It is Drift. Drift nears Ness. Drift is a world-shaper. Drift makes itself up as it goes along. Drift loves lists. Drift is tide, gravity, storm, wave, wind, gyre and coastal aspect, among other things. Drift acknowledges debts to the global capital flows that determine prevailing trade currents. Drift looks drastically disorganized to the untrained eye but is in fact a micro-manager of OC tidiness. Drift's favourite holiday destination is two tiny cove-beaches on the south coast, one of which gathers right-hand gloves in its jetsam & the other of which gathers left-hand gloves in its jetsam.

 

Drift relishes equally the company of sea-coal, Lego Star Wars figures, barnacles & gull feathers. Drift is fully reconciled to the unattached life. Drift has been known to unite with long-lost partners. Drift speaks an unpretentious tongue, a mongrel patois pat of this-&-that, bodged into anyoldcreole.

When you're with Drift, time does strange things. Drift is one of those friends who lays out odd things side by side, fully disassembled. Today with Drift is pre-Cambrian, today with Drift is Anthropocene.

 

Drift doesn't do time, drift does space. Drift is always becoming. Drift has unbounded potential. Drift is unimaginably vast. If you had to describe Drift you’d need a new language and a new kind of map. The only end to Drift would be the end of oceans, which would be the end of the planet & no one really wants that.

 

When you're with Drift, space does strange things. Drift is a hermit crab taking a face-cream tub as shell on a Pacific atoll. Drift is four hundred & thirty-four rusted steel fishing globe-floats in a single bay on an island of the Lofoten archipelago. Drift is the wood out of which humans were first carved. Drift dislikes being made to represent anything which devalues the glittering that all that Drift makes. Drift is matter plus motion, Drift is matter plus motion, Drift is matter plus motion & that is the end of it.

Listening to Drift is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world, as beautiful as listening to your child breathe in the darkness.

 

Drift is an avocet skull writhing with maggots. Drift is Colgate-Palmolive Teeth - Whitening Toothpaste tube, no top. Drift is a seal corpse with zither-rig jaw & off-planet fur. Drift is kelp & bladderwrack, long-line hooks & net, jerrycan & a doll's head. Drift is a beached sperm whale, sheer-sided as a battleship, downwind of which you won’t stand, leaking red onto the rocks, watching the world grey out through one tiny upwards eye.

 

Drift happens to you rather than you to Drift. Right now, Drift is approaching Ness from the sea by all directions. Drift is coming in piece by piece, gathering on the beach, quietly assembling either side of the Green Chapel. The laboratories will be Drift soon.