Imagine. I was living entirely in the moment, with no formal assurance beyond tomorrow morning’s telephone call, and I found myself interested; not sad tearful frightened or resentful, only interested. Here, I reasoned, is a circumstance where you clearly cannot make terms. The truth is, one never makes terms. This affair is only the bare, unfiltered truth. Can you take it in or will you founder on the absence of illusion? Indeed, it was stamina and self-control that were required to answer the question. I rose to the task. I began to grasp the idea of living without a future: we had few moments to waste on bad behaviour. I saw errant impulses die before they could make trouble. I saw reflexive anger give way to analytic understanding. I saw petty indulgence stifle itself and a kind of rough emotional justice prevail. All this I saw, and all this I was pleased to see. Then a day came when I also saw that learning to live without a future is a sterile exercise: what looks like life within a walled garden is really life inside a renovated prison yard. Joe’s wife remained an abstraction, but Joe’s marriage became a stunning confinement.