Learn to live like an animal

Posted by Ciara J. Burke at 05.00 a.m., 15/06/2011

So, from this strange pink ink-pierced pear shape on a map I am writing my first blog entry for this site. I am not sure, at all, what kind of person will end up here but maybe one day when I publish The Great Irish Novel someone will look back here and say, God, she used to be so pedantic. Even if that person is just me. In any case this is where I am. Brighton where I will be for some time unforseeable. And Brighton where I have finally learned to let myself exist without the creeping and daunting nostalgia of OH MY GOD TAKE ME HOME.

It's such a strange concept, anyway, the home thing. Dublin was never my home city though in the end, and on this very site, I started telling myself it was. Maybe I only begun to call it home after I left. But now Brighton is home in the loosest sense of the world. I'm here, I have a tenancy agreement, a bank account and a National Insurance Number. My stuff is here, in knots, on my floor. This is HOME like a welcome mat. And strange enough, I like it all very much.