The first person to welcome me to New York was a homeless man on the subway from JFK:

Me (groggy from the plane, irrationally tearful): Sorry, we’re new. We don’t have any money.

Man: You gonna live here?

Me: Yes

Man: You’ve come to the best place in the world.

I think I might have. Over the past few months, whenever I’ve told anyone I’ve been given a scholarship to study poetry in New York, it’s sounded to me like I was speaking about someone else. Here I am. I have that beautiful feeling of being lost and free at the same time. I haven’t written much in my notebook yet, I’ve mainly been looking. Whatever I might have seen on TV or in films or read in novels, somehow I’ve managed to be totally unprepared for this. Which is the way I like it, now I think about it. Woody Allen’s mother might well appear in the sky and I’d believe it. Once my eyes have adjusted I might have something to tell you. For now, I’m enjoying the brink of this new, unexpected life that’s been held out to me…