Trust No One -- Julie

The second X-Files movie comes out next week. In the early 90's when the show was on, my obsession with it gave me a little street cred with my middle school students; now it just makes me sound out of touch and slightly dorky. "You named your dog 'Mulder'? Why?"

In the show, the main character, Agent Fox Mulder, is a wee bit paranoid and trusts no one except his partner, Agent Scully. He's typically right. This pretty much describes me as a reader. I trust very few authors and I am a skeptical reader. Opening a book my assumption is that I won't like it, and soon something will happen that will make me fall out the narrative. I'll see the work of writing going on as I'm reading and I'll stop believing. I'm typically right.

Here's why I love my writer's group: week after week they bring writing, and skeptical as I am, it just works, page after page, and I believe every word of it. I'm in a Buddhist shrine conversing with a Rinpoche, I'm in a drugstore shoplifting a pine-scented car deodorizer, I'm in the driveway of a woman whose house has just burned, I'm sitting on a 'motorcycle' getting my insides cleaned out...

Mulder had only one Scully -- I've got four.