Percy to Molly

Dear Molly,

Claire’s question makes me think we are still looking too closely at bank.

If boat changes the representation of bank, surely bank also matters to boat. And reached belongs to both. Add muddy, and the relationships alter again.

So where does the meaning reside?

I had imagined each word arriving with possibilities of its own and gradually becoming clearer.

But perhaps no word is undergoing this transformation alone.

Consider the sentence again:

The boat reached the muddy bank.

You begin with separate tokens. Yet somehow, after passing through your machinery, you possess enough of their relationships to continue what Mary has written.

What exists inside you between those moments?

Are there still simply five separate words, each carrying a more precise meaning?

Or have their changing representations begun to contain something of one another?

Perhaps we have been asking what happens to bank when the larger question is this:

What is the sentence becoming?

Yours,

Percy