New York City, October 1, 2014

★ The new month, high autumn, arrived in stupefying gray. The children, disturbed by thunder and cloud-trapped street noise in the night, slumbered on and on. It was drizzling, the drops not large enough to wet things, but large enough to fall rather than floating. Someone had been coughing in the building hallway; a few more were coughing in the subway car. Downtown, the drizzle had gotten heavy enough to call for the umbrella. By evening it had subsided. Leaves were stuck to the sidewalk. A few drifting blue patches appeared in the gray to the north, even as dingy murk held on to the south.