One night in Italy, I walked to the edge of the little village where I stayed. The town disappeared behind me as I meandered through the halo offered by the last streetlight in the borough. Beyond the nimbus, the field of grain and wild poppies I admired often from my balcony during daylight hours, was but a black ink spot as I stood in the outer rim of the lamp's glow. One step then another... creeping toward the periphery... I inched closer to the charcoal abyss, anxious to gaze into the moonless night sky and witness the perfection of the cloudless heavens stretched out above with no city lights to mar the glimmering beauty of each winking star. The border between light and dark lost distinction near the edge of the black emptiness. Feeling free to look into the star spattered firmament and allow its beauty to overcome my senses, my eyes began their upward journey then halted spellbound. Where once I was in the comforting glow of the mercury vapor above, suddenly I found myself in midnight obscurity. The obsidian void engulfed me and began to quiver with tiny pinpoint sparks of light--not in the heavens but in the fields. Thousands upon thousands of diminutive phosphorescent lamps waltzed among the blades of grass and flitted around my feet. The horizon lost meaning; a blanket of ethereal splendor rippled through the opaque meadow as I walked into the grasslands. I gaped in awe as the Universe left me there to choose between the vast celestial sphere above, and the enchanted dance of the fireflies below.