Dear Old Professor

Are you becoming more acquainted with a part of you that is just now stepping out for recognition? It is likely that your newfound affection for the discovery of the largest prime number is a vocation, the Latin equivalent of “calling.” Today, most people have jobs they eventually become satisfied with because the job has found a way to wrap itself around one’s neck, not because of some philosophical calling of any kind, such as what is implied with the Latin version of the word known as “vocation.” Rather, most people settle for that which ends up being mediocrity. This choice pattern is very odd given the outcome of all lives. Is that what you have chosen to do?

Professor, this feeling you are developing right now is difficult to define. It will slowly begin to affect you on an intellectual and physical level, though you will fight the former sensation with the bureaucracy inherent to your status as a tenured and lazy professor. You will piss and moan, that is all. Because of this, you will most likely experiment with your sexual mind. During this process, I will be your friend and your enemy, stepping in occasionally to offer you a beverage of your choosing so that you do not overstep your bounds and become too pompous and self-righteous in your personal pain and agony.

Due to this interesting dichotomy, the moralist as bartender, for example, I will challenge you to consider who you are underneath that bag of skin that covers your bones. You are going to question my motives and my style, but I will urge you to refer to the preceding pages of this essay (where are they?), and ask you to kindly read the section that provides adequate warning to readers like You.

We will continue to engage in this unusual exercise with a wonderful vehicle known as language, which unfortunately you will misinterpret with wild and crazy abandon. The irony about the matter is ironic.

Perhaps you will throw the book in which this essay appears on the floor, or against the wall. You may even burn it or tear it to shreds while you do the pseudo-African Dance you think you do. You will contact several therapists, thereby illustrating your need for (we can only hope) Jungian insight. Your newfound neurosis will mount, and it will require a label and eventually some medication to satisfy your academic leanings, though the whole time you will treat the neurosis as a passing phase, a phase that is like the medicated moon in your mind, the dissertation you once wrote that landed you a job, for instance.

This insidious process will take place as “it” silently eats at your psychological makeup. It will become larger than your wildest imagination, yet your action plans will be met with inaction, though on occasion the small level of compassion you have for others will make you feel guilty for giving students poor grades when they truly did not deserve them, and for forsaking lost relationships. Whatever your choices during this time of massive confusion, you must look at your own eyes in a mirror and form an action plan that is self-preservation oriented.

You may do this today, tomorrow, or in ten years. Of course, I do not know your timetable, nor do you. Time speaks softly to you every day. Time has a way of being like a circle, maybe like an oblique spheroid, not perfectly round. Whatever its shape, do not allow the diagnosis others provide about your life to shape your life. The words that comprise the diagnosis may trigger the emotion that should never be associated with the conditions established in the weather patterns of your mind.


However, to be fair, and to conclude, you are a sick and demented individual.