#time for the richard siken something you love is going to be taken away quote again

[spacemancharisma]

[lakesbian]

been trying to articulate how exactly worm is funny for A While and i still don’t feel like i know exactly how to touch on it but it is so fucking funny. worm is funny in the way accidentally dropping three cartons of eggs onto your floor and then slipping on them like a cartoon character when you try to clean them up is funny. like. worm is funny in the way what this richard siken quote describes is funny

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.” worm is funny in the way that life just fucking sucking and being weird as hell all the time is funny. worm is funny in the way people making dick jokes during the apocalypse because what the fuck else are they going to do is funny. kind of obsessed w/ it

[unicyclehippo]

32, 35, and 36 from your writer questions post!

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again?How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

im terrible w remembering specific lines actually? so i don’t have any lines that rly stick with me for Pondering usually it’s just vibes. but now that i have said it there’s this line i love that is actually from a richard siken interview & the idea of it sticks with me i use it myself now & again, not exactly as it was written but the behaviour, the way it makes me feel. anyway, the quote is this:

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”

35. What's your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

i love adjectives i’ll use em liberally i’ll use too many of them i like my stories to be Textured

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice…what do you Know?

this is why i love doing new things bc the advice, i think—to me at least!—isn’t really about those ephemeral things you Know but about writing from a place of knowing. so im not a famous artist but i can pick up a paintbrush & paint a picture & after i have done that i can write things better. i know the artist places their easel where it catches the light. i know what it sounds like when they wash their brushes, & how they leave the balcony door open so they can hear the radio of their neighbour in the apartment below. i know they see the world in colours of mixed paint. i know they have paint smudges in the oddest places even when they were trying to be very neat! i know that ever since they tried to drink paint water, they’ve been careful to always keep their water mug & coffee mug seperate. i know how paint feels slippery on their fingers & then tacky as it dries. i think it’s perfectly fine advice to write what u know—I think it comes from a place of stabilising a story with authenticity so that ur readers will follow u into the bits ur making up.

[tundrakatiebean]

I thought of that Richard Siken quote a lot when I was grieving:

Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.

I think when our brains are overwhelmed with Big Grief, especially when we don’t have the place that’s right for us to process it, our brains seek out little things to try to explain it. The same way depression will make you find bad things, grief makes you find sad things. No matter how little they are everything feels like an absence. It’s easier to digest the big things when you make them smaller. Thinking about how we don’t always do things right even if they seem small at the time is big. Seeing the paint you didn’t apply as nicely because it was someplace you might not see is small. Thinking about how the warmth can leave things while we’re not looking is big. Seeing a cold cup of tea is small.

It's a surreal experience, watching a funeral from four thousand miles away, and not having anywhere to put your grief.

[solskens]

things are supposed to feel good. love is supposed to feel good. especially love. especially relationships, especially sex, especially intimacy. it's supposed to feel good

[just-wublrful]

only one of you is going to make it and you’re afraid it's going to be you, or, alternatively: you are standing by the tragic hero and it is looking rough out there-

( @lasilhouetteinbianco i did it there’s moby. whoo)

A History of My Brief Body, Billy-Ray Belcourt | Antigonick, Sophokles trans. Anne Carson | The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | Doña Juana “la Loca” (1877), Francisco Pradilla | Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin | THE TRAGIC HERO UPON REACHING THE END OF THE SCRIPT REALIZES HE HAS BEEN DEAD THIS WHOLE TIME, Joan Tierney | Wishbone, Richard Siken | Orpheus and Eurydice, George Frederic Watts | Bitter Water, The Oh Hellos | Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare | YOUR LOVE FINDS ITS WAY BACK, Sierra Mulder | Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (detail, 1905), John William Waterhouse |  Wishbone, Richard Siken | Richard Siken, in an interview with James Hall | Moby Dick, Herman Melville | Weeping Nude (1913-14), Edvard Munch | Love and Pain (1895), Edvard Munch | Metamorphoses, Ovid

[ID: An assortment of various quotes, lyrics, and paintings from a variety of sources.

1. To love someone / is firstly to confess: I’m prepared / to be devastated by you.

2. Ismene: I can help you suffer. // Antigone: No. // Ismene: I can give you reasons not to die. //  Antigone: No.

3. And he took me by the hand. But he was still worrying. “It was wrong of you to come. You will suffer. I shall look like I was dead, and that will not be true...” I said nothing.

4. A painting of a young woman dressed in black. She stands in blank despair beside a casket in an open field. She is surrounded by a procession of numerous mourners, as smoke from a behind her rises into the air.

5. What are we staying here for? How long do you / want to sit in this house, eating your heart out?

6. You are kneeling at the water’s throne / When preparing for an ending scene / It’s important that / Swords drop like anchors / Yours will never rise again / I am watching from the cowberries, or / From your mother’s curtains, as if / Through a burial shroud, or

7. And it’s another wrong-man-dies scenario / and we keep doing it, Henry, / keep saying until we get it right... but we / always win and we never quit.

8. A painting of Orpheus and Eurydice at the entrance to Hades. Orpheus, in a toga, reaches out to catch Eurydice as she goes limp and pale, soul having returned to the Underworld. In the background a dead tree trunk can be seen.

9. I am not a fool entire / No, I know what is coming / You will bury me beneath the tree / I climbed when I was a child

10. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

11. My throat is a beehive pitched into the river. Look! / Look how long my love can hold it’s breath.

12. A painting of Orpheus’ head floating down a river after being torn apart by the Maenads. His face is turned upward, with pale skin and long red hair. His lyre floats beside him, alongside numerous lily pads and lilies.

13. See, we’ve won again / here we are at the place where I get to beg / for it where I get to say, Please,

14. Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.

15. “...Sleeping? Aye, toil how we may, we all sleep on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amidst greenness; as last years scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swathes — Starbuck!” But blanched to a corpse’s hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away. 

16. A painting of a nude woman sitting upon her bed, hunched over with her head in her hands and legs sprawled. She appears to be weeping. Her long, dark hair, spills around her shoulders and into her lap.

17. A painting of a woman and a man embracing each other. The woman has warm skin and long red hair, which spills over and contrasts with the man’s pale, grey skin. She buries her face into his nape, and he into her arms.

18. But when she saw him in his hapless plight, / though angry at his scorn, she only grieved. End ID.]

[thatweirdguyinthebushes]

all my dream smp playlists

as the title says, all my dream smp playlists! all quotes are by richard siken, except for the bee duo playlist, which is quote from the orestia. enjoy!

EDIT: new additions! quackity & tubbo playlist, awesamponk playlist, quackity & schlatt playlist, snowchester/post-doomsday playlist

EDIT: new new addition! a third tubbo playlist, this time in chronological order :)

OVERALL DREAM SMP PLAYLISTS

and they called it freedom (lmanberg playlist. art by qtiq. the three administrations are separated by war instrumentals. songs are ordered chronologically.)

a fresh start, with no past. (dream smp, post-doomsday/snowchester, art by quippso) I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I'd rather quit. I'd rather be sad. It's too much work.

DUO PLAYLISTS

never saw one without the other, did you? (c!tommy and tubbo. art by georgesspotify) but no ones left. you know this and i know this. together we trace out the trail away from doom. there is no hope. there is a trail. i follow you.

make it better. (c!beeduo. art by now_thatwaslie) "I'll take care of you." "It's rotten work." "Not for me. Not if it's you."

you never got to see the lights. (c!niki and c!wilbur. art by salsasscribbles) You wanted to be cremated so we cremated you and you wanted an adventure so I ran and I knew you wouldn’t catch me. You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

all that matters is that youre alive. (c!quackity and c!tubbo. art by tubbowithagun) Your skin looked blue in the television light. Your teeth looked yellow. Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest, your ribs delineated like a junkyard dog's. There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go.

getting to spend time with you aint that bad, huh? (c!awesamponk. art by ) Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany, in gold light, as the camera pans to where the action is, lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see the blue rings of my eyes as I say something ugly. I never liked that ending either.

I'm never gonna protect you again. (c!quackity and c!schlatt. art by Probably a Plant) A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wife–please. But you take him instead. You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich, and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you and he keeps kicking you.

CHARACTER PLAYLISTS

be worse. (c!niki. art by evenspelledevan) We pull our boots on with both hands but we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

he loves me, right? (c!sapnap. art by chjropta) Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you.

there is no sunrise inside. (c!sam. art by pnksh1rts) I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

trust nobody. dont even trust me. (c!quackity) We're shooting the scene where I swallow your heart and you make me spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.

i know what I'm like. that's the issue. (c!wilbur. art by ranbooz) I will turn myself into a gun, because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own.

i dont like who i am around you. (c!tommy. art by jellyilyy) I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars, thinking Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?

be better. (c!jack manifold. art by robotic-poet.) So, I said, now that we have our dead, what are we going to do with them? There's a black dog and there's a white dog, depends on which you feed, depends on which damn dog you live with.

this is checkmate. (c!tubbo playlist #1. art by beetlle) History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters. History is a little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of.

a good kid, and an even better spy. (c!tubbo playlist #2. art by sad-ist) You're going to die in your best friend's arms. And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, you've memorized it, it's all you know.

hope for the best, plan for the worst. (c!tubbo playlist #3, art by emikuthecipher, listen in order, seasons separated by c418) Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless. A stone on the path means the tea's not ready, a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still hasn't hit bottom.

[sp3mily]

omg congrats!!!! could i pls get a ☁️quote and some📜hcs for spemily? thank youuuuu

Heck yes!! Check under the cut :)

📜: Spemily Headcanons!!!

• They speak Russian to each other. Whether it's because they don't want other people to hear/understand what they're saying or because it just feels right to use Russian at the moment. They've got little nicknames for each other (And the team literally desperately tries to figure them out)

• They adore going on walks together. Like individually they both think taking walks are just okay but together, it's great. They walk around parks, they walk to the grocery store, they just go on walks wherever simply because they want to.

• They both like learning and gaining knowledge, so they teach each other bout things they don't know. Emily teaches Spencer Arabic and he teaches her Yoruba. Anything that the other isn't knowledgeable about, they'll teach them about.

• Emily really likes to dance, while Spencer thinks he has two left feet. So she teaches him how to dance and he really enjoys it. So they dance together whenever the mood hits them.

• They have a photo album that they both cherish very dearly. They each took some photos from when they were younger and put them in, then started taking more photos together. They have pictures of them in every state. Every date night, there's a photo. Any milestone, there's a photo. They both write a little message on the back of each picture so that if they ever forget, they'll remember what was happening in the picture or so after they've passed, people will be able to remember them in a special way.

☁️: "Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.” - Richard Siken

I'm a huge Siken fan, I have to start off there. I think he's brilliant and his work is beyond amazing. This is my favorite Siken quote, without a doubt. There's something to it that's both complex and simple and I adore everything about it. I think it's very true as well, I know there've been a lot of times where I'm crying and I just think to myself "I'm crying right now." And then you start looking around at everything and trying to distract yourself and you notice the little things that you hadn't seen before. I think Siken is amazing, you should definitely check his stuff out if you haven't already!

[zukosgay]

alright, what are your favourite richard siken quotes?

BOY, I GOT MANY

You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened. Your co-workers ask if everything's okay and you tell them you're just tired. And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.

but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess, while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire, and getting stabbed to death. 

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands. 

You miss the point: the face in the mirror is a little traitor, the face in the mirror is a pale and naked hostage and no one can tell which room he's being held in. 

I’ll use my body like a ladder, climbing to the thing behind it, saying farewell to flesh, farewell to everything caught underfoot and flattened.

I’m saying your name in the grocery store, I’m saying your name on the bridge at dawn.

I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars

and with this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own.

The heart is monologing about hesitation and fulfillment while behind the red the heart is drowning.

Love, love, go ahead and have another plate of it, it doesn’t run out. Of course, I wonder if they love me back, which is, really, besides the point. I don’t do it to be adored, I do it because my love keeps getting bigger and that’s what happens. 

If the dead are watching, I want them to see us writing, dancing, singing, painting. I want them to see that we still reach out to each other.

but if there is a Truth out there, to be had clearly and definitively, I’m not sure I’m the kind that can get to it; and if I can get to it I’m not sure I should be the one entrusted with it.

I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad

We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. [...]  Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses.

What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it’s only fair.

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder? Difficult, to be confronted with the fact of yourself. Opaque in the sense of finally solid, in the sense of see me, not through me.

This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them. [...] Let's say that God is the space between two men and the Devil is the space between two men 

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story. 

I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue, and final resting

I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is. 

the thing is: I am always very much in love and very much afraid and nothing else.

We make these ridiculous idols so we can pray to what’s behind them, but what happens after we get up the ladder? Do we simply stare at what’s horrible and forgive it?

My favorite kind of pie is cake. I have a giant umbrella that protects no one. My father is a sadist and I am my father’s son. These statements are not lies but perhaps they lack a certain clarity. // Someone put their hand in my heart and they didn’t take it back out. If I died tonight, no one would notice for weeks. My father is a sadist and I am my father’s son. I learned it well. Do I have the stomach for it? Do you really want to know?

Dad says he means no harm and Mom says she just gets a strong gut feeling sometimes. We’re a family of liars, but psychic and sadist are slanderous words and I don’t have the kind of proof that would hold up in a court of law. [...]  We’ve all revised our histories so many times I wonder what true things will be left to say when I’m finally allowed to say them.

God says, Which one of you fuckers can get to me first?

[endkrp-blog]

                                                        STAFF FILE.

                                                              name    eun taeoh                                                               d.o.b    07/28/1997 (19)                                                               position    lifeguard                                                               room    S02

                                                               welcome to the end.                                                                   kindest regards.

--- first, we inquire: why?

does anyone actively seek out a lifeguard job at some outdated hotel? no, no they don’t. and for taeoh it was no different. what started out as a passion for the sport turned into what most young athletes only dream of: a possible career. taeoh had been put into baseball at a young age, and from there his talent as a pitcher was evident. he’d spend hours out at the diamond with his dad; throwing the ball around and talking about the game. he’d never known anything else outside of his glove, the ball, the red sand and the cap on his head. he was a baseball player through and through: it was obvious to anyone.

then he got to the age where serious decisions had to be made, sticking with baseball being one of them. of course with the amount of promise taeoh showed there’s no way he couldn’t continue, and so he did. baseball was his life, and the high expectations that weighed upon his shoulders only grew as he did. not only was taeoh playing baseball everything to taeoh himself, but it was everything to everyone else. the amount of throwing he did tripled (along with the amount of scouts coming to his games) and things were looking, for lack of a better word, perfect. but anyone can tell you that nothing ever goes as planned, sometimes the plan itself just getting canceled in its entirety.

dead arm, they called it. taeoh knew a lot about the risk of injury when it came to baseball–it was inevitable, really–and so he knew that eventually something would strain, tear, break, anything. what he didn’t expect was for his arm to fatigue to the point where he just couldn’t throw. or rather, throw well. and so in his last year, with his university applications sent out and a variety of scouts’ phone numbers in his phone, taeoh was told to rest. he could always try out for the team next year, right?

with his dreams crushed and his family in tatters over what could be the end to his career, taeoh was sent to recuperate in none other than the lovely jeju-do. it was there that he found the lifeguard job at the end himself (he took lessons a few summers back in order to raise funds for new ball equipment), phoning home to say he’d be staying at the end until his pride arm heals and the next season begins.

--- then, we wonder: what?

there’s a lot of things taeoh desires in life: his arm to heal, his parents to leave him alone for more than two days, the scouts that used to call him every half hour to actually pick up the phone and tell him he hasn’t been left behind. most of all, he wants to get back to the game he loves and for everything to just be okay again. he’s well aware of how idealistic it would be for his arm to heal and for things to revert back, but even so, he wants it. he can’t help it. during his stay at the hotel, he’s hoping–though he’d never admit it–that he can find something outside of baseball to love. it scares him to think that if he doesn’t heal then the only thing that keeps him going will be gone. it was too easy for things to fall apart like that. the time away has only proved he has nothing if he doesn’t have baseball, and that’s no way for someone to live: athlete or not.

so now that he’s forced to go without the sport for an undetermined amount of time, amid his sulking and the job, taeoh’s praying something (or someone) will show him a reason to live again. he’s a baseball player through and through, but he’s also a person. it’s about time he started living like a nineteen year old kid and learn that there’s life outside of the diamond. he doesn’t have much of a choice either way.

--- finally, we demand: who?

“I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.” – Richard Siken

honestly too many quotes and poems from richard siken sparked my muse for taeoh, but i thought this particular quote applied to him the best. taeoh is a go getter: he’s passionate, determined, eager to make his dreams come true. he’s the type to get up at six in the morning every day even when he doesn’t have to. so, when he got dead arm, you can imagine how much turmoil that amounted to in his life. after the diagnosis, that kid slept in ‘til noon and barely made it out of bed for the rest of the day. when one thing has been your entire life for the entirety of your life, then it gets taken away from you in circumstances you can’t escape: nothing makes sense. it’s like he’s been living for nothing. not to mention he’s a kid with a flair for the dramatics so it felt like the end of the world. it was the end of his world, in a way. but of course his injury isn’t the only thing that makes him as a person, but it is his reason for being at the end, and so ultimately this quote encompasses his character and my muse for him the best. aka a lost, disappointed and constantly on the cusp of giving up boy that is doing his best to find the fire inside of himself again.