New York City, January 14, 2014

★★ Chilly but sticky. A light, steady-seeming rain got less and less light on the walk to preschool, then abated on the way back. The intensity would continue to rise and fall, fluctuating on an overall trajectory to greater and greater sogginess. Nothing to do about it but put the hood up. A business-improvement-district worker pushed soot-colored water away from a crosswalk on Broadway with a broom. All day the crosswalks would be flooded: gray water, clearish water, opaque beige water. Rainbows of lost motor oil spread in the roadway. Brick dust bled into puddles where workers were redoing a storefront. Brown water dripped from the ceiling onto the N/R platform at Prince Street, not from one identifiable or avoidable spot. Resin-yellow water trickled away from the feces smeared on the wet tile wall in the stairway up to 22nd Street. People slow-walked with their umbrellas under the scaffolding, indifferent to the foot traffic backing up behind them.