New York City, March 26, 2013

★★★★★ Yesterday’s mud-spatter glittered on the toes of the boots. Under the gray, away along the cross street, a golden glow was coming through. Downtown, the covering was starting to rumple and come apart, glowing white seams and clear blue ones opening to the east and overhead. Lingering rain-grit crunched underfoot on Franklin Street. One boot grazed the red synthetic back of a chair in the jury waiting room, leaving a powdery smudge like a squashed moth. In the murals around the top of the walls, well-proportioned pink-gold cumulus clouds marched above city landmarks. Straight ahead was Grant’s Tomb. High up and off to the right, beyond the painted sky over the painted Public Library, a slice of flawless blue showed through a window. The prospective jurors were herded into the opposite end of the chamber, where now the blue was out a left-hand window and in the window to the right was a confusing, roiling patch of paleness — and then an edge of blue appeared there too, and the scene resolved into a tall cloud, moving across the narrow gap between buildings. Meanwhile an official was explaining that justice would not require any further participation by ordinary citizens today; everyone’s duty was discharged in full. It was only midday, and ragged prodigies were filling the sky, obliterating the polite ecstasies of the muralist: a high transparent layer on the blue; a writhing mass of blinding white, coiling from cornice to cornice across the street. The courthouses led to Chinatown led to Little Italy (cannoli, toy buses, a man barking lunchtime outside a restaurant) led back into Chinatown. The bakery with the good black-bean cakes was not the one with the proper Hong Kong tea; that one — why not go looking for it? — could be found a few doors down. Tourists stood considering the durian stand. Deep yellow crocuses were up in the park between Chrystie and Forsyth, very far from where things had begun.