"Virginity" [by Mitch Sisskind]

They called him Tight Pants Blair and he 
Favored an eccentric notion of time derived
From A.N. Whitehead's Process and Reality.
In a nutshell, Tight Pants Blair proposed that
The past does exist but with a certain flatness
So that nothing in the past is farther back or 
Deeper in the past than anything else. Thus, 
Our "distance" from the Egyptian pharaohs
Is the same as our "distance" from yesterday's
Hamburger or anything else in the past that
You care to name. For example, when did you 
Lose your virginity? Tight Pants Blair would
Argue that the meaningful question would be
Not when, but simply did you lose it or not? 

Comments

[Jill Newnham]

Good question! Reminded me of philosophy seminar I took senior year where discussion of the past's real existence hinged on the definition of real. Also, Whitehead came up in discussion and the professor quoted him saying "all philosophy is a footnote to Plato."