New York City, July 14, 2015

★★ The moment of forming the thought that the morning wasn’t too hot led directly into the moment that the sun shrugged off the clouds and cleared the buildings. A full D train was emptying onto a full sweltering platform and vice versa. Downtown, the subway steps were being hit by falling drops of water — rain, somehow already, out of a sky that had barely started darkening. Nothing would cohere or endure. More sun showed and vanished. Just after one in the afternoon, a loud white-noise blast of rain hit; five minutes later it had faded away. Before long, the fire escape was half dry, and the streets were steaming clear. By rush hour there were blue gaps in the white and gray, moving fast. Someone slumping on a bench heaved out a cloud of tobacco vapor, which fell straight to the ground in the heavy air.