New York City, January 27, 2014

★★★ It was time, or it was a moment, for switching back from the parka to the wool coat, in the humid and relatively mild morning. Meltwater dripped from an old, grimy awning; pigeons pecked at some waterlogged and filthy lumps of breadstuff that may have been pizza crusts. Everywhere soggy garbage was emerging from the gray and dwindling snow piles: cups, wadded plastic, slimy paper trampled utterly flat. The ground was filmed with sooty mud. Brightness increased, and a rip of blue appeared in the sky. A bus billboard passed, words complete obscured by dirty salt, only the faint traces of a famous face or two dimly showing through. The clouds kept dissolving, the light strengthening. Sunset would be a dam break of magenta spilling across the remaining cloud cover. By then, the gloves would be necessary again.