The air in the Bronx was heavy last night, thick with smoke, a haze of particulate matter that had been drifting ominously southward from immense wildfires in the Canadian wilderness. The fires are remote to us, both geographically and in human imagination, burning remotely in the vastness of the continent. They are dangerous, but seemingly as far from New York as the moon.
But of course, the moon isn’t really that far in the grand scheme of things, and its nearness dictates the tides in what is still, for all its steel and concrete and slick-haired millionaires playing games of dice with our lives, a port city, dependent on water.