The night winding down into lamplight and Herman Melville, I can almost feel the future: a smooth, translucent grey wall that I can see blurry things moving behind, especially strange because I know that wall is built on a precipice, and there's nothing for anything to walk on out there. The future is 3 AM when it's 11 PM, after-dinner coffee when you're eating lunch, your last cigarette when you're just ripping the cellophane off a fresh pack. The future is everything you tell yourself you can foresee, everything that makes sense for now. Once it's the past, though, it's all a blur, just like it was when it was the future.

I need to sleep.