New York City, October 13, 2015

★★★★ Rain had been in the forecast, and the light through the blinds was gray — but a bright gray, on reconsideration, and the blinds came up to find apricot-colored rifts in the clouds over wet streets. Soon the morning was warm and dazzling. The new music-lesson room had a window, and there was daylight in it. Jackets were over arms or tied around the waist. The numbers said the chance of showers was tiny; the sky and the air said it was altogether gone. Somehow, in these days, gorgeous mildness had stopped being the transient inflection point between extremes and had become the equilibrium to which things kept returning. Rush hour was bright downtown and then, in 50 blocks and half as many minutes on the subway, the sky was suddenly overcast, the clouds the color a clear dusk would have been, only sooner.