Facinating People

An aquaintance of mine has taken to blogging about the most facinating people he knows – I have no idea why he hasn’t interviewed me yet. He is on an unussual quest to find the most facinating person in the world by means of interviewing the most interesting friend of each of his interesting friends. The idea is rather novel, and has caused me to think about the mesmurizing characteristics of my own friends. This has lead me to an odd realization – I don’t have any facinating friends.

I would describe all of my friends as kind. As a general principle, I try to always loose mean peoples phone numbers. I also have a number of friends that are very intellegent – many of whom are experets on fasinating topics. But does my best friends PhD in imunoligy coupled with her indepth knowledge of the effects of phomonia on lung tissue make her a fasinating person, or simply a noble person?

The most catigorically fasinating person I have known is my dad’s brother Dick. My Uncle Dick died last November, so I can no longer truly claim to know him. I clearly cannot call him up for an interview. Thinking of my Uncle Dick in memorandum, it is impossible to describe him as anything other than fasinating. He was an inovative artist who developed new ways to view and manipulate color and light. He saw the world in a unique way and constantly strived to introduce others to his vission.

But when Dick was alive, I never would have described him as mesmurizing. I regularely called him weird, crazy, and certifiable – all in a loving familial way of course. Dick had so much passion for his work that he would frequently launch into unsolicited sermons about the devine powers of color, light, and pattern. He often sounded like a television evangelist. Dick was quite popular in many artistic circles and managed to convert a few followers to his artistic voodoo, but he never received anything but rolling eyes and groans from his nearest and dearest.

Attending parties with Dick’s friends was a particularely unusual experience. Like Dick, most of his friends viewed themselves as facinating people, busy in the act of enlightening humanity. As a result, nobody cared about anything but themselves and their own personal artistic agendas. An artistic coctail party seemed to be nothing more than a number of independent monologs all being recited in parallel. People may have paused out of curticy to allow others to speak, but nobody ever said anything that related to anyone but themselves.

In short, I don’t think facinating people are all that kind. Which is why I have so few facinating friends. Occationally my own huberis creaps up on me and I begin to think of myself as facinating. So I would like to publically invite all my friends to keep me in line. The next time you hear me talking about myself at a cocktail party – please tell me to shut up. I would rather know how to listen, than know how to mesmurize.