#13. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.

I want to part with a quote from the second-best book I've ever read, which I find relative to Vonnegut's mentality of live versus death:

Peace out =)

#12. If you could choose to live forever, would you?

Honestly, I haven't read many books, though this year I've tried to compensate for that. But one book that I did read in my middle school years was Natalie Babbit's Tuck Everlasting. I read it on my own time actually because my then-favorite actress Alexis Bledel had starred in the 2002 film version of it.

Here's a brief summary:

A sheltered little girl named Winnie discovers the Tucks, a family who lives forever because they drank spring water flowing from a beautiful forest tree. She learns of their strange limbo existence and is warned of the disadvantages of immortality. In short time, Winnie becomes accepted and loved by the Tucks in a way that she has never been loved by her own family. She also becomes infatuated with Jesse Tuck, the adolescent son. However, a misunderstanding with the law forces the Tucks to leave town, but not before Winnie is given a bottle of the last of the spring water. However, Winnie does not use the water for herself and naturally dies.

This has a different perspective of the concept of time. When I read S-5, I tried to convince myself that maybe everything does happen all at once. Then I realized it couldn't be. I want to prove this one step further with Tuck Everlasting. Like, what if someone lived FOREVER? How does everything happen all at once for that person?
Though Babbit's work focuses more on why mortality is necessary, it also presents the idea (by using the Tucks) that time is what prevents everything from happening at once. The Tucks teach Winnie why allowing the world immortality would disrupt the balance of life. It would throw human out of the great cycle of life and death, turning them into the equivalent of rocks The cycle of life and death can be LOGICALLY PROVEN. People who believe in reincarnation would also support this belief. And a cycle most certainly does not happen all at once.

"Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is."
— Tuck Everlasting

The past comes before the present, the present before the future. Time machines are a figment of the imagination. They will never be invented because Time does not allow us to move in and out of its three states. Time is a funny thing.
Like I hinted in earlier posts, Billy became unstuck in time because he was insane. The best way to cope with tragic happenings is to let go of the memory. If you no longer remember what has happened, you will not make yourself believe that you can revisit it. I could try and try to explain how I think time works, but tehre will be people who will disagree with my opinions. But, Billy was obviously suffering from PTSD, so I don't think he actually did become unstuck in time.
However, Vonnegut's narrative outlook on the matter of death is still relevant. Though a person may be dead, he was alive in many other moments. And some people need that reassurance to move forward with their lives.

Yet, memories mix into one another like liquids as time passes.



#11. No one knows, I realize...

So.

Just a Dream - Nelly

 [2010]

I've had a change of heart. Although a fascinating concept, I don't think one can actually be unstuck in time. I thought maybe, just maybe, everything does happen all at once. But, all delusions aside, time does come and pass. We live then die after all, don't we? And no one is scientifically alive after they are dead.

The song Just a Dream by Nelly cleared the misconception of being unstuck in time. Although I've heard it many times before, when I heard it playing today at Adie-Knox during my swim instructor class, I was also thinking about S-5. Which led me to think about The Great Gatsby (I'll explain the relevance later on).

I was thinking about her,

thinking about me,

thinking about us,

what we gonna be?

Open my eyes, it was only just a dream.

So I travel back, down that road

When she come back?

No one knows, I realize,

It was only just a dream.

I had an epiphany.

For a brief moment, the lyrics made me nostalgic. So I was left to wonder: if everything happens all at once, we would not look back on the past. But we do. We regret certain things for a very long time before we learn to move past them. For some of us, it takes even longer. I don't travel back in time like Billy Pilgrim. And I'm pretty sure no one else does unless the entire world is keeping a secret from me. We can only revisit lost people and places in memories. Some people exist only in our memories, dead or alive. And because memories do exist, and because memories are poignant, life must not happen all at once.

I'm going to bring in an example from The Great Gatsby. The wealthy Jay Gatsby built his adult life around getting back with his ex-flame Daisy Buchanan. He joined the bootlegging business to make the money to impress her. Jay often reflects back to the breezy, calm night that Daisy was in his arms and the two were so in love. Gatsby gave up his morals and involved himself in illicit activities to chase that memory. He was blinded by the past and nourished the dream that he and Daisy could be in love again. Needless to say, that never did happen.

Now I'm in the club thinking all about my baby.

Hey, she was so easy to love.

But wait, I guess that love wasn't enough.

I'm going through it every time that I'm alone

And now I'm missing, wishing she'd pick up the phone.

But she made a decision that she wanted to move on

'Cause  I was wrong.

But let me paraphrase Vonnegut's words and say that the past, present and future has always been, and always will be. Jay Gatsby refused to accept that Daisy would never be able to love him the way he wanted her to, and that led to his untimely death.

I think there is a deeper message in Vonnegut's novel. He wasn't necessarily believing that time happens all at once. If we examine the history of his life, we realize he must have seen some pretty tragic things in his years as a soldier. There are things he wants to forget or wish had never happened. His coping mechanism for those times is to appreciate that although he had awful experiences, he had also experienced miracles and good times. The diamond stone that Billy found in his jacket and his time as a labourer in the malt syrup factory are examples of this. I am going to assume at this point that these events are highly autobiographical. Vonnegut was trying to convey the thought that we shouldn't dwell on what's happened, because it has happened, and always will happen. Fate has control of us in that sense. We shouldn't try to correct the past, but learn to live with it. He took the good and the bad with the mentality that whatever will be, will be.

 If you ever loved somebody put your hands up,

If you ever loved somebody put your hands up

And now they're gone and you wish you could give them everything...

#10. I'm off to see a blog, the wonderful blog by Jordyn

I ended up on Jordyn's blog a couple weeks back because sometimes I wonder how people think, as strange as that sounds. And so I thought, "Hey, I wonder what Jordyn wrote on her blog." (Well, I didn't really think that, but somehow I was curious what her blog looked like that day).

As I read on, I learned different ways to appreciate S-5, even though some of her opinions were different than mine. Her posts were also entertaining, so props to her (Y).

Post: http://shouse5.blogspot.com/2011/03/warped-narrative-assignment-4.html

I wanna start with reviewing her time-warping post. I love short stories, so I started with that. I am (-slash- was) a huge Miley Cyrus fan, which made the post even more interesting to read. Jordyn's metaphors were quite striking as visual aids.

Two great examples of this are:

• As the passengers hit the rough concrete, their seatbelts dangled uselessly in the light summer's breeze.

• She fought through the growing crowd, which seemed to swirl around her, swallowing her the way an explorer that has fallen into a pit of quicksand will be swallowed as he fights to escape in inevitable fate.

She also manipulated Vonnegut's style into her own writing, which I thought was very clever:

You might even have said that it sounded scared, as if its owner was not in total enjoyment of the situation at hand. That was I.  I was that owner of that voice.

As I read on, I was amazed at how well she captured the feeling and intensity of each time-warp. It felt very Vonnegut-inspired and I adored her amazing story-telling talents.

Post: http://shouse5.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-am-incapable-of-using-technology.html

I loved the creativity in her blog. In one of her recent posts, she made a photoshopped picture (though she says she's not great with Photoshop). I think it's neat when people try out new things, and I liked the pciture; the lego figures made me smile. I'll probably mention this to her in French class tomorrow aha. I'm still confused as to what the blue outlined rectangle is though =P.  But she chose an idea that I was struggling with before too: what if everything does happen all at once? It's strange to accept because we think in such a linear fashion. I would not want to know my own fate either, what a scary thought.

Her closing lines, When we only look back on what has already happened, we turn into a pillar of salt, wowed me. It's one of those things you read that makes you a little more optimistic about life. I'm somewhat a pessimist, no lie. So it was good to know that there are optimistic people like Jordyn out there.

Post: http://shouse5.blogspot.com/2011/04/valencia.html

Her character analysis of Valencia Merble was similarily thought-provoking. I don't read too much into things when it comes to books, so that particular post was an eye-opener. My afterthought after reading her ideas was that Merble does represent the flaws of society.
I was a little lost with the passage until she stated that "the major flaw that Valencia and society have in common between them is their constant consumption and lack of production." And I thought, "Hey, she's right." Valencia eats and eats and doesn't do anything for society, even with all the money her daddy owns. And us, we all take and take but hardly ever give. We want more for less. Technology gives us what we want without having to exercise for it. For example, a remote control was invented so that we don't have to leave the couch to change the channel (I am not saying remote controls are bad inventions so hold on). This may seem like trivial matters, but inventions such as a butter glue stick to spread butter on our bread slices more easily is ridiculous. Clever, but ridiculous.
As she so aptly states: "We could all help humanity out if we all tried to be a little less like Valencia Merble."

Post: http://shouse5.blogspot.com/2011/04/looking-back-on-slaughterhouse-five.html

On an ending note, I also agreed with a few points in Jordyn's blog post "Looking back on S-5".  She wrote that "Vonnegut is stressing the importance and neccesity of finding meaning within our lives." The thing is, "everybody dies but not everybody lives (Moment 4 Life - Nicki Manaj ft. Drake)". If we don't find meaning in our lives, we lose all effort to live. Billy welcomed his death, yes, but he enjoyed living his life. Vonnegut just had a dark, satiric way of expressing it.

Check it out!

http://shouse5.blogspot.com/

So it goes.

#9. Could-have, Should-have, Would-have...and the Nothing-at-all's

If you could change something about the novel, what would it be?

I would change absolutely nothing about it. I realize this sounds sooo lame, but I thought about it.

After thinking of what I didn't like and what I did like about the book, I realized that you have pros and cons in life. Vonnegut tried to make his novel realistic in a sci-fi sort of method, which worked with the events. To take away any part of the novel would be to destroy the very essence of it. It may not seem that the trivial sections of the book would matter (such as what books Kilgore Trout wrote), or it may seem that some events were not given enough time to play out (such as Edgar Deby's execution). The reality is that that was how Vonnegut wanted to write the book. He actually graded his novels at one point in his life (Google this if you don't believe me). The only novel he gave an A+ to was to S-5. That says something about how he felt about this particular work. He downplayed Derby's execution because it was just one more death in his book. So it goes.

And think about it this way:

• Is there a more comedically tragic way ofValencia dying rather than of carbon monoxide poisoning? I have an odd sense of humor, I must admit, but the way Vonnegut described her anxiety when news of Billy's plane accident hit made the whole scene amusing. Ironically, she was the one who ended up dying as she was on her way to visit Billy in hospital.
• Is there a better beginning to a book than giving it all away? It's like a PowerPoint presentation, you present Table of Contents  for what you will cover, and then you break it down. It helps organize a reader's thought process. The quality of a book should not have to rely on surprise and suspense, but on its content and uniqueness. And what's more unique than the random line "Poo-tee-weet"?
• Is there really a better way than Pilgrim being killed othered than by a hitman of Lazzarro's choice? I doubt it. There was satisfaction and a sense of closure when Lazzarro fulfilled his revenge. Otherwise, Lazzarro's character would have just been another lame all-words-no-show kinda guy, which is already ubiquitous in life. That would have been boring.

S-5 is perfect the way it is because I couldn't imagine it being written with alternative scenes. It may be a psychologically human thing to think this way, but that's my take on this.

#8. Time, Time, Time Again, Younger Now Than We Were Before

What scene in the novel would lend itself well to film and why?

A fun scene to produce into film is the blurb about how Billy Pilgrim and his peers had to work in a factory that produced malt syrup. Billy actually revisted this memory of Dresden during a time of unconsciousness, so it can be inferred that he was time-travelling again. Film is the most effective way of producing the feel of a protagonist experiencing a dreamy, hazy, other-world.
This part of the novel was written in an amusing, nostalgic kinda way. The narrator seemed to miss the taste of the malt syrup, and tried to decribe it in a way that could also be decribed via film. A novel leads much to the imagination, whereas with film there is visual aid. A visual of the malt syrup would evoke the audience's taste buds to a higher degree.
The comedic aspect of the paragraphs was how child-like the workers acted. Although they were supposed to be working dilligently in the factory, they secretly spooned the malt syrup. Vonnegut details that spoons were hidden all over the factory in radiators and rafters. This sentence made me chuckle. It reminded me of how children act when they try to hide some petty "crime". I don't know what malt syrup tastes like, but I can assume that it actually does taste good, though it is possible that Billy only thought it tasted euphoric because of the lack of substantial food.

Yum yum.

In my head, this is how the scene runs:

-The screen is a haze; a tik-tok noise plays as background music, this music merges with factory sounds (implies time-travelling)
-Reveal a tablespoon that is thrust into a vat of a thin honey substance, turned round and round and re-emerges like a gooey lollipop
-This is plopped into a human's mouth; zoom out; it is Billy Pilgrim's pleasured face
-Suddenly, the workers hear someone else coming; suspenseful music plays
-A person of authority is auditing the factory
-The factory workers now appear to be hard at work
-As soon as the manager figure leaves, the workers simultaneously take their spoons from their hiding places and spoon some syrup on the sly
-The sound of footsteps play again
- Billy Pilgrim sees Edgar Derby through a factory window wanting some syrup, and quickly shoves a spoonful into his gaping mouth; Edgar's surpised face would be worth a thousand words
- Billy hides the spoon
-The workers spring up, immediately hide the spoons, and proceed with sweeping the floor or cleaning lavatories (or whatever else they were doing)

Ta-da.

#7. I Haven't Done This in Awhile...

This is what I felt when I read Slaughterhouse Five, in poetry form. I haven't written poems in a long, long while, and it's hard to be lyircally passionate about book-reading aha, but this is it. S-5 made me visit my memories as I was reading, especially the ones I hated and the ones I wish I could redo. I'm so intrgued by Vonnegut's mentality about time that that has become the theme of my blog. Vonnegut's words of wisdom made me want to come to peace with all my regrets. And I'm not just saying that. This is me trying to come unstuck in time. I hope it makes no sense.

Epigram or epitaph,
I could not understand those four lines
What is black ink on manilla paper
When it is both read but unread
At once.

I fell through the pages
Had to pace myself the second time around
I rushed past floating trees and pebble trails
It was then the lines unblurred into words.

Bygone days became mental scenery
As I sat there on the staircase beneath a chandelier
Reading these damn paragraphs-
Please
Stop the tidal waves now.

But my mind ran the 5K into my past
And suddenly I am time-warping in my head
This is my moment of weakness
I'm not leaning against a tree, falling asleep,
I'm sifting through mental photographs,
A disarrayed collection that I have forced into order...

That March day when you couldn't figure out a classic riddle
A summer when you left for the place of your childhood
There you jumped off a train bridge into water
And broke through the surface on an August day
I can feel the warm rain that drenched my jeans that October 9th
You filled out the letters to a hangman
Cut to the Sunday afternoon in January that I fell up the stairs
And a late April night that you were at my door
I begged my brother to tell you I wasn't home
But you walked through the front door
Knew all the steps up to my room
The floor dropped on the Canada Day that you closed the glass door
And I was walking barefoot on hot pavement.
The seasons were rolling around again.

A best friend lost,
And a lot of growing up to do,
But it was like a chain reaction that I couldn't follow.
Billy seemed lost all along
Somehow I found peace in his insanity
But I cannot in mine.

I've lived through the dead ends and open holes countless times
Scrawled out every possible way to describe all that happened
Yet my paper heart is still as blank as a cloudless sky.

Time can make you ugly,
But
What is time,
death,
and life
When I cannot feel anything at all?

Could I live the way Billy lives
Without regret,
resistance of fate
and
free will?
But you know I'm fallible
Chagrin has been all I could feel for the last few seasons
I've been treading in quicksand
Painted in colors so wrong that I could black out heaven's field.

And
This book
So broken and raw
Distorted yet enlightening
I loved it.

I found a way to come unstuck in time.

Live vs. Death [QUOTE]

'The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."'

-Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

#6. Slaughterhouse Five & Catch-22

I picked up Joseph Heller's Catch-22 during the March Break. I find it strikingly similar to S-5 because both novels are anti-war novels and the events are described out of sequence so that the respective time lines develop along with the plots. In addition, both works deal with the themes of inevitability of death and sanity versus insanity. Vonnegut made it clear that everything happens all at once, and though a person was dead in one moment, they were alive in many other moments. Heller narrates that although his main character wants to live, he will ultimately die. No one is certain whether Billy Pilgrim imagined the alien abductions or if they were real, and no one can escape the wrath of the term catch-22.
Honestly though, I find Catch-22 more hilarious than S-5. S-5 had elements of crude humour, such as how a dog (fed a slab of meat with bits of spring wire in it.) began bleeding from the inside out. I am only half-way through Catch-22. BUT my friend spoiled the ending for me. Apparently towards the end of the book, the style and tone becomes more pessimistic, and its a bitter ending.
So here's a briefing of the novel: It's about what happens to a certain U.S. squadron in WWII. The main character is Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier, who wants to finish the amount of missions required for him to go home. However, the number of missions needed is always raised. In the end of the novel, Yossarian still does not return home because the number has again been raised. There is also the concept of Catch-22, which I will explain in depth later. The lives of other characters are also narrated, and the events (though out of order) run into each other in a non-linear fashion that although is jumbled, makes sense.
Catch-22 is "a dilemma from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions" (Merriam Webster). For Yossarian to go home, he either has to finish his missions or be declared insane. But because he does not want to fly more missions, he must therefore be sane. So even if he is done his missions, he must still fly more missions because he is not insane.
The hilarity of Heller's masterpiece takes away some of the magic of Vonnegut's creation, although both books are captivating. They were real eye-openers, helping me see the world in a new perspective. These are the kind of books we should be reading in school.

#5. And I Could Tell You...

I want to think alot of us have tried to write a novel of some sort during some point in our lives. Honestly, I have something like a novel that's about two years in the making. It's embarassing, really. It's about two-fifths complete. People say the first novel you write will always be the most personal. I think that's right in some aspects, in the sense that the emotions and some of the more major events have a basis in reality. So the basis of my work would have to be pieced together from things that have happened to my friends, my family, or me. But it can also be highly fictitious in other aspects of that realm.
I used time warping as I was trying to piece out my novel. I wasn't actually aware that time warping came from Vonnegut. I mean, I don't have flying spaceships, an abducted protagonist, or Tralfamadorians in it, but it's cuts and cuts of flashbacks told in real time. It was difficult trying to limit what I told, which character types I threw in, and where I would set the novel. I ended up creating a fictitious city close to Toronto as my setting, as I have lived in Southeastern Ontario for a very long time. I also tried adding in places I have visited or people I knew well have visited; cities such as Orlando and small towns such as Spring Lake. I didn't want to write about places I didn't know.
What I want people to learn from my novel is that there is no such thing as fairy tales in real life. There are happily-ever-after's, I won't argue with that. But I think that when I was a child, someone had forgot to tell me that storybook weddings weren't real. I think I would have come to peace with things (that have happened) years earlier had someone just told me so. I hate how exaggerated some television shows are, especially 90210 and Private Practice. I think a novel should have its awkward moments, scenes that don't make sense, and questions left unaswered. Because as trite as it sounds, that's what life is. So that's what my novel will be like. I want to say alot of awful things have happened to me, which I don't know if it's true in relation to other people's lives. I also hate talking about personal matters in person, which is probably why I text a whole lot more than I talk.
My novel would be realistic fiction. The general plot centers in on a girl throughout the first twenty years of her life, complete with flashbacks, a prologue, and (there will be) an epilogue.
That's all.

#4. Born on the 17th [Time-Warping]

Sabrina Song walked along the gritty sidewalk of her New Jersey hometown, Spring Lake. As if on cue, the grey clouds had cracked open, and summer rain was pouring down from the broken sky. It was night time, yet somehow the clouds lit up heaven's field. The bitter wind bit fiercely at her bare legs. She let her mind replay that day’s events as to distract herself from the cold. Earlier on the beach sands, she had watched the headlights land on her before the Audi had swerved away, taking Pierre and Sebastian Langlois along with it. It wasn't her fault. They knew that, but they refused to do admit it.  Sabrina didn't want to think about Alexis Riverton's death. Yet Sebastian's words permeated her mind...

"There’s nothing we can do to bring back Alexis. Just face it. It might be the wrong thing to do, but I just want to forget about her, about this, and about you."

They were no longer the eight-year-olds who ran around playing ding-dong-ditch on neighborhood doors. Although she was thirteen already, she felt absolutely hopeless. Her feet kept moving along in a perfunctory manner, but her head was somewhere else. She couldn’t walk backwards in time, just like how she couldn’t save Alexis. Her suicide had been unforeseen, but the guilt had engulfed Sabrina whole. Though she couldn't have handled Alexis entirely on her own, she regretted never understanding the depth of the situation. Sebastian and Pierre were the ones who had drifted away from them. It wasn't just her fault.

A half hour later, Sabrina found herself fumbling through the front door of her middle-class house. No one was home, and no lights were on. She liked it that way. She walked slowly up the wooden stairs and continued walking down the hallway until she reached a wall. Turning right, she blundered into the bathroom and that was when her vision began to blur. She weakly shut the door and sat there in the darkness. Reality dawned upon her then. Alexis Riverton, her best friend of eight years, really was gone forever. There she lay, collapsed on the bathroom floor, balling her eyes out.

The bitter tears fell fast and quick down her alabaster cheeks. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in her bedroom. Sabrina looked around at the four walls that contained her, trying to piece together the answers in her mind. She didn’t know how she ended up in this situation.  Liam Everson, her ex-beau, was not the kind of boy she had thought she would end up with. Senior year was supposed to have been…different.

She heard a knock on her bedroom door. Knowing very well who it was, she took her both her flip flops and chucked them at the door. She then proceeded with screaming a slur of expletives.

“Sab, I’m so sorry,” was the hesitant reply.

 Sabrina ignored Liam. She lied there calmly on the carpeted floor. At almost eye level with the floor , she could scan the entire area underneath her bed. Her vision caught hold of a memory box that she had stashed there months ago. It was the wooden gift that her best guy friend Cody Carrasco had sawed and pieced together for her  as a sixteenth birthday gift. She reached for it and opened the lid. The first thing she saw was a tiny manila envelope with her name scrawled upon it in a familiar bubbly handwriting. She emptied it of its contents. Folded notes poured out. Sabrina picked one up and opened it. She touched the letters as she read the words, and wisps of seasons-old memories crashed into her mind like tidal waves.

What was Cody askin u bout earlier today?

She was suddenly in Law class again, watching a CSI episode that Mr. Garlick had thrown into the tape player.  Actually, Sabrina had had her head down on the desk until she felt something light bounce off her head. Her best friend Brooklyn Costa had chucked a note at her. Sabrina had discreetly plucked the note off the floor and unwrinkled the scrap of lined paper.

Not wanting to answer immediately (or at all), Sabrina feigned interest in the television screen. It was a scene where a terrorized girl had run up the stairs, disturbed because there was an intruder in her house. She raced into her closet and shut it closed. She was breathing heavily, and suspenseful music played in the background. Suddenly, two hands from the darkness behind her reached out and gagged her mouth. It turned out the man had been in her closet the whole time.

At this scene, Sabrina literally jumped in her seat. The rest of the class noticed and then laughed. Mr. Garlick, who stood at his podium desk marking assignments, had a half-smile on his face. Brooklyn chuckled and raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. Sabrina shoved the note in her pocket and pushed down an uneasy sensation. She stared at Brooklyn and couldn’t help but wonder.

Sabrina knew how it all ends, and how it all began. And she hated that.

I'm on the Verge of Chapter Seven

I didn't know who Kurt Vonnegut was 'til a few months ago.
It's kind of depressing actually, 'cause he introduced some fascinating ideas that I would have loved to have known years before. His concept that life happens all at once, and only humans see it in a linear fashion, is so intriguing. He makes death seem less of a sad thing, because he explains that the person was alive in many other moments. I guess this mentality could also pertain to people who were in my life before but are no longer here. Most of them sort of just slipped right out of my life, for reasons only Life itself would know. But for the few others that didn't end on good terms, I try not to go back to it except for the good memories. Because for all the bad memories, the nothing-at-all's and the closed glass door, I suppose there are just as many good memories.
This book really solidified my belief in fate. I wasn't so certain about it before. I kind of hoped that there was such thing as free will. But the miracles that happen in life and the bad things that happen in life (which are sometimes uncalled for) seem to prove that the future is a definitive thing. We don't know if shooting stars will land, but someone out there does. That's the scary thing.

#3. On Censorship in Literature [edited]

Literature that raises eyebrows, that causes controversies, especially in the twenty-first century, should be censored or withheld. A lot of people will probably disagree with my opinion, but I have my reasoning.
I feel that in our world, right now, there's so much more freedom of expression because of social networking. Facebook allows employers and teachers to interact with employees and students at a highly personal level. There is also less privacy. And so many times the line blurs and people cross it without even realizing it. I don't think that's a good thing.
I don't consider S-5 controversial literature. Most people in our time and age don't. What I'm saying is literature considered CONTROVERSIAL IN OUR DAY AND AGE should be censored. I guess subject matter would be the main issue.
For controversial literature to not be censored, to not be withheld, seems dangerous to me. Songs these days are already poorly censored. I remember running into a 7-year-old singing London Bridge back when Fergie was huge in the music biz. Although songs like Fergie's London Bridge is not intended for little children, kiddies come into contact with it because it's a small world. Kiddies singing explicit song lyrics is frowned upon.
So why shouldn't controversial literature be banned/censored? If it's for the greater human good, then that's the way things should be. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows one to express his own thoughts and feelings as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's rights. If a piece of literature offends certain groups of people, why should it not be censored?
I might be old-fashioned in some aspects, but there's just some things that you shouldn't say out loud. There's a reason why we have that little voice inside our heads to tell us when to stop talking. I'm just saying.

#2. A Quote from K.V.

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - K.V.

Sometimes, when I stand in the middle of the action, I feel I don't have a full perspective of the situation. I always have tunnel vision in those cases. But when I'm on the outside looking in, I feel sure of what the right decisions are, even though I'm not the person making the decisions at that moment. But when you're on the outside, you want to make sure that you're not too far away.
Another way to look at this Vonnegut quote would be to emphasize carpe diem. Seizing the day. It's always been something easier said than done. We're all on the pursuit of happiness, but there's always been that brick wall. I hate that brick wall.
I wish I had had some of Vonnegut's wisdom all my life. He doesn't seem like the kind of man to dwell on the past. Slaughterhouse Five is representative of that. He seemed like the kind of man who didn't let the past impair his judgements for the future.
What doesn't kill you, can only make you stronger.

"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people." - Randy Pausch

#1. Fate vs. Free Will

"There is really no such thing as what might have been. There's what happened and what will happen. I've just had to realize that what might have been is imaginary, and it's this beautiful illusion of how it could have been if you had just done this right ... But things don't line up ... and you mess up for a reason." -Taylor Swift

I've always imagined that the future was dependent upon the decisions we come up with, that the future was silly putty which could be molded to our liking. But over time, I've figured out that the future is something both unfathomable and untouchable. It's a beautiful thought, believing in free will. However, I realized that I don't always have free will because life happens.You don't determine the life you're born into. You can't pick your family (though sometimes we wish we could) or choose what you look like (besides with plastic surgery). There's also only one Paris Hilton in the world. She didn't choose to be born into a world of glamour. It just so happened. Most people aren't that fortunate. And some people are born into poverty. Some people have to pour cold water onto their cereal because they can't afford milk. This is fate's play.
The power of free will is also nonexistant in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Billy Pilgrim never chose to be abducted by the Tralfamadorians. I know that with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But not everything that happens can be explained with that logic.
The question still stands. Why Billy Pilgrim?
Fate.
Life is like a road, paved with thousands upon thousands of forks in the path. I suppose it's what you do with your situation that determines your life. But I think whether you turn left or you turn right, the path you tread on is the one you were meant to take. The other path is a "beautiful illusion". In your mind it stands as something that could have happened, but in reality it could never have happened. My mantra has always been that everything happens for a reason. That good things fall apart so that better things can fall together. I'd be living a life of regret at this point if I didn't believe in fate.
That's my take on this.

"There's a peace in knowing that all things that turned into dead ends turned into dead ends for a reason. If I felt a different way, it would be hard to sleep at night." -Taylor Swift

Unstuck in Time

So.
This is my S-5 blog, dedicated to my ENG 3UN blog assignment.

Here's the DL: I have a fascination with the essence of time, which will become apparent as I update this blog. The titles of my posts will sometimes seem completely irrelevant to the body. Those are song lyrics that do in fact capture the main idea of my post.

I'm just a little quirky.
Ta-ta.

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."
-Tralfamadorian, Slaughterhouse Five