New York City, September 13, 2015

★★★★ A steady drip in the predawn dimness, some remnant of the pattering rain at bedtime, seemed to be coming from inside the room, up by the bookshelves. Full wakefulness was required to establish for certain that it was outside. The day to which eyes reopened hours later was clear and sharply detailed: lampshades in apartments across the avenue, balconies off in New Jersey, aircraft over the Hudson. A small plane banked and turned, showing the white of its wings. There was a cool, lively breeze to match the light. Down at far west 34th Street there were white peppercorns of clouds through the new glass canopy over the new escalators up from the deep new 7 train station. Immediately to the west, the clouds formed a blinding sheet that made it hard to look at all the cranes. The eight-year-old struggled to unfold and read the revised transit map in the wind. Happy people wandered around taking pictures. No transit or development improvements had made up for how sneeze-inducingly sun-blasted the open concrete of Eleventh Avenue was. In the time it took to walk from the new subway stop to the old elevated rails of the High Line, the clouds had begun to predominate. The seed heads and bright purple flowers shook in the gusts through their replicated accidental meadow-space. Reflected clouds filled the available panels in an unfinished glass wall. Enough sun came back for the return trip that the cooled air of the subway was a palpable minor relief. Later, uptown, the picturesque variety of whites and grays suddenly flattened into a single shade and rain came rattling down. Within the hour the clouds had pulled apart again to resume their dramatic contrast and motion. A small but color-soaked sunset showed in a gap between buildings, and then the sky was all iron and silver and steel. The apartment door rattled in its jamb; the wind crooned and shrieked notes on the building that hadn’t been heard in months.