Readers of Vanity Fair magazine may be catching a similarity between its back-of-the-issue Proust Questionnaire each month and many of my Tendrils postings this year. One difference is that when interviewing a chosen celebrity figure, each question gets a single answer, while Tendrils, with its listings of ten items, demands a full count on both hands, one-two-three on to one-zero.

The questionnaire itself, attributed to French author Marcel Proust (1871-1922), became a popular “confession album,” a kind of Victorian parlor game. When published by his son-in-law, the French president, it was subtitled “an album to record thoughts, feelings, etc.”

Frankly, they’re usually difficult for me to tackle. More personal than I usually navigate. But doing them as an exercise for Tendrils has had me reviewing much of my life from a fresh perspective, and maybe also is giving you a better idea of what makes me tick.

Still, some of them haven’t prompted a full ten responses from me. Here are some examples.

1. What do you consider the lowest depth of misery? Being utterly alone. Quite distinct from blessed solitude.
2. When and where were you happiest? Meeting Lady R and courting her.
3. Where would you like to live? Where I am now, though we’re also dreaming of moving up the coast, soon as we can.
4. What is your favorite occupation? Writing.
5. What are your most marked characteristics? Let’s start with quirkiness.
6. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? I’ve long admired hawks, but now eagles and osprey, more so.
7. What do you most value in your friends? Reliability.
8. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? They’re incredible. If I could, I’d leave each of them with a billion to do with as they wish. The world would be much better for it.
9. How would you like to die? With the least inconvenience to those around me.
10. On what occasions do you lie? Half-truths, since I’m conflict-averse. That is, omissions, rather than commissions

~*~

Anyone up to answering one or all of these now?

 

Yes, I’ve always had a penchant for history.

1. A hand-scrawled letter by my great-grandfather on scratch paper. (You can view it and my analysis on my Orphan George blog.) And the small autograph book he carried in Indiana his first years after leaving North Carolina. (Again, see the blog.)
2. A stone breastplate pendant from an ancient burial mound in northwest Ohio. Plus, flint arrowheads.
3. My Eagle Scout award, reflecting lessons in self-reliance, natural wonder, wilderness, and the outdoors in general.
4. My Max Rudolf LPs. Working largely out of the spotlight, the conductor shaped the Cincinnati Symphony into a precise, glowing musical machine. Each performance was a revelation.
5. James Nayler’s collected works, the second-oldest of the books in my personal library. Warped and hard to use as it is, with the ink bleeding through on many pages, it was published in 1829 in Cincinnati. He’s still my favorite writer from the emerging Quaker period. Also on my shelf are John Gough’s History of the People Called Quakers, in a four-volume set published in 1790 in Dublin. And then there’s Fernando G. Cartland’s Southern Heroes or The Friends in a Time of War (1897, Poukeepsie, New York), which details many of the travails of my ancestors under the repressive Confederate regime.
6. A bone-handled antique fork, which I often used when visiting my grandparents. I wonder how far back in the family it really goes, but it’s still quite elegant in its primitive simplicity.
7. An 1840s cherry table made in Ohio. Wobbly and warped, the wood itself is gorgeous.
8. My journals, now numbering around 200 volumes. It’s what I often have rather than photos as a prompt to my memories. For the most part, I’d say the pages are more an outline of what happened, rarely of my inner thoughts and feelings, often tedious in their surface reporting, but they can still take me deeper into so much that’s otherwise slipped from my mind.
9. Our copper cod weather vane. The one on the roof of the barn.
10. A perfect trilobite, collected as a young rock hound in southwest Ohio.

~*~

Tellingly, many of these items are irreplaceable, unlike many other treasures that would still have replacements.

Which of your possessions do you most treasure?

 

1. Empathy.
2. Name-face recall. You know, an instant recall of names and faces and tidbits about the person.
3. Better recollection of conversations. Who said what, when, and how, rather than the stew I usually retain.
4. Small-talk charm.
5. Woodworking and carpentry.
6. Plumbing and electrical.
7. Recall of herbs and spices.
8. Auto mechanics.
9. Baseball coordination and strength.
10. An ability to recall a joke and tell it well.

~*~

Gee, I didn’t even mention making real money!

So what would you admit to?