New York City, February 18, 2015

★★ Pretty colors floated in the air above the river. Cirrus clouds moved by, and then cumulus ones, carrying the general rose-gold tinge with them. A gentle cloud parade, to watch from the couch while flattened by a cold: more cirrus, and even a little stratus over New Jersey, as brilliant bands of tarnished light stretched across the southwest. Outside, at last, in the evening, the newer snow on the black snowbanks looked like some wholly unrelated substance, as alien and separate as spilled candle wax. What felt like a drizzle turned out, on close inspection in the light of a crosswalk signal, to be tiny snowflakes. In the beams of turning headlights they looked exactly like dust motes in a sunny room.