New York City, April 14, 2013
★★★★ Pear blossoms spread up and out, anticipating the forces that will some future day split each pear tree apart. The light was precise. A truck crane’s red arm stood out against the blue, over a crew working on a roof. Stains surrounded the newly emptied trash cans. It was chilly, not too chilly, no matter which jacket you wore, or if you wore none at all. Carnegie Hall shone pink in its slot among buildings, and the smell of carriage-horse dung carried down from the Park. Motorcycles blared their way through the echoing facades of Midtown. People flowed through the streets, out in the day. Almost no one looked, in Broadway just below Columbus Circle, into the little space between the back of the first ambulance and the front of the second ambulance. The paramedics worked at a measured, disinterested pace, almost unnoticeable in peripheral vision. The signal changed and the pedestrians crossed behind the ambulances without turning their heads and kept going. On the circle, sunlight found the explorer’s face and shoulders, high above the shaded tulips. At night, on the desolate end of 34th Street, a fuzzy crescent moon and Jupiter looked down on the line of passengers waiting for the delayed long-distance discount bus. The air was tolerable still for standing around in, save the reeking smoke from an opportunistic kebab cart. Off to the right, over the bulk of the Javits Center, a meteor flared — short-tailed and green — and was gone.