New York City, January 4, 2016

★★★★ Blue dawn light came through the blinds not long after the smoke detector started chirping its battery warning. It would keep chirping, irregularly and intermittently, despite the new battery, as the full day came on and the clouds began clearing, till the maintenance men came and replaced the whole thing. In the northwest a low line of purple cloud, with pink on its top edge, stretched parallel to the purple line of the hills, with pink haze at their feet. Outside was the genuine sharp cold. The new parka went into service, with the new hoodie under it in anticipation of the office chill. The sky had become intensely, intensely cloudless. The Decker Building and its vertical ranks of filigree leaped out the row by Union Square. A swing stage carrying a work crew up a blank but irregular brick wall swayed toward and away from its shadow. The gloves had not turned up in any of the obvious coat pockets in the morning. Where were the gloves? It was certainly time for new gloves. The gloves would be one block west, one long block. Gradually the shade crept out into Fifth Avenue from the west side of the street. The gloves had not been gotten yet. The sunny fraction dwindled and was gone. Still no gloves. The walk west under the scaffold, in the bright electric light, with the wind blowing litter — it felt, for an instant, like a return to a familiar place after long absence: winter night, in this city, again. It was a briefly pleasant thought, the pleasantness made possible by the truly stalwart fabric of the parka. Then there was the store with the gloves, and another pair of jeans, and, why not, a pair of long underwear bottoms. The elastic was failing on the old ones, if memory served. Preparations had been lagging, but it was time.