New York City, June 23, 2015

★★★★★ The elevator on the way out into the day was already hot. High bright clouds switched the baking heat of the sun off and on. A police horse with white streaks in its mane and tail and rump ambled along the edge of the soccer camp. Mushrooms had sprouted in all the forks of one elm’s roots, while the next elm over stood mushroom-free. Downtown the morning light was chalky. By afternoon, the clouds were a thin sheet, making the roof a pleasant refuge from the air conditioning. A medium-gray cloud blanket was draped low down in the north, over the Empire State Building, but it didn’t amount to a threat. The real clouds came in over rush hour, and with them — a raindrop, or an air conditioner drip? A rumble of thunder, or a taxi revving? Then raindrops came for sure, and a gust and a flash, and certain thunder. But the B train outran or outmaneuvered the onslaught. The radar map on the phone showed something slashing through Brooklyn and away, but the people coming into the Columbus Circle station were still dry, the streets above still breezeless. One of the new New Beetles sat in a crosswalk with rain beaded on it, carried in from somewhere else. Finally a little rain fell, but only a little. Odd bright patches appeared in the west, even as a giant dark zeppelin-belly of cloud cruised by, flying uptown, gondola-shape dangling from it. A burning gold light found an opening in the clouds and came through strongly enough to cast a shadow on the wardrobe door on the far side of the room. Then came not just an intimation of the sun but the sun itself, framed above the next apartment in a gap maybe four times its width and twice its height. Out through the gap poured not only golds but restored blues and even whites. One long black spike of cloud still drifted in front of it, and after that passed, a little sprig of black followed. But the golden light was flooding everything, flocked with white and tinged purple. What had been the clear blue parts abruptly became textured, rippling gold too. Soft little olive clouds floated under the display, as the gold became orange, then red, then purple. Down low in New Jersey was a smooth milky purple, spreading like paint in paint thinner. The sky was blood, wine, tangerine peels, green glass. It was so far beyond the powers of a camera that the only thing to do was to shoot it in black and white.