New York City, February 13, 2013

★★★ A sunburst as big around as a pencil flared through the bottom corner of the door of the empty apartment across the hall, where the weatherstripping failed to meet the jamb. Outside, the sun was down in among the lumber propping up the plywood construction wall where the next apartment tower will go. Light worked its way around the cross streets by the Flatiron. Months of accumulated insulating side-thatch of hair were now left behind on the barbershop floor, and where the straight razor had scraped the skin bare, the air was cold tonic. In Madison Square Park, the light caught the pale angles of the sculpture of nested polyhedra exactly the way it caught the pale angles of the tree branches above it.