New York City , December 18, 2014

★★★ Individual buildings stood out golden in the first rays of dawn, arriving so late that the day had seemed overcast. Colors ripened, the sunrise no longer a secret reserved for early risers. Wind tossed the colorless dry leaves around in the forecourt. Blue construction mesh lit up along the edge of a new luxury tower in the distance. The sky was full of light that couldn’t reach into the streets yet. Then the sun found its way in, casting long midday shadows. A pennant of caution tape tied to a traffic cone fluttered in the same direction. Short as they are, though, the days remained perversely changeable; before the afternoon was done, the sun had vanished into a gray pre-dusk, which showed the lights in the windows to their advantage as it deepened on a crosstown walk: Here warm illumination on a wooden domestic stairway, there the cold yellow of office fixtures. The cold was deepening, too, and by Seventh Avenue the wind was something to be braced against. Eyes burned coming in out of it.