouble with the fact that she was his teacher in ninth grade and now they're drinking and smoking pot together. It doesn't make sense. It's not that I'm judging the activities because I can't claim not to have indulged in either of these activities myself - but I don't understand doing them with someone for whom you were supposed to be a role model.

As far as I can tell, B is a pretty typical nineteen year old, experimenting with drugs, getting drunk a lot, going to parties, and thinking he's too deep for the rest of the world. Standard nineteen year old stuff, at least it was for me. But Kat. Well, she's my age. Thirty three. I just don't understand how, at her age, these kinds of things still hold any interest for her. Maybe I've just become old and stuffy. But I don't get it anymore.

When JM told me that Kat and B had been doing cocaine together I felt sick. When Kat told me that B had "decided to quit" as though it was just that simple I wanted to choke her. She's not this stupid. She knows it doesn't work like that.

When I look at it as calmly as I can, I tell myself that the changes in her life shouldn't stop me from being close to her, shouldn't stop me from loving her and trusting her as much as I always have. But there's another part of me that is uncomfortable. It's like I'm on the edge of a forest, the same one that I know swallowed up Jesse and swallowed up my sister... and Kat is just playing along the edge of the forest and I'm scared because I know that something in there is going to reach out and grab her and drag her in.

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I've written a lot today. Sometimes writing like this, the kind where there's no concern for grammar or rhythm or beauty, is a form of personal therapy. When I write down what I'm thinking and feeling it starts to make sense. Metacognition through journaling. I understand myself better. Sometimes.

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