New York City, January 12, 2016

★★ The crosswalk, glimpsed between sneezes in transit, was overexposed into blurriness by brilliant sunlight coming from two directions at once. Forty-five blocks later, the sky was translucently overcast, with blue gaps. Bike messengers were talking about an inch of snow as they pedaled by. White earbud wires snaked in and out of layers of clothing. An armored car sat with one wheel in a cracked, part-frozen puddle. The clouds thickened; the light faded further. Big pieces of garbage began flying up and down outside the third-floor office windows. In the evening dark of the commute, some but not all of the parked cars were beaded with droplets of something that had evidently fallen on them, but a glance overhead to check for more found instead a tiny shining star. At night, the wind battered the apartment and whistled under the door.