New York City, June 8, 2013

★★★★ Comfortable air blew down the subway steps in the dry, bright morning. Even so, out on the sidewalk, the feet drifted into the narrow shade of the awnings. The afternoon clouds were mounded in lumps like an excess of shaving foam. Tiny black helicopters hovered against the grayest patch, far downtown. A bird sang elaborately somewhere over Grand Street, against the blinding late sun. A huge dark fly squatted on the baby Shanghai bai cai. In the middle of dinner, the light outside the window suddenly turned strange and yellow: skeins of heavy rain were unwinding in full daylight; rain embroidered golden lines of stitching on the glass. The north was dim and bilious, but the western sky was clear almost to the zenith, the sun descending in a lavender glow.