Me at a costume party last night, photos by Julian Parris. Happy Halloween.

Some notes I took during Carole Maso‘s reading at the &Now festival, which was amazing. Many of these snippets are straight from or paraphrased from her forthcoming novel, Mother & Child. Discovering a writer like her for the first time gives me so much hope, the giddiness of it feels just like falling in love.

introduction:
the still to come
the future is beckoning to us, is lonely
stay open to this appeal — Derrida, The Taste of the Secret
sensitive to formlessness
not to define it or pin it down or conceptualize it, or it will recede and vanish
the Now Point
what is really
the future is already moving through us
cannot be pre-comprehended
if we think on it too much, it evaporates
to be open to our own fear that we will end — attraction to the future
moving from the immortal column to the emphatically mortal
vulnerability
porousness
the future streams through us NOW
not one day is promised to us

mother & child:
all effort passes
if she could only verify their existence
all time, all space, rushed to her side in that tiny, indelible moment
coffins vs tables vs hair of children
a soul in transfer
the image is stabilized on the retina only at the moment of death
and the flames and the heartache
suddenly, gravely, inexplicably I feel important
the quality of the smallness
art is rehearsal for the future
how strange is that present with all the past seeping in and all the future streaming through
all was in coexistence; there was no way around it
dark matter really exists, but so does luminous matter
I can’t wait to get there
liquid water… I can almost taste it
you might as well stay here, the child says, a while longer
seeds : protected until the end of time
after the end of the world, there is another world
frozen suspended animation
the global seed vault, seed crib, at the north pole

(and, next to me, Roxi picked pomegranate seeds in her purse)