I Knew Him, Horatio - Straightforward

Straightforward

May. 17th, 2005 | 01:42 pm

meta-creation_date: 2/19/2005 16:57:36

The boys were right, a teenage girl is quite a dreamy creature. It would be nice to be str[a]ightforward; we must be so alien to them.
— Dragonette (Laylock), March 17^th, 2001

I was just reading through some of Laylock’s archived journals and re-found the above quote. I ran across it some months ago, but didn’t more than take mental note of the statement. However, it’s been running back and forth in my head ever since, like Hamlet in his nightshirt running behind dead Rosencrantz</a> and Guildenstern* In the course of one or two hours, I today have finally tracked down, for your perusal, the citation.

It’s as I always say (and have never gotten slapped for — and only seldom threatened), but it is still nice to be able to cite a girl as saying it. Yes, it would be nice if those lovely creatures of the female persuasion (and if you have read any of my previous entries, you know I am nothing of a misogynist), were “straightforward”. That’s a better way of putting what I want to say than simply, “I wish women made sense.”

There are philosophical implications to the desire for straightforwardness as well: honesty is to my life as words are to reading. Without words, there would be nothing to read; and without honesty, is there really anything to live? I could not live falsehood, and I cannot abide it in another.

Yes, a girl — of any age — is quite a dreamy creature, and so alien to me. However, I know that most of them mean well, and some few of them actually act on those intentions and do well. Straightforwardness may be too much to hope, but I can think of no other creature worth a little perseverance in the unravelling than a woman. Still, too much time unravelling is time spent unwisely; and I’ll not waste too much time unravelling many Knots by the Road.^†

*****

* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an almost-silly play by Tom Stoppard, parodying Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Telling the story from the eyes of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from the original play, Stoppard creates what is essentially marginalia and commentary on the content, times, and customs of and surrounding Hamlet. In as diverse an array of topics as the Law of Probability (sic “of Averages”), Hamlet’s sanity as well as anyone else’s, and the implications of being buried in a coffin (Would it be like sleeping in a box?), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern provide a sharp and intellectual comedy — rare in these days of easy see-and-forget drama and slapstick humour.

†

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate;
And many Knots unravel’d by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
— Stanza 36, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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