Back into the daylight of a May morning, by a busy beach front at the Sussex coast, I have officially landed home after travelling through three time zones, via air, boat, bus and van, my backpack in various states of heaviness and lightness. Through the disorientation of jet lag, the sway of endless miles, the jolting of sea meeting land, concrete meeting sky, city fighting landscape, I have returned to the familiar, the often seen, where my home dwells.
     It's official, I guess, and I see Brighton all about me, but I feel like a walker through space, a ghost in these parts, a girl without a home, a mind without a place to settle. I am rendered mute by the tenderest of experiences from my journeys, my usual personality feels like sludge in my fingers. And the place that feels furtherest away from me is here, and the lands I belong to I can no longer easily name.
     I turn thirty three tomorrow, and far from finding any settled place to rest my head, I find myself wandering, the page has turned and what is written is unexpected, exciting, unabashedly new and unformed.
     This is the time of my life. This is the turning of the tide. This is many days of reckoning, sweeping me up into their silent arms.
     I don't want to ever sleep again, but to remain awake until the last ships have passed over the horizon and I am with them, pulling the sails from their pits.