Delight Springs

Friday, June 6, 2014

The springs of life

It's the morning after the premier of "The Fault in Our Stars," the film adaptation of John Green's touching tale of tragically fated teen romance. I didn't see it, just ran one of the taxis.

I did read the book last year, at Older Daughter's insistence. So I understand the passions it provokes. Our girls nearly came to blows last night over precisely how and when to get to the cineplex. But that's all I'm going to say about that. Just writing it already defuses it. Humans are funny sometimes.

Scanning the marquee, I noticed exactly no current offerings I'd cross the street to see. Just monsters and street fighters and comic buffoons with an arrested adolescent sensibility. Other than the young doomed heroes of TFIOS, apparently, no mature and thoughtful hearts of gold are to be found up on the silver screen at present. Hollywood doesn't seem to do films for grownups anymore.

So, entertainment and insight are still best sought beyond the screen. I'm happily reminded (by John Man) of one of HDT's better lines and the great Lake Poet's better instincts:
[T]he walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise go in search of the springs of life... you must walk like a camel which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant to show him her master’s study, she answered "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
Just so.

One more thought before striding. Still nailing down texts for Environmental Ethics, I want to find something that effectively communicates a point well made by Michael Sandel in What Money Can't Buy. The newly announced federal target of reducing CO2 emissions 30% by 2030, by variable means, will revive talk of carbon credits and such. Sandel's point is that we can't afford to let big companies buy their way around the moral limits of markets. Over time, that would dry up our "springs of life." It's just not sustainable.


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