Pop Can Roof

The Comic
WARNING: This post contains philosophical material. If you have a weak mind, bore easily, are operating heavy machinery, or are pregnant, the following lines may not be for you!

Today, I decided to test out the medium of colored pencil in a “large scale test.” By this, I mean that the entire comic was drawn in colored pencil without my normal recourse to Sharpies or regular pencils or markers or any shade. What I discovered is that my scanner can only pick up darker colored pencil colors–lots of lighter oranges and blues had to be added in (again) using Photoshop. Overall, I’m happy with the result.

For those of you wondering what the heck I was thinking, this comic is an homage to Henri Bergson and to a professor of mine, Dr. Charles Schmidtke. A few years ago I took a course from this intrepid gerontologist on (you guessed it!) the nature of time. Before I elaborate on Bergson, I wanted to pay my respects to Dr. Schmidtke; I just found out (as I was drawing this post) that he retired this Spring. May his retirement be long and fruitful!

Anyway, this particular modern philosopher (Bergson) is of great interest to me because of his thoughts on the nature of time. In fact, I know very little about his more famous philosophical positions, but I do have a passing, amateurish familiarity with his thoughts on this particular subject. To oversimplify: He distinguishes between “physical time” and “metaphysical time.” Physical time is measured, partitioned, and counted: seconds, minutes, plank-time, lunch-time, a time to reap and a time to sow. Metaphysical time is…not. I imagine it is something akin to what Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Professor Moriarty experienced while he was trapped in the Enterprise computer (before his “escape” to the ship in a bottle).

Bergson calls this human, metaphysical perception, the “duree.” (Think duration or durability.) This duree is the present, the moment, the now–the thing which we are perpetually experiencing as “current” without recourse to division between past and future. Instead of being the moment where past and future meet, there is only the now–the duree. (My apologies to those who know better; I’m sure I’ve effectively butchered this extremely nuanced philosophy by putting it into such unrefined, blunt language).

In the comic, what you see is my own limited view of time–influenced by Bergson (and Schmidtke). At the top is the ordered funnel of events which have led to the present; they are not directly connected to the present, but indeed the disparate past possibilities have led, at some undefined point, to the present. In the center, circular and unbroken, is “the now,” or “the duree.” It is the only “real” entity–all else is speculation and shadowed perception. Nothing else exists but this “moment.” Finally, the infinite future–the “undiscover’d country,” lies open and alien and (again) disconnected from the reality of the now.

Finally, I want to apologize if the text of the comic is somewhat unreadable; I tried my hand at hand-lettering.

The Living
I made a big error in my paperwork. As a result, I’m back to square one with most of it. Ugh.

The Gaming
FoxKelfonne made me aware of the fact that Dokapon Kingdom is available on more than just the Nintendo DS, as I had somehow been led to believe by reputable folks. Armed with this new information, I shall attempt to locate and purchase a copy of this game for either the PS2 or the Wii in the near future. After all, what could be better than a bizarre game of Japanese RPG Munchkin Monopoly?