New York City, December 27, 2016

★★ A loudly splashing and sloshing night led into a morning of floating mist, so light there were dry patches along the line where the buildings met the sidewalk. Even so the dampness was like being toweled off in reverse, gradually but insistently prickling into the coat and the face. Two stops downtown, though, and the mist was gone. From inside MoMA, where the white walls admitted any sort of view, it seemed at first as if the gloom was enduring. That was, however, simply the shadow pit of the architecture and the neighborhood. With effort, intimations of light could be found, high up and far away. On Sixth Avenue, outside the dim canyon, the sun was abruptly blinding; the flags, even the hopeless state flag, swung like colored lanterns. Rays of glare and long shadows knifed out from the mobs at the crosswalks in baffling profusion and intensity. The temperature was so mild it made no sense.