New York City to Newark to New York City, January 28, 2014

★★ Ice was floating down the Hudson again; cirrus clouds were moving north quickly. On the subway platform, a woman wearing a small dog in a baby sling dabbed at her nose. Rumpled synthetic fleece blankets marked the presence of babies. Or dogs? A grainy translucent slush puddle at the gutter was as unyielding as steel plate. A cafe had left drinking glasses on its sidewalk tables, in case a flaneur in triple longjohns might want a place setting, and one glass had been knocked down and smashed. The early clarity gave way to gloom again. At night, in the dark outside the train, lights gleamed on the frozen marshes or parking lots of New Jersey. The sidewalk through the new Newark, from Penn Station to the performing-arts complex, was solid ice, innocent of salt or shovel. The sky was mud-orange, with a descending airplane passing across it.