#iwishiwasarobot

...because then I'd be a better person.

We're marvelous machines, really. Not only is the capacity and capability of the human body still being pushed and re-imagined, but our bodies are part of an amazing cycle that, perhaps by design and perhaps by serendipity, continually reinvents bodies and adapts them to new and unexpected situations.

There are some who suggest we cheat death. Which is probably a big mistake. Death is an essential part of why, for a few billion years, this planet and its biosphere have managed to work.  Not without immense suffering and turmoil, of course, but these things are the rule. The history of life on Earth is one of conflict and struggle, interrupted by only brief periods of relative tranquility and calm.

This was going to be a blog about me as a robot. While I am a machine, I'm no robot. I don't really have a hard-and-fast definition of a robot, but of course I'm thinking of a synthetic life form, made to specifications to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, and live longer than this old meat-bag I currently call home.

I like my meat-bag. More than I used to, anyways. I'm even fond of some of its design flaws - because they force me to be smarter just to get through the week. Others though, are just obnoxious.

Take, for instance, the mood.

I have lots of them. You probably do too.  I'm usually content to shrug them off as occupational hazards germane to the trade of writing... except that they're not really hazardous to me. Not immediately, at any rate, and not in the same way as they are to the people around me in their various capacities.

A confession: I'm a moody prick.

A select few have had the cojones to point this out to me. I'm glad of that, but I'm also glad that not everybody's doing it because that at least means I'm not a moody prick all the time (or that they're too polite to say so, which is just as good).  And yeah, moodiness is an obnoxious trait. But I kind of need it.

To a writer, mood is the harmony that makes voice more than mere words. It's probably the most difficult part of narrative structure to talk about (which is why it disappeared from literary studies half a century ago) and maybe the most essential.

Essential.
Of essence.

The essence of moods, of death too, is the transition. Death destroys and from it the parts become something new. Moods swing, and in the motion of moods we see the irrational become the rational, the revolting become beautiful, the prick become the prince (I mean Hamlet, not me). And vice versa. Can't have one without the other.

Give me the valley and the mountain top;
there's no one on the plateau anyway,
no one
but the robots.