Forever – is composed of Nows – (690)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Forever – is composed of Nows –

‘Tis not a different time –

Except for Infiniteness –

And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –

Remove the Dates – to These –

Let Months dissolve in further Months –

And Years – exhale in Years –

Without Debate – or Pause –

Or Celebrated Days –

No different Our Years would be

From Anno Dominies –

This poem was referenced in Paper Towns, the most recent John Green book I have just now finished reading. Although I usually have a great distaste for pretentious existentialism and philosophy, I find myself delving into this poem with great fervor. There is something about how well it fit into the novel, and what Green was trying to say about ourselves. How we can never really know someone else completely; we can know what we see of them, what they show us, and what we imagine they are. How everything is really more all about ourselves than it ever is about anyone else. And although Paper Towns is not my favorite novel by John Green, it has presented me with some beautiful ideas to ponder over.

"Maybe it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen- these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out". - Paper Towns, John Green (p302)