I’m hearing from readers each day who’ve enjoyed the Emily Dickinson poetry quoted in my Christmas novel. Now that we’re officially moving into the holiday season, I’ll be chatting weekly about the words of hers that I chose to be this project’s emotional touchstones. So, join in in the comments if you like. Sit back and just listen. Throw your hand in the air because I’m going on and on and on. It’s all good to me. I love the sensations and images that flow from ED’s words so much, I’m equally as excited to talk to myself as I am an entire room of readers. So, this Tuesday thread’s for me…and you, if you’re as obsessed as I am ;o)
The beauty of Emily Dickinson, is that while an entire poem might not resonate with you, there are kernels of amazingness in practically everything she wrote–most of it never published in her lifetime, because she couldn’t bear to be around people, to know their thoughts about her work, or even to look herself too closely at what she saw as prose that were full of prose. She wrote and rewrote and hid away everything she penned, drilling deeper and deeper into an idea until she discovered a “now” that said exactly what she wanted it to.
Forever is composed of Nows
‘Tis not a different time
If forever (all the tomorrows there would ever be) were the same as now, and time lost its power over what we chose to do and what we put off or avoid forever, what would we be today? If yesterday and all the things we’re running from, or remembering fondly as if the past were better than what we have now, were today, then what would our decision be about how to live this now.
I’m playing with time in Christmas on Mimosa Lane. We travel back and forth to the past and present and back again with each of the story’s central characters. What they’re learning, I hope, is what ED is saying in this poem. That we are what we are now, and we are the compilation of all that we were and will be–and how that affects who we choose to be now. There is no difference in time. There is no before or “to be.” There is now and what all the moments of our lives combine to be in us in the place we currently are.
We chose our future. That’s what I discover in her words. (more…)
