I love it when the morning sun, low in the east, slices through clouds to light up a single building across the river. This morning the sky was blue-black behind Jersey City and the glints on the river were copper. A strong wind pushed along lots of swells and whitecaps. Everything was shadowed and overcast and each building in the science-fiction skyline got its turn to glow by itself as the hole in the clouds moved north.

From my new spot the bad news, as I told you, is that I can see two monumentally ugly blue buildings of which I was formerly blissfully ignorant. My first thought is that they're an architect's bad dream but actually I think they're a bad architect's dream. The good news is that I can see a red-and-white striped lighthouse that was also hidden until now. So you win some and you lose some. And the book I've been working on, which for a long time seemed to be going around in circles with no way out, is beginning to start to commence to embark upon what may possibly turn out to be something approaching the end.