New York City, November 8, 2012

★★★ Meltwater trickled everywhere, around the edges of a bright, dry day. Schoolchildren scooped up the remnants of the storm into wet, quartzy snowballs and flung them this way or that. In the bare damp earth between the plantings, a hermit thrush hopped about, puffed to some multiple of its basic dimensions, a speckled globe. Late clear sun daubed and gilded bits of buildings; the Gehry tower for millionaires was a silver fairytale spire. Bursts of light traced rows and columns of another building’s windows on a blank brick wall. Then cold and dark descended together. Smokers huddled along the Bowery.