"Sometimes we see an elephant and sometimes we do not"

i.

“Thus the unity of treatment is to be looked for in the gradual development of the scheme, in meaning and in relevance, and not in the successive treatment of particular topics. For example, the doctrines of time, of space, of perception, and of causality are recurred to again and again, as the cosmology develops. In each recurrence these topics throw some new light on the scheme, or receive some new elucidation.” (xii)

Whitehead demands his reader to break conventional habits of reading – the first section has to be read but will only ‘make sense’ when placed in the context of subsequent sections. Thus his later claim that “no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe”. It’s not too difficult to see how such ideas have applications for poetry – and why Olson & Duncan were so taken with ‘Process and Reality’.

ii.

“Nobody knows where you are/How near or how far ...” – but wherever you are, Uncle Charlie, ‘Happy Birthday’!

iii.

“my brain is thinking in paint” (Alan, yesterday)