New York City, March 6, 2013

★ Less a day than a dull passage of exposition, the dutifully plausible transition from yesterday’s brightness toward tomorrow’s forecast of snow. The jackhammer on an excavator rattled under the heavy sky. Styrofoam peanuts blew off a passing garbage truck in a pale, scattering burst like blossoms from a tree. The wind pushed coattails out and back. Little droplets beaded on a taxi. Sometimes the pavement was dampened; other times it dried out. The only break in the trudge toward something else came at dusk, as the late blue light filled the spaces between the buildings on Broadway, setting off their oblique angles as they receded downtown.