I Sure Am Fat

In grad school I had a reputation as something of a mimic. Pour a few beers in me, and, if those beers happened to make me merry rather than morose (about a 50-50 chance), I would happily roll out impressions of one professor after another. There was the American legal scholar for whom I TA'd for a couple of years, whom I would conjure by flinging my arms out wide, tucking my chin into my neck, looking from side to side, and shouting a perplexed "Gah!" There was the Indian historian whose ability to talk while simultaneously inhaling and swallowing I had mastered pretty well - so well, in fact, that a certain administrative assistant forced me, one drunken department Christmas party, to perform the impression before one of my advisors, who subsequently failed to guess who it was I was imitating. In fact, I did a pretty good impression of that advisor - whose "I'm listening" face invariably came across, to us insecure grad students, as a "who farted?" face - as well. But my best imitation by far was that of another of my advisors - if "advisor" is an appropriate word for a person who maybe, maybe read my dissertation chapter drafts once in four years and who dispensed very little in the way of actual advice. But, just as he wasn't an advisor, strictly speaking, this wasn't really an impression. Instead, it was me sticking my arms out around my stomach in a circle and saying, in my own voice, "I sure am fat! What a worthless piece of crap I am!" over and over. Pretty mature, I know, but it was always greeted by howls of laughter, and (then as now) I would say pretty much anything for a laugh.

As I lounged around my father's house this morning, having a peach torte, a sausage biscuit, a glass of orange juice, and three cups of coffee for breakfast while spending several hours reading a novel called An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England (an irresistible title for someone who feels the way I do about historic home tours), I began to feel certain pangs of sympathy for my fat, worthless piece of crap advisor. For what have I done over the past week but eat recklessly, without heed to the internal processes I'm disrupting or damaging, while lazing about watching TV, reading novels, talking on the phone, driving (never walking or biking) from place to place, and slowly working my way through the seven greatest stories ever published in Esquire Magazine (despite what you may think, they're actually good, serious stories)? In years past, when I was more productively employed, I would have felt guilty about this and would quickly have intervened to force myself into reading one of the library books I brought with me or plotting out an impending research trip. The guilt is still there, but it's become distressingly easy to brush aside - perhaps it's the false promise made by the holiday season. the idea that nothing you do right now has any consequences in the real world; perhaps it's because finding a job has removed whatever urgency I felt about working on the next book; or perhaps it's just that after a pretty solid month of interviews and presentations, I'm a little burned out. All of these things may be true, but I'm still beginning to worry slightly. If all men grow up to resemble their fathers, perhaps all PhDs grow up to resemble their advisors. If someone doesn't stage an intervention soon, I'm going to end up looking like this guy and raising geese on a farm in Connecticut.

More soon.