I was up until nearly dawn filing a spot about the evacuation for a Very Big Public Radio Network. Walking back to my homestay in the early hours, I noticed a reddish glow aura coming from the western horizon which could have been a sunset but for the time. A false sun called Merapi. The plume of smoke drifted out of its triangular profile toward the north, lit from the inside by a flow of lava now more than a mile down its slope. The moon was full, Jupiter to its flank, and the elements framed by palm tree fronds. Primordial, astronomical, and troubling.