but he's a robot!

The last time I was in los angeles, I fell for a robot. He approached me after a show and complimented my performance, in his deliriously objective monotone. The robot wore a bowtie and was significantly taller than me, and I gazed into his streamlined face and thanked him.

A few of my friends know that I now like to think about the Robot and write to him and, when I have downtime in the afternoon, have gentle daydreams about us doing things like going and buying fruit in a nice supermarket, as opposed to an outdoor market because I hate how warm fruit gets at outdoor markets. When I read his letters, my brain quietly undulates in ways it hasn't for months, if not years. It's an unassuming sort of rippling, like placid noiseless finger-length wave rolls on a pond, maybe from a bug jumping in the water. I maintain my identity and do not jump on planes and meet the Robot in the airport where he could pick me up in his extension of his body that would fold out for me like a motorcycle sidekick sidecar deal. I just write back.

Beyond all this, I'm writing. Every day. I am getting to know stories intimately, seeing them as possible from all angles, being an architect and a massage therapist and a best friend and an intellectual stimulant with stories, breaking a story's heart, learning what the Robot mentioned when he said in what I picture a very solemn voice:

"Every culture in the history of man has thought it important to tell stories, and ours has effectively rebuilt cities to this end [i.e. universal films backlot]...there is an inherent, evolutionarily important need to document and satirize life...there are guidelines to story telling, and that by looking at life with those in mind, everything is easier to cope with."

The point of this story that I tell you, and say to terrify you and tell me to turn back and the killer is right behind that door, is to break it down and look at you so truthfully when I say it: I am very slightly emotionally invested, about the same rate of emotional investment as I might have to a really good apple that I know is in the refrigerator and I'm driving home and can't wait for it to split open in my mouth. Can't quite say it. Yes I can. I'm excited for that robot apple. and aspire to perhaps hold up residency in kind, be my own apple in the center of his robotic eye.