"I guess I just like liking things"
This is truly THE collection of poetry for me. I could read it a hundred times and see something new and different every single time. "Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out" and "You are Jeff" are my personal favorites, but every single line is absolutely beautiful and gut-wrenching. I love everything Siken says and does and this work has had such an impact.
I genuinely hate football with my entire being, so the fact that a story that's (sort of) about football is first on this list should scare you. It's just such a wonderful, distinct world that is both impossibly grand and beautifully mundane. The most human story I've ever read, and it's told by three sentient space probes. It's hilarious and poetic and will leave you far too emotional about a lightbulb.
And I think, "this can't be Heaven if I'm getting scared, right?" And then I think, "maybe I am in Heaven, and Heaven is scary."
This script is a very different film than the one that exists today. Frankly, this is for the best, but the script is still worth the read considering just how many jokes and little bits of lore are in here. It's almost impressive that a movie as absurd as this one came from even less grounded origins. I love you Rachel and Emma I know this was probably such a fucking joy to write.
Reading books has never been quite the same for me since I was a kid, a book constantly hidden in my lap of under my covers. Then, it was like breathing, turning the page somehow more natural than looking up from it and being so jarred by the world still existing around you. This book has brought me closer to that feeling than I've been in years, something about it is just so all-consuming. I do find that Kurt Vonnegut's voice is confusing at first, but has eventually become so distinct that I can almost feel myself thinking in it. It's science and religion and all the other comforting lies we perpetuate in the face of annihilation.
Americans are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.
In a post-hunger games world absolutely littered with vague and corny takes on dystopia, I am here to tell you that this is THE apocalypse. You know it because you're living it. It isn't a single moment where everything fell apart, isn't an unfamiliar world with human society restructed around being in Gryffindor or whatever. It's a slow decline, one that feels more familiar with each passing day. It's omniscient and beautiful and so fucking terrifying in just how right it manages to be.
“You’re so young,” he said. “It seems almost criminal that you should be so young in these terrible times. I wish you could have known this country when it was still salvageable.”
“It might survive,” I said, “changed, but still itself.”
“No.” He drew me to his side and put one arm around me. “Human beings will survive of course. Some other countries will survive. Maybe they’ll absorb what’s left of us. Or maybe we’ll just break up into a lot of little states quarreling and fighting with each other over whatever crumbs are left. That’s almost happened now with states shutting themselves off from one another, treating state lines as national borders. As bright as you are, I don’t think you understand—I don’t think you can understand what we’ve lost. Perhaps that’s a blessing.”
“God is Change,” I said.
“Olamina, that doesn’t mean anything.”