New York City, January 7, 2013

★★★★ Now there was even a little light to spare. The image of the sun itself flashed orange-red off the windows of New Jersey, and then illumination flooded their faces, sending warm tones reflecting back east off the surface of the river. The buildings downstream brightened into blocks of creamy light and dusty-blue shadow. Out on Broadway, the upper panels of a breakfast cart’s shade umbrella flared silver like a photographer’s umbrella reflector. Downtown, a woman hurried up the street, glancing at a communication device, with her long puffy coat unzipped and flapping behind her. Two men, one after another, were dressed for indoors, but with plaid mufflers wrapped around their necks. The public was divided on the question of whether to have kept their coats and shed their bundling-up accessories, or to have kept the accessories and shed the coats. Even after 5 o’clock, a glow remained in the sky, and the breeze was merely bracing.