A long time ago a friend was recounting some prosaic events of her day. Throughout her story she continually employed a more or less basic expression, but at the time (and ever since) struck us as quite odd but quite correct. She would say something like, “well I went into _______ and before I knew what I was up to, I had spent my whole paycheck.” Or, “I was watching _______ and before I knew what I was up to, I had watched the entire season — and it was 3 o’clock in the morning.” The phrase before I knew what I was up really sums up a major part of the human condition. Life is experienced as underway and very smoothly, but we really only glance retrospective snapshots of it. There is a mechanism that inserts a kind of magic interpolation between these snapshots, transubstantiating it all into a tense or narrative… I took a job as a boat captain but before I knew what I was up to I realized I had spent the entire journey looking only at the wake.