New York City, April 21, 2014

★★★★ Light slammed into the little plaza beside the apartment tower, beyond the riotously multicolored tulips. “A little too bright,” the six-year-old said. The public was using the seating out there, just off the cross street. The sun got in among the crenellations of a midblock building, pulling the eye up to the previously unnoticed battlements. Down in the subway the trackbed was illuminated, both by direct sunbeams and by an indirect blue glow. A man on a downtown bench balanced two plates of baked goods in one hand, while in the other hand his foamy specialty drink tilted up toward the edge of its wide-mouthed cup. Caught between the warm light and the lingering chill, people wore shorts or cardigans or, for one man aboard the B train, shorts with a cardigan. After the light had left the streets, it was still up in the masonry, or passing through a high glass corner, or glaring through light clouds to make the supports of water towers stretch thin like molten candy.