New York City, August 16, 2015

★★★ A dirty haze was rising in the west at dawn. A little squad of clouds cut off the direct sun briefly and then departed. More came in after, their contours dramatic but unreal through the blur of haze, the light around them tinted oddly. Out in the thick heat, an SUV sat at the curb with its windows down, blasting music too loudly for its speakers as the driver bustled around doing something outside it. A pigeon waded into a puddle up to the feathered part of its legs, bent its head, and drank. Some of the clouds, moving overhead in the afternoon, looked capable of rain. The blacktop by the Tavern on the Green was intolerable, making escape to the Park momentarily worse before it got better. A saxophonist played what was, on attentive listening, “Call Me,” with a 30-foot radius around him empty of anyone not in the process of going by. Two kids whirred along on free-range go-karts, checkered pennants flying from the rear. The doubled shade of the clouds and trees had an effect; a cool breeze rolled along the dusty ground. A little burst of raindrops fell. Later, another little spray would streak the apartment windows, followed by returning sun and a confused blue mist on the river. The air in the Times Square subway station was so hot it hurt the eyes. As the N train rose up into Queens, the sun was finding thickness in the battered markings on roadway ramps. Light traced a swayed roofline nearby and the top edge of a cloud mass high over Manhattan. After dinner, the night clouds appeared to be, through some accident of the light pollution, plain white.