New York City, January 19, 2015

★★ A reprieve written up but left unstamped in the outgoing mail. The wind was trying to make up for the relative warmth, biting as hard as it could with blunted teeth. The sky was blurrily mottled, unresolved between brightness and dimness. Over time the clouds came into focus, piled up more thickly. In the middle of a meeting, there was what looked like expansive blue sky in a window reflected in a glass wall. But outside afterward there were only tiny glimpses of blue, in widely separated regions of the heavens. The burned-out trunk of a Christmas tree, needles and branches consumed, lay by a blackened patch of sidewalk. The blue parts grew more distinct and lovelier, limned in white gold, shedding a pink aura on the surrounding gray.