New York City, August 6, 2013

★★★★★ Genial blue skies in the west gave no hint of the churning dark ocher-gray mass in the eastern sky. It was simultaneously monstrous and petite: the near edge must have been around Central Park West, and a swatch of blue at the horizon put the far side nowhere past the East River, if that. A pocket edition of the end times. By the time the train got downtown, the whole thing had dissipated or gotten mislaid, and the ordinary sun and clouds resumed their extraordinarily mild and lovely maneuvers. A man hosed down drywall rubble in the back of a garbage truck; the smell of smoke floated by. The children came back from getting gelato, with something like a swagger. Downtown again, on Second Avenue, the smokers outside the bar fared better than the drinkers inside it.