New York City, February 12, 2014

★★ The ice in the Hudson had formed a single thin white band down the middle of the channel, like a lane divider. The sky was grayish blue, the snow was grayish white, a grayish gleam bounced off Broadway. The roadway had been salt-lightened and the sidewalk grime-darkened to the same pencil-lead color. Gray got grayer, till the evening, when it all turned blue. A blue van with its lights off came roaring up out of it, after the cars with headlights had all passed. The 1 trains were untenable, but the cold walk up past Lincoln Center was more boring than painful.