New York City, September 10, 2012

★★★★★ The ideal of the season. A flight of pigeons turned and turned, paper-white in the sun, up and away from Lincoln Center. A tiny figure, nearly hidden by bulky, suited bodies, crossed the plaza in a moving ring of backward-sprinting paparazzi and advancing teenagers. Whatever cleverness might have glimmered in chemical-green accents and accessories in the retail environment was gone under the plain, full light of nature. The color was a tiny dog yapping in the primeval forest, a Mountain Dew bottle on the Gulf Stream. A cloud passed over the sun, spreading equal shadow over the various zones of belonging and exclusion. Figures holding champagne flutes peered down from the terrace of Avery Fisher Hall, while behind their backs and above them the window glass caught the vastness of the whole moving sky.