Foreign Landscape

Tonight was an absolutely sublime night - perfectly clear, ink-black skies with stars scattered about as if a giant was sowing glittering seeds, and the moon, oh! The moon, so bright! As I looked at it with naked eyes, I felt as if I was a camera; my eyes took a few long seconds to adjust, as if I were fiddling with knobs on a camera in my head. It really was a heady few minutes.

As I watched, four military jets in tight formation broke through some ambient layer in the sky, and began to leave contrails in a wide sweep across the sky. They must have been going incredibly fast - no sound until they were almost all the way across the horizon. I watched the trails slowly lose integrity and drift apart, and figured I had better go inside for my camera.

What a night.