Before I got into bed last night I stood at the bedroom window gazing down into the empty street flooded with full-moonlight and cloud shadow. The angled roofs, the brilliance of the light, the velvet dark--all were shockingly beautiful. But there was also an intense brevity. Everything--my watching, the moon's arc, the threads of cloud--was in motion. And I realized, for the first time, that where I live now--this tidy neighborhood of tulips and bicycles--might now and then erupt into a wild land.