Friday, February 16, 2007

Base metal


Waiting for the kettle to boil for my post Eucharist coffee this morning, I was half listening to Today on R4 when a feature about a new magazine stopped me in my tracks. Eat your heart out, alchemists - though the philosopher's stone may still be elusive, the elixir of life is apparently available courtesy of a new magazine.
“The world’s first consumer glossy dedicated to everything anti-ageing” , 'Elixir' appears today and it’s editor only just stopped short of promising that to read it regularly could fend off death.
She did, interestingly, correct herself when she began to say
It’s about living life in all its fulness…” changing to “to the max” so that I wondered if she’d once had another view about what makes life worthwhile.
Today she was resolutely materialist, preaching her message of well being through the best of scientific (and pseudo scientific?)innovations. When challenged as to why everyone should want to appear somewhere between 14 and 30 forever, she said something along the lines of
“Surely we all prefer to look at someone who looks pleasant…
Clearly the concept of beauty in old age isn’t worth entertaining for a moment.

I wonder what she’d have made of E, radiant for that moment in her hospital bed yesterday.
I’m willing to bet that she’s got a better route to life in all its fulness than all the staff at 'Elixir' put together.

1 comment:

Fiona Marcella said...

"I wondered if she’d once had another view about what makes life worthwhile" - well she certainly seemed to know the vocabulary (not unusual for someone educated in the UK pre 1980s I would say) AND realised when she was making a mistake by using it.
Why on earth ANYONE would want to continue living the nightmare that is late puberty/early adulthood anyway goodness only knows.