ALLOCHTHON
it’s the assurance of solidity without stasis;
it’s the promise of plasticity without vulnerability
it’s the buried memory of the Flood;
it’s the eternal emergency of the present
it’s a half-remembered face, anonymous yet universal;
it’s a soundless signal that broadcasts pure intent
it’s a genetic memory, vivid and unrelenting;
it’s a sheltering current, the wake of a more vigorous ancestor
it’s an uncatalogued species of urgency;
it’s the only unrushed anticipation
it’s the whetstone organ of nostalgia;
it’s an inside without outside
it’s the vertigo you always return to;
it’s a state that’s always entered, and never left
it’s a thousand creeping tendrils, filamental;
it’s roots as they exist in the imagination of branches
it’s an invisible horizon;
it’s the synesthesia beneath all sensation
it’s an unexplorable parameter;
it’s Real, even when not Actual
it’s a room drowned in the colors of perpetual sunset;
it’s the comfort of a constricted world
it’s a private permanence;
it’s the longest tradition you know
it’s a life conceived as a long assimilation;
it’s a life conceived as the blooming of deeds
it’s being drunk as only the holy can be drunk;
it’s being holy as only the drunk can be holy
it’s a sleepless surveillance;
it’s what waves on, colorless and immortal
it’s the asymptote to which all revelations converge;
it’s the temptation of every unfinished pilgrimage
it’s a lust that obeys nothing, and rebukes everything;
it’s the youngest appetite you can return to
Author’s Bio
Matt Carland is currently finishing his PhD in neuropsychology at the University of Montreal, where he performs clinical research on personality and addiction.