New York City, December 13, 2012

★★★ A white wake cut through the blue, blue Hudson, under a clear morning sky. Light was everywhere, and so was the chill, both piercing the living room on the hypotenuse between the windows. Late sun came between the open slabs of a building under construction, glowing through the orange mesh on each story. A busker worked the corner in a sweater, leaning forward with a heavy-grained guitar. The sunset was a smooth, even wash of pink in the west. After dark, in the unobstructed sky by the building site on Amsterdam, the length of a don’t-walk signal was not enough time to glimpse any Geminids. But it was enough time to pick out the stars twinkling near the zenith. The signal changed. And then — something, or nothing, a flash of a white line segment, a streak on the celestial dome or simply a false impression on the inverted dome of the retina.