New York City, August 9, 2012

★ This again. Sticky air, growing stickier if you moved around in it. The sun, up behind high clouds, spilled out an immense, colorless halo around itself — a slack, dilated disc of secondary light. The light filtered down on the street as fill illumination, without shadows. Absent real shade or direct sun rays, breeze and stillness took over the work of dividing cool from hot, here and there. The sky darkened later on, and a few drops came in sideways under the awning of the halal cart, but it quit before it could even add up to rain.