New York City, December 2, 2013

★★ Dim, dim, dim. Birds moved like airplanes against the lowered morning sky. A street sweeper raised a choking cloud of dust in the still air. Near midday, a golden glow found the elevated expressway, then faded out again. The color of the haze gradually shifted, sometimes amber, sometimes grim brown; bright rifts and even some blue appeared in the clouds, then went away again. By late day, the spectacle was entirely jumbled: white dots of cloud, in sizes varying from small to minuscule; a blank gray overlapping them from below; a zigzag of bright orange, above stairsteps of the same orange. Before it could resolve itself, it just went dark.