In late March, a five-alarm fire utterly destroyed the huge Axis condominium project in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, a huge city with no zoning laws. Because of this, builders have a lot of flexibility in where and how they want to erect a project. That being said, this condo was pushed right up to the very edge of a historic cemetery. I live nearby, and after hearing more than the usual amount of fire engines screaming past my home, I went out to my deck and looked north, where a huge plume of black smoke engulfed the sky. I grabbed my gear and opened up an app on my phone that tracks fires and traffic accidents and headed out the door. When I finally got to the scene, I hopped the fence of the Magnolia Cemetery where I saw an obelisk with the word "Father" written on the pedestal. With a surreal fire raging in the background, I immediately thought of the whispery voice-overs from Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life," (although I think in the movie, it's the word "mother" that is urgently voiced by Sean Penn).