chapter 13.

-I like this world. I like drinking champagne. I like not smoking. I like the sound of Dutch people speaking Dutch. And now... I don't even get a battle. I don't get a fight.
-You get to battle cancer, -I said- that is your battle. And you'll keep fighting, -I told him. I hated it when people tried to build me up to prepare for battle, but I did it to him, anyway.- you'll... you'll... live your best life today. This is your war now.
I despised myself for the cheesy sentiment, but what else did I have?
-Some war- he said dismissively -what am I at war with? my cancer. And what is my cancer? my cancer is me. My tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner.
-Gus- I said. I couldn't say anything else. He was too smart for the kinds of solace I could offer.
-Okay- he said, but it wasn't. After a moment, he said- if you go to the Rijksmuseum, which I really wanted to do but who are we kidding, neither of us can walk through a museum. But anyway, I looked at the collection online before we left. If you were to go and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude getting stabbed in the necks, and you'd see people dying at the sea in a battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
Abraham Maslow, I present to you Augustus Waters, whose existential curiosity dwarfed thet of his well-fed, well-loved, healthy brethren. While the mass of men went on leading thoroughly unexamined lives of monstrous consumption, Augustus Waters examined the collection of the Rijksmuseum fron afar.
-What?- Augustus asked after a while.
-Nothing- I said -I'm just very, very fond of you.
He smiled whith half his mouth, his nose inches from mine. -The feeling is mutual. I don't supose you can forget about it and treat me like I'm not dying.
-I don't think you're dying- I said -I think you've just got a tough of cancer.
He smiled. Gallows humor. -I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up- He said.
-And it is my privilege and my responsibility to ride all the way up with you- I said.
-Would it be absolutely ludicrous to try to make out?
-There is no try,- I said -there is only do.

I'm dying to know, is it killing you like it's killing me?

Él es uno de esos chicos en los que no te fijas la primera vez que lo ves, y tal vez tampoco al mes.
Es de esas personas que poco a poco vas conociendo, que cada día habláis un poco más, y llega un momento en que empezáis a hablar de cosas realmente absurdas, que habláis por hablar porque las cosas relevantes os las habéis contado miles de veces.
Y es entonces cuando te das cuenta. Realmente te da igual si te ha llamado o no la atención el día que lo conociste. No te importa si te fijaste en él o no la primera vez que estuvisteis hablando de cualquier tontería. Pero te das cuenta de que hace un tiempo te levantas de la cama pensando que vas a verlo y se te ilumina la cara, que cada día que no lo ves estás más decaída, notas como poco a poco le has ido dando más importancia a hablar con él que a muchísimas otras cosas. Es ahí cuando empiezas a pensar hasta qué punto se ha vuelto imprescindible para ti. Y te das cuenta de que lo quieres, de que es su cara y no otra la que quieres ver cada mañana nada más despertarte, te das cuenta de que cuando te habla no hay nada a lo que le des más importancia, y no quieres que vuestras conversaciones acaben nunca. Y lo quieres.

My fears?
Yes.
I fear oblivion, I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark.
Too soon.
Was that insensitive? I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings.
Augustus, please. Let's return to you and your struggles. You said you fear oblivion?
I did.
Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that? (...) Hazel!
There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discover will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.