Bare Life on Molten Rock

Forthcoming in SubStance (2018) special issue `Geophysical Lithographies' She laughs to herself, and her whole body shakes with it -she's got a volcano to choke off.So she curls the fingers of one hand into a fist, and sears down its throat with her awareness, not burning but cooling, turning its own fury back on it to seal every breach.She forces the growing magma chamber, back, back, down, down … (N.K Jemisin The Fifth Season 2015, 384).We know surprisingly little about rock.Rock is red hot, creeping, viscous stuff that we rarely see and touch at our peril.For living things like us, to enter into an intimate relationship with the lithic -to become enmeshed with rock -is to become rock.It is to meet with sudden, certain, cessation of life.At least, that's how it would be if we could encounter the bulk of the Earth's rock.Around 15% of Earth's mass is made up a metallic core, which geoscientists estimate to