235: Kite
| Kite |
 Title text: It's easy to regret your awkward conversations but hard to regret the ones you didn't have. |
Explanation[edit]
This comic presents, through a surreal scenario, one of Randall's recurring themes: that it is better to take a chance and make an interesting choice.
Cueball flies a kite, then fixes it to a tree and climbs its string. In real life, of course, the string would not be able to support the weight of a human.[citation needed] Up in the sky, Megan appears hanging on a blimp, looking at him throughout the encounter. Cueball wonders about her and considers talking to her, but he does not act. After she has gone, Cueball is alone again; nothing has changed.
The title text explains the meaning of this metaphor. It is easy to regret an awkward conversation you had. In contrast, you don't regret the conversations you didn't have the nerve to start, because their cost is invisible--yet, they may have been missed opportunities, possibly a much higher cost than a simple awkward conversation.
Later in the 1614: Kites title text, it turns out that other people (Beret Guy) can also fly with a kite.
Transcript[edit]
- [Cueball readies a kite.]
- [Cueball starts to fly the kite.]
- [Cueball continues to fly the kite.]
- [Cueball ties the kite string to a tree.]
- [Cueball grabs the string.]
- [Cueball starts to climb the string.]
- [A scene showing Cueball holding onto the string at a high altitude, against a color backdrop of the ground, clouds, water, and the sky.]
- [Black and white again. Megan comes into view holding onto a small blimp.]
- Cueball (thinking): Hey, there's someone else up here. I wonder what her story is.
- [Megan floats to the other side of the panel.]
- Cueball (thinking): Maybe I should say hi.
- [Cueball is alone holding onto the string.]
Trivia[edit]
There is a fan made animated version of this comic.
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I believe you are backwards on your interpretation of the title text. If it is hard to regret; you do not regret. Therefore you can regret awkward communication, but can't regret communications that never occurred. In this, Randall seems to be at odds with the tone of other pages, such as the choices arc.138.163.106.71 01:50, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Agree on this and I have changed the explanation - I do however, believe that it is not the point that Randall tries to make - and have thus added that you can regret the missed conversation even more than a possible awkward one... Kynde (talk) 18:15, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Pi day[edit]
How has everyone missed this.
Not one notices that the day relates to Transcendentalism, and that relates to Life in the Woods, which relates to Thoreau, who put it quintesentially:
- "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
