Proustian request

Dear friends, etc.

My last blog post was all about how wonderful folks I know are and how varied their talents and experiences are.  Today, I read a little blurb in this month's Vanity Fair about their esteemed Proust Questionnaire and the luminaries who have answered it in sometimes surprising ways.  So, I'm putting those two ideas together here and asking all of you, dear readers, to complete your own version of the questionnaire.

If you haven't seen the questionnaire in its regular spot in VF, you've probably seen actors and suchlike answering similar questions from James Lipton and his ever so serious beard on "Inside the Actors Studio."  If you're like me, you sometimes speculate on what your own answers would be if you ever gained the kind of notoriety necessary for people to actually ask you those kinds of questions.  If you're like me in that respect, you've probably also written and revised your Oscar (TM) acceptance speech a few times...

Anyway, below is a list of the questions in the VF questionnaire.  Please answer it.  Please read other people's answers.  And, if you want, post your Oscar speech, too.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

What is your greatest fear?

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Which living person do you most admire?

What is your greatest extravagance?

What is your current state of mind?

What is the quality you most like in a man?

What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

When and where were you happiest?

Who are your favorite writers?

Which talent would you most like to have?

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

Who are your heroes in real life?

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Where would you like to live?

What is your most treasured possession?

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

What do you most value in your friends?

What are your favorite names?

What is it that you most dislike?

What is your greatest regret?

How would you like to die?

What is your motto?

Go ahead...spill it.

How lucky! How supremely lucky!

Facebook is a fantastically weird little beast, is it not?  I have reconnected with the first boy who ever kissed me, friends I made in Rio that shared a remarkable afternoon at a prison with me, elementary school classmates turned into friends by the passing years and many, many others...

What I would love more than just about anything is for all of my disparate friends to get a chance to meet each other, to know each other and to fall in deep, nearly familial, love with each other as I have learned to love them all.  I would love it if quirky, artistic photographer Lisa were to meet the iconoclastic, sardonic and utterly wonderful Kim.  I think they'd be besties just like that.  I'd love it if the folks I improvised with in Boston met the improv crew who took me in when I moved to New York.  And Shana must meet Teresa who must meet Jessica who must meet Michael Jeffrey who must meet Jen who must meet Ruth who must meet Patrick who must meet George who must meet Kris...  I could go on.

Someone once told me I was lucky to have as many friends as I do.  I posited then, as I do now, that luck has nothing to do with it.  Having such gorgeous, talented, fantastically interesting friends as I do is a labor of love.  I am blessed to know the coterie of amazing souls that I do.  And if, at the end of my life, my life's work is nothing more than the blessing of knowing such people, it will be enough.  The friends I have, I treasure beyond all else.  Everything else is gravy.