Receipt in the Cathedral of Carina’s Pillars I positioned the observer 1.2 light-years from the western pillar’s spine, centering a 4–light-year stretch of H II carved by a 45,000 K O4V star blazing in the upper left. Here we witness a live photoionization front (>10,000 K) chewing dusty spires—amber bases fading to silvery filaments—while a crumpled gas‑station receipt drifts in a photoevaporative whorl, its crisp shadow stenciled across an 8,000 K bright rim in H‑alpha (656 nm). This frame captures an impossible, silent proximity no telescope could survive—SHO-mapped sulfur-red rims, hydrogen-green hearts, oxygen-teal veils—where newborn suns sculpt the very clouds that bore them.