at one moment he had thought of it as heavenexcept for the lack of clawing flames he realized it might also be hell , but it was heavenas heaven in that he was a disembodied spirit , a possessor of his fleshly mask , a consciousness riding upon the senses as this boat pressed through water and air : there was a thickness which was realindeed , one which was most real during the bouts of fog , especially the deep banks it was inside himself that they sailed , and as he lost sight of others on the boat , as he lost sight of the boat , only feeling it alive to his blind touch upon a railing or a steadying spar , as he lost sight so he saw : peered with the eyes of the fog , became the fog , an engulfing lightlessness , and all which had been , stayed just there as been , a past , for it was not the past which the fog saw but the future , a future with its unknowableness yet its absolute knowableness as it exists as the boundary of the right-now ; so was the fog , it was right-now .