New York City, February 16, 2016

★ Dirty-looking rain streaked the windows. It was falling in slow pale waves pierced by faster flying drops. For a while it broke. The clouds were not quite uniform gray, and the slightly darker parts were speeding by. The floor throughout the subway stations and platforms had a wet sheen. Spots of liquid mud like coffee, shaped and reshaped by shoe soles, decorated the way up and out at 23rd Street. The wind brought a sudden lashing of new rain, and shortly after the terrible downpour was back. An umbrella-less person sprinted down the far side of the avenue. The torrents settled a little, then rose again to a slashing, drenching squall on the run for lunch, leaving water dripping down the nose. At 2:30 a horrid darkness covered the view, as deep as night. The gloom lessened a little as some of the hanging darkness transmuted to water and crashed down. Huge drops crisscrossed like strafing fire. Fifteen minutes later things had returned to what was probably an ordinary rainy day, but it was hard to be sure what ordinariness been before. The murk had been too shocking. Sunlight and a few silver-white clouds appeared, high up, and then a new fast-moving smoky gray covered that again, in the oncoming night. Then that broke too and higher pink clouds were racing east to west even as slate-colored ones were racing south to north above them, the sky fractured into cross purposes.