there's a certain slant of light
LIVING ON THE DIAGONAL
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear, O Israel! (Mantua Books). His
editorials appear regularly in PJ
Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials of
an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012. His debut
album, Blood
Guitar, is now available, as is his latest
book, Reflections
on Music, Poetry and Politics.
In
Laurence Sterne’s extraordinary postmodern-before-its
time novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,
Walter Shandy says of his brother Toby, who is contemplating
marriage to the Widow Wadman, “he will never . . . be
able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.”
To sleep diagonally in one’s bed is a form of nocturnal
freedom not to be easily surrendered -- it leads to fascinating
dreams. Similarly, in James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses,
after a crucial conversation between its two main characters,
Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, Stephen “beveled off”
-- he had much to think about. (Italics mine.)
One
recalls, too, J.K. Rowling’s Diagon Alley in the Harry
Potter novels -- in particular The Chamber of Secrets
-- where apprentice wizards can purchase out-of-the-ordinary
objects -- wands, spell books, owl treats, charms -- that make
life magical and interesting. (Speaking of nocturnal freedom,
Diagon Alley gives access to Knockturn Alley -- another significant
mondegreen.) Such divagations from the “straight and narrow”
form the theme of the not-to-be-missed Alexander Payne movie
Sideways in which a one-week wine-tasting trip leads
to an unforeseen life-changing experience. It is the tangent
that proves decisive in the enrichment of life, the tilt that
rights the balance -- or in the film’s vocabulary, the
pinot noir that “can only grow . . . in tucked away corners
of the world” replacing the cabernet sauvignon “which
can just grow anywhere.” The title of the protagonist’s
novel, The Day after Yesterday, considering his state
of mind, is an elliptically evocative way of saying “today.”
Even his given name, Miles, implies the longish, unplanned,
sideways journey he has undertaken.
There
is much to be said for living one’s life on the principle
of the diagonal, a line from point A to point C, involving a
slightly longer journey than a direct A-B path and allowing
extra time for reflection and flanking awareness of the surrounding
milieu. The shortest distance between two points is not always
the best distance, considering what one may see and learn in
steering an oblique course through life. In this regard a zigzag
may be even better, although the leisure required to plot an
anfractuous trajectory is always constrained by limits of time
and the necessary degrees of efficiency and obligation. Moreover,
the zigzag has a distinct downside; it is all too frequently
an evasive tactic or a sign of indecisiveness.
We
might say that a diagonal suggests, paradoxically, a circuitous
route that is neither roundabout nor meandering. It is not a
detour but the elongation of a direct journey, neither the shortest
nor the longest distance between two points, but in many respects
the most profitable. All in all, the diagonal represents a feasible
compromise between waywardness and responsibility.
