"Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle"

Hi, drawing book readers! I managed to make it back over here this week to share some comics with you. When I opened my old drawing book to see what was waiting for us this week, I was glad to find some pages that I really like. There’s even a mention of the Odyssey at the end of this episode, which feels kind of topical, since a movie version of the Odyssey was just released this summer.

We’ve been slowly making our way through my old sketchbook journal series, and here we are sometime in 2003, starting with a title page that was intended for a web comic version of this story. It says “Clarkson edition,” since I guess I drew this picture on the GO Train on the way to the Clarkson station from Toronto. But the rest of the pages tell a story that happened in Calgary.

This page was drawn at The Roasterie, a Calgary coffee shop that was already an institution back in 2003 (I have no idea what that makes it now - but it’s still there!!)

I remember standing at the Roasterie and talking with my friend, a literary scholar, about how I felt like I was having some kind of identity crisis. I guess if you ask a literature guy about your identity crisis, you’re going to get an answer like the one he gave. Of course, time is linear… but in a story, it doesn’t have to be. His comment reminded me of a wonderful book called “Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle,” by the amazing science communicator Stephen Jay Gould.

It is funny to me that I seem to have written at least some of these deep reflections in a car that was pulled off to the side of the road, after smoke started coming out from under the hood while I was driving on Deerfoot Trail in Calgary. Back in 2003, when I was stressed out, I wrote comics to help me cope. (The tow truck did arrive, and took my car away, never to be seen again - that’s another story! I took a cab to the airport and made it on time.)

Tennyson, my favourite poet - partly because of my grandmother, who might have studied literature, if only she had had the opportunity… and partly because of Ulysses, that great poem about what life must have seemed like to Odysseus when he got HOME from his odyssey. What was his life like, when the adventures were all over? I love that Tennyson decided to explore that question. (If you don’t know that poem, read it! Maybe even read it out loud. It’s so great.)

That’s it: Some deed of noble note may yet be done! That’s the takeaway, for me. Even if it’s Sunday evening and you haven’t finished all the things you were hoping to get done this weekend, don’t give up! Linear time will keep on going… but keep an eye out for those cycles of renewal that are bound to come along.

Thanks for reading this rather philosophical post! See you again soon for another story from the drawing book.