☼ "If you could
destroy the story before it started, would you—

go back—before the unnameable thing?"
—Rachel McKibbens, outhouse from blud

☼ "be who you are, even if it kills you.

it will. over and over again
even as you live."
—Joy Harjo, break my heart from An American Sunrise

☼ "There is a relationship between rebirth and realization. You do not always know when you are reborn; you may wander around in your own life, feeling in-between two things that you can't recognize or name. When it dawns on you that you have been reborn, that you are not the person you used to be, you shed that veild haze of confusion, the one that's left behind from the dead version of you, thinking it's still alive. The ghost that inhibited you before the realization passes over, fades away, and you can come into yourself again and carry on."
—Selene Corbeau, New Year, New Me: Reflections on Rebirth

☼ "You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again."
—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

☼ "we will wear
new bones again.
we will leave
these rainy days,
break out through
another mouth
into sun and honey time.
worlds buzz over us like bees,
we be splendid in new bones.
other people think they know
how long life is
how strong life is.
we know."
—Lucille Clifton, new bones from How to Carry Water

"I tell and re-tell the story
to find the answer;"
—H.D., Helen in Egypt

"And if you missed a day, there was always the next,
and if you missed a year, it didn’t matter,
the hills weren’t going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit—"
—Louise Glück, Sunrise

“But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.”
—Welcome to Night Vale, Through the Narrow Place

"What an age! Every one is dying, everything is dying, and the earth is dying also, eaten up by the sun and the wind. I don't know where I get the courage to keep on living in the midst of these ruins. Let us love each other to the end."
—George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) in her letter to Gustave Flaubert dated 27 June 1870, featured in The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert letters

"I make the tremendous effort to rise again, not to wallow anymore, not to go on just suffering or burning."
—Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

"As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.
—Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen translated by Megan Backus

"I am so busy. I am practicing
my new hobby of watching me
become someone else. There is
so much violence in reconstruction.
Each minute is grisly, but I have
to participate. I am building
what I cannot break."
—Jennifer Willough, from "The Sun Is Still A Part of Me", Beautiful Zero

"Sometimes an abyss opens between Tuesday and Wednesday
but twenty-six years could pass in a moment. Time is not a straight line, it's
more of a labyrinth, and if you press close to the wall at the right place you
can hear the hurrying steps and the voices, you can hear yourself walking
past on the other side."
—Tomas Tranströmer, Answers to Letters translated by Robin Fulton

"What goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives."
—Ursula Le Guin, Tales From Earthsea: Dragonfly

"Understanding all the ways fear stands in he way of our knowing love challenges us. Fearful that believing in love's truths and letting them guide our lives will lead to further betrayal, we hold back from love when our hearts are full of longing. Being loving does not mean we will not be betrayed. Lvoe helps us face betrayal without losing heart. And it renews our spirit so we can love again."
—bell hooks, All About Love

“That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

"Language itself is a revenant – that is, a ghost that walks again by repeating and being repeatable. It is older than the speaker, and it will live long after the speaker has died, thus indicating a future to come that is a repetition of the past and the present but still different. Language speaks the speaker, as if ghosts of past generations possesses them in order for them to express themselves to ghosts of the present as well as those of the future."
— Line Henriksen, “Spread the Word”: Creepypasta, Hauntology, and an Ethics of the Curse

"You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world."
—Mary Oliver, Dogfish

"We collide with place, which
is another name for God, and limp away with a
permanent injury. Ask for a blessing? You can try,
but we will not remain unscathed.
—Richard Silken, Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede

The Matrix Resurrections is a full-frontal attack on The Matrix, Adam Egypt Mortimer

Time Loop Narratives Are About Love, katy

i cannot return to normal, Sam Beck

reasons., taishe

I wonder what will come of us, Kiel Murray

Sunlight, Grant Snider

☼ untitled, a-really-wierd-cat and collaborators

☼ sunrise - louise glück, Lizzie Ormian

note that some of these works may only touch on these themes while others have been more influential in fleshing out these feelings. my favourites are marked with an asterisk (*). those that i've been told i should check out but haven't for whatever reason are at the bottom marked with a caret (^).

*Puella Magi Madoka Magica
*Life Is Strange
*Oxenfree
The Matrix: Resurrections
*If Found...
Returnal
Steins;Gate
*Red Dead Redemption 2

^Groundhog Day
^Deathloop
^Palm Springs
^The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask