I Wish I Might

Just watched the end of the film/movie/whatever Contact, and it got to me, as it always does. I'm not a big science fiction fan, but I'm a fan of occasionally feeling a sense of wonder and awe. I'm also a fan of the people—I'm not one of them, sadly—who can't bear to sit home, who have to go on quests to find out new things, to cross oceans and mountain ranges and on beyond. If you don't feel those urges at least once in a while—they're part of what defines being human—you might as well be an earthworm or a flounder or something, in my humblest of opinions. The film gives you all that, and you can eat popcorn while you feel it. Pretty good deal. Jodie Foster tears it up, I must say. You believe every scene she's in. (Try to ignore Matthew McConaughey. His role feels a little tacked on. "He's got the girl's part," is what Foster said.)

Perhaps I'm libeling flounders and they feel awe and wonder all the time. But I think it's mostly human beings who'll occasionally do things like stop, keys in hand, halfway between the car and the back door and look up, struck by the night sky on a winter's night. So let's put it this way—if flounders feel awe, then I think we should try to emulate the flounder. That's all I'm saying.