‘[I]f all matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes and oceans represented by a thin film of nematodes. The locations of towns would be decipherable since for every massing of human beings there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.’

• Nathaniel Cobb, ‘Nematodes & their Relationships’, Yearbook of the US Department of Agriculture, 1914. 

‘[I]t is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.’

• H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The Festival’, Weird Tales, 1925.

After hauntology. Ontology pre-considered as post-itself; form as not-yet rot (decay as a building process); substance as nutrition for post-substance; the present as ineluctible succumbing to voracity-with-memory; materialism as pre-mulch melancholy; objects as variegated, specific & writhing-edged outlines of wormfood to come: vermiformalism.