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6 August 2025,

Good sleep, good food, kopi o kosong or teh o kosong. They are enough for now. The rest can wait. ☕️🍵

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The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

Albert Einstein

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Sheep/får in Vårby gård, Huddinge (August 4, 2013).

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5 August 2025,

Worthwhile is all that is truly significant, and significant is all that is truly worthwhile.

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Lawrence Weiner: Specific & General Works, Le Nouveau Musée / ​Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, 1993 [BOOKS at, Amsterdam. Art: © Lawrence Weiner / ARS, New York]

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The Mystery of Spock's Empty Chair

It's been distracting me ever since I noticed it that Spock never seems to sit down on the bridge of the Enterprise. Uhura is next to him sitting down. Most people who have a job to do on the bridge are sitting down. He has a chair, but he never uses it. Instead he seems to be constantly on his feet, even though that means he has to bend over to use the instruments on the panel and look at his little scanning screen thingy, because all of it appears to be built for a seated person. Besides the very appealing headcanon explanation of "he's doing it to give Kirk a nice view of his ass," what's going on with that?

The first theory that occurred to me was that it's because of the amount of time he spends exchanging dialogue with Kirk. Maybe the directors wanted to frame most of those shots with them standing up and facing each other, and they thought it would have been awkward if he always had to get up out of his chair first.

However, a friend suggested that it could be for the simple reason that he's also very tall. They don't seem to have given him much leg room under the console. Maybe if he sat in the chair he'd just be uncomfortable. He might have to sit farther back than Uhura does, and then he'd still have to lean forward awkwardly to reach anything.

I'd be really curious to know if anyone involved with the show ever got asked about it in an interview or anything. Is there a definitive answer to the question of why Spock never sits down?

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…a kindly rest, with sheets smelling of quince and a great deal of silence.

– Rafael Dieste, from “The Rock and the Bird,” Tales and Inventions of Félix Muriel (Iberia, 1986)

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Softly echoing, quietly modulating music.

Friedrich Hölderlin, from Celebration of Peace

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“In the wilds every season has its wonders, but there is always something unchanging: the immense, heavy sound of heaven and earth, the sense of being surrounded on every side, the darkness of the forest, the friendliness of the trees. Everything is heavy and soft, no thought is impossible there.”

— Knut Hamsun, Growth of the Soil

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For more comics on impossible thoughts and complicated feelings, check out my latest book, THINKING ABOUT THINKING.

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This week on the Incidental Comics newsletter, a look inside my top secret sketchbook practice:

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Writing tip: Don't let the novel tea wear off...

New comic for The Southampton Review.

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Check out the latest Incidental Comics newsletter for thoughts on creativity, burnout, and improvisation.

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