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1) I've made notes for a dozen or more scripts. Most I'll probably not write, but I have folders full of source material, scenes, thoughts, photos, peripheral stuff. One I've been calling The Last Nine Days of Poe. My imagined take on the mystery surrounding his death (think The Orient!). And waiting until I have the time, money and interest to do the primary research--here and in Boston, Baltimore, and Richmond--before I write it. Once, when I checked out maybe six or nine books from the NYPL on Poe, or by Poe, the security card chuckled when he glanced at them on the way out, saying, "You like Poe, huh?" So I invited him to share a bottle of wine with me, then had an orangutan murder him.
2) When I wrecked my car at 16, I was incredibly angry at you. Of course I'd not met you then. Still, I was angry. However, I may have also been asleep, but it was an angry sleep, and at over 109 mph. A resulting injury I often forget is on my flight out of the sunroof I was partially scalped. Seriously, I only now remembered this. I was a banal statistical reality, to wreck my car at sixteen, so forgive me as it's not interesting. However, it was slightly your fault. I'll take the blame for the totaled car and the rattled brain and the cracked back and the fractured arm. You scalped me. Still, like I said, I often forget that part.
3) We all have our personal mythologies, icons and landscapes. Every so often I dream I've bought my childhood home and moved back into it. It's horrifying. Sort of. And in weird ways comforting. It was one of those early-70s brick ranch homes with a sloping lawn seeded with some Asian variety of grass; a lush, deeper green than the other lawns. There were Chinese cherry blossoms, dogwoods and maple trees in the yard. There were nine rooms in the house, depending of what constitutes a room. The windows were never opened. Psychic motivations are obvious to everyone but the owner, but in the dream I'm usually renovating the house, ripping the carpets up, knocking down walls, gutting it. Destruction and rebuilding. I think the dream means I should pursue my calling as a stock car racer.
4) In my adult life, if I'm near a window, I like it to be open. I'm sitting by an open window right this very moment, in February, in New York City, in the ninth year of happyrobot.
5) The year happyrobot was created was less than a year after I was married. Like happyrobot, nine years ago I chain smoked, weighed twenty-five pounds less, and my ambitions had not been crushed. (I kid!)
6) There are nine ways I love you I may never tell you.
7) I've fallen in love with less than nine women from looking at their photographs. But more than one. Let's say a number midway between one and nine. Three. You say three's not the number midway between one and nine? I say to you I realize I'm a narcissist, but I'm the type that's most happy when I forget myself. Plus those crazy numbers are invisible.
8) It's possible to quit nine things you care about--hobbies, passions, behaviors, friendships--and not realize it. But after the ninth, you're completely aware you're quitting.
9) When I was nine I wore an ugly sweater every day and hated my fourth-grade teacher, who was a year from retirement, had a bad dye job, and a mustache. Home from school I'd eat half of a pound cake in front of reruns of MASH. Ten was much better, as I started going outside and playing baseball. Eleven better than that. And twelve, boy, twelve! The things I could tell you about twelve. So here's to happyrobot turning twelve and pitching its first no hitter and leading the league in home runs, and French kissing Donna Maness.
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