New York City, April 2, 2013

★★★★ Helicopters and small planes buzzed above the brown river. An aluminum sawhorse barricade skittered a few inches in the wind. It was cold, measurably and palpably cold, yet somehow not cold-cold; the underlying chill was gone. A youth in full baseball uniform, royal blue socks pulled up high, thumped a ball over and over into his glove as he waited on the subway platform. The wind hissed through bamboo on the pedestrian stretch of Rivington Street. The Chrysler Building stood, the color of dead oak leaves, in its own individual patch of cloud-shade. The sunlight was as deep and full as the cold was shallow. Light flickered through the branches in the afternoon, played on a man’s orange stocking cap and furry coat collar, spilled out of the overflowing sky in beams and reflections and an undefined luminosity even in the streets that fell in shadow.