Proust Questionnaire

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
(Just to give you an idea, Proust’s reply was “To be separated from Mama.”) That dark corner where any opportunity for hope is extinguished.

Where would you like to live?
Somewhere where the green outweighs the gray.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
A cocktail of my child's laughter, a nice, sunny 65 degree day, my wife's luxurious hair in the wind, and a book that is light in my hand but heavy on my mind.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
The kind that one pushes aside in hope that the universe will take care of them, which ultimately it does...but by throwing them back in your face.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

Tyrone Slothrop, Septimus Smith, The Reader from Calvino's Si Una Notte, Jimmy Corrigan

Who are your favorite characters in history?
Robert Anton Wilson, John F. Kennedy, Aristotle, and Lao Tzu

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Hippolyta, Virginia Woolf, Amelia Earhart, and Helene Cixious.

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Ms. Dalloway, Rose Walker, Death, Ludmilla, and Oedipa Maas

Your favorite painter?
Dave McKean.

Your favorite musician?
Matt Sharp.

The quality you most admire in a man?
The ability to fight even when there is no chance of success.

The quality you most admire in a woman?
The ability to not only give but also to nurture life.

Your favorite virtue?
Reliability.

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one?
Religious rectitude...just because of all the problems it causes.

Your proudest achievement?
Having bonded to a set of family and friends that truly add the gleam to my life.

Your favorite occupation?
Trans-versing the ground where ideas and words meet.

Who would you have liked to be?
Odysseus, Hemingway, and Don John.

Your most marked characteristic?
Loyalty.

What do you most value in your friends?
Loyalty.

What is your principal defect?
Paranoid Calculations to the n-th degree.

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
The unmentionable.

What would you like to be?
Someone forgotten over time, but whose words and works somehow live on.

What is your favorite color?
Purple and Bloodstone Red.

What is your favorite flower?
Waterlilies.

What is your favorite bird?
Finch.

What word or expression do you most overuse?
"Are you serious?"

Who are your favorite poets?
T.S.Eliot, Li Po, Basho, Sappho, Homer, Dante, and e.e. cummings


What are your favorite names?
Helene, Seamus, Antonio, Nathanial, and Petrocolus.

What is it you most dislike?
Self-Vindicated Ignorance.

Which historical figures do you most despise?
The whole Third Reich and any cruel Roman emperor.

Which contemporary figures do you most despise?
On a general level,Fox News commentators. On a really specific level, terrorists.

Which events in military history do you most admire?
The Battle of Thermopylae and the Storming of the Beaches of Normandy...oh, and the French Invasion of 1066ACE

Which natural gift would you most like to possess?
The ability to understand other people. I'm fine at reading books, but when it comes to other humans, not so much.

How would you like to die?
In sacrifice for others.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
This mass of stuff around my waist.

What is your motto?
“Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit”

(From the Latin, "Everything Changes, Nothing is Lost." Originally read in Neil Gaiman's Sandman.)

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