Every period is a black hole that swallows up all meaning from the sentence that precedes it. Meaning hurtles through a sentenceâthrough the curves of each mark, each syllable, each word, each gap in betweenâtowards its final punctuation at the speed of light. I do not mean this figuratively or aspirationally; I mean the literal speed of light. It is a material phenomenon. Meaning travels at this speed in all cases where it is deployed as symbols on a surface. Meaning is not always already existing, and yet it goes on ahead of each reader, mimicking reader-speed by materializing at the instant a reader encounters it. We know this to be true, that meaning travels at the speed of light and not at the speed of a reader, because readers read at different speeds. There is no mean reader-speed that dictates the rate at which meaning is made. And if, dear reader, you contain within your multitudes the ability to read at the speed of light, you will already know this to be true. Once meaning arrives at its final destination of the period (the full stop) it does not disappear; it does not die; it is not consumed or made void, even as it enters one. Instead it flattens itself across the surface area of the period. It exists totally and simultaneously with and within itself. All possible information is present at once in an instant, so that each period contains all periods and all meanings that precede it (black holes all the way down). This is why reading is like approaching an event horizon, and why writing is like tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time.
