ABSTRACT: I argue that the circumnuclear disk (CND) and the ionized gas filaments can be understood in terms of the tidal capture and disruption of gas clouds on low angular momentum orbits in a potential containing a point mass. The general pattern of such capture is the tidal stretching of the cloud into a long filament which repeatedly collides with itself before settling into a relatively long-lived asymmetric elliptical torus precessing counter to the direction of rotation. During the collisions, compression in strong shocks is likely to lead to star formation even in the near tidal field of a black hole. This process may have general reldevance to accretion onto massive black holes in normal and active galactic nuclei.