Where The Sidewalk Ends
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0This comic is a true story, though an abbreviated one. When I was a wee lad I jumped in a puddle during a rain storm and fell into an aquatic world of magic and mystery. The mer-people that inhabited the strange underworld I found myself in needed my assistance in slaying a particularly ornery sludge monster that threatened their homes and livelihoods. I wondered what a nine year old boy could do that fully grown merfolk couldn’t, but, wrapped up in the majesty of it all I resolved to try my best. It was about this time that I drowned, having forgotten that I was under the water.
After drowning, I woke up from the fever dream I was having. A few days later, the rather nasty disease boiling my brain away abated and I went on to live a healthy and semi-productive life into my 20’s.
True story.
Imagination is a strange and powerful thing. When you actively utilize your imagination, everything has significance in some fashion or other. Every tree could have a life of its own, every toy has a history, and every star harbors incredible alien life the likes of which have never been seen on this planet. Writing comics has forced me to engage my imagination, to grapple with it in a difficult way. When non-artists see comics or art, they are often impressed with the imagination that it takes to create the things they see and read. There is a mystique associated with creativity that most people fall prey to (I do at times, when I see artists I’m impressed by) that makes us think, “Wow, how did they do that?”. We often consider ourselves inferior in those moments, thinking it impossible that we could ever match what these individuals have accomplished. This is, in a way, our own imaginations at work.
The reality is that imagination and creativity are tools. Creativity is as much work as any other, though often more mental work than it is physical. We all have the capacity to create and conceptualize but it requires time and effort as adults. As children, our minds are free from the limitations of the physical and social world allowing us to come up with the most outrageous concepts. Part of being an artist (professional or otherwise) is getting in touch with that side of your mind again and it can be a struggle.
As for me, I find solace in imagination. Stories and concepts allow me to explore other worlds and people while I sit bored in class or at work. That’s a powerful thing. Having the ability to conceptualize the unknown is what has set humanity apart from animals and given us everything we’ve got. Admittedly, some of that has run out of our control to some degree, but it has, for the most part, been positive for us as a species. With a more responsible long term approach to our imaginations, life on this planet could be pretty swell.
At least we don’t have to worry about drowning on the sidewalk.
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It’s so true that the imagination needs to be exercised just like any muscle of your body in order to keep it in shape. Some people assume imagination and creativity is a trait you’re automatically born. I’m glad you’re making people aware they have the full potential to be creative and imaginative even if they don’t consider themselves artists, or writers or a “creative” focused person. I feel in order to be successful in any field of work, some sort of creativity is necessary.
Adorable strip <3 Hope someone turns it into a gif haha
If that’s true, then my imagination is pretty buff.
Honest, honest, I enjoyed this. Thinking about little oddities–completely irrational ones, of course–like this that could happen in daily life make my day just a bit brighter. Like, what if everything we wrote on the whiteboard in class started moving and erasing each other? What if the carpeted hallways between classrooms actively cleaned your shoes while you walked from point a to point b?
Imagination. :]
A good illustration for the point that children find it easier to imagine outrageous scenarios is the webcomic Axecop.
For me this was realllly a true story, It was raining and I was jumping in puddles, mostly unsatisfying small puddles in the road and sidewalk. I was a little angry because my mom made me wear heavy wool snow-pants, it was early spring, so I was getting her back by jumping in every puddle I could find. Then I found this beautiful puddle beside the sidewalk, I walked up to it and jumped in with both feet. What I didn’t know was that it was a trench for the new gas lines, and it was deep, my feet never touched the bottom. This was the ’60 and not everything was always fenced off like now. I managed to grab the edge as my snow-pants and boots pulled me down and hauled my self out of the hole. I went home and made up some story about how I got completely soaked.
Hey, i always see your comic, but i admit i am a bit lazy to read sometimes. But i wanted to thank you because you really made my day with this imagination topic.
idk its just amazing to see other people world created from scratch, what do they imagine and such. I tend to escape to the one i constructed when im at work (a lil boring lol). Anyways thank you ^___^
This is what we all secretly imagine will happen to us when its raining.
I Can Hold My Breath Forever in comic version.
That fish looks rather happy, and I am glad you didn’t get too sick.
Man this did happen to me; only I fell off my bike into a puddle, which turned out to be incredibly deep. I was riding bikes with my sister, according to her she turned around and I was gone but my bike was still there. According to me I ruined a new pair of high tops, after nearly drowning in a deep puddle in the woods.
I’m not sure that children really have an easier time imagining things than adults. I don’t spend much time around kids so I could be wrong. Still, I think the main advantage children have, as far as imagination goes, is that they don’t understand many of the ways in which the world works. So it’s often not so much that they’re pretending that the world is different than it is, but figuring out what would happen if some imaginary thing was true. It’s just closer to the way they’re thinking about in general, so even when they’re actively making stuff up it’s not that different than how they’re normally thinking. Or at least that’s my off the cuff theory that could be totally wrong.
Ah, imagination. Best thing in the world, so glad I never grew out of mine. Also, in reading the title to this bit, I imagined there’d be some mention of the wonderful Shel Silverstein.