Continue Blogging Mon Amie

Like a half-eaten Popsicle melting into a puddle, this blog assignment is coming to an end. As everyone is finishing up their lovely blogs and putting out their own opinions for their classmates (and everyone in the blogging world that comes across these) to read I can only wonder how my own blog will be received. It's a little strange to me that people may actually read my thoughts on Slaughterhouse Five. Considering the embarrassingly minimal contributions I give to class discussions this is definitely something new to me. All the same, I've read other classmate's blogs from time to time and really enjoyed them. Lauren's blog was among the one's a enjoyed reading and the rest of this blog will be my response to her blog. "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt" was a blog that kept me reading every post! I began with the introduction and read the rest in random order (much like Vonnegut would write) to find that all the blogs interested me. My favourite things to read were the poems because they were unique. I really enjoyed that different medium of writing and the poems themselves were full of emotion.
My favourite poem was "Dabbling in Some Fiction" because it was a short and sweet summary of the book but at the same time I could totally take a few lines out of context and apply them to myself. "In my dreams; Where nothing I see; Is as it seems" I really liked this because I could see how it related to Billy and his supposed time traveling but I could also relate it to how I like to think of the world when it gets to be too bothersome. When nothing seems to go like I planned and every thing's not beautiful. Pretending that things aren't so glum can really brighten my attitude and changing my attitude can usually change the situation I'm in. I guess that everything just has a wonderful way of being linked together. It made reading the poem more emotional and its always good for a writer to be able to do that. The stylistic choice to italicize each poem was good to see because it created some consistency in the blog posts as well.
"Travelling In Time..." was another one of my favourite blogs by Lauren because it made me wish she hadn't travelled to the next moment each time. As silly as that sounds, each moment and its description was so well written that I felt as if I were reading a snippet of a novel. Honestly, the first moment in the hospital was so suspenseful! I wanted to badly to find out who was being visited and if they got better, I felt bad for the family that was going through that and wanted to be a part of that world so that I could tell them...but it wasn't my place. Every character had been described with little description but so much emotion that it really made me think, "this girl seriously needs to write a book!" Even if the moments were short (which they were meant to be to resemble Billy's travels in time, I understand that) I felt that each of them were separate but connected because of the main character (Lauren of course) that seemed so real and that the elevator was present in each of them (good attention to detail by the way). Overall, this blog post seemed very personal to me as a read it and I felt that I got to know Lauren a little better just through this. I think she should think about beginning her novel someday soon (see her blog post #12), because the thoughts and ideas she has for it sound good to me!
"Certainty" is the final blog post I'm going to discuss because it kept me thinking after I finished reading it. Though it is short, it provokes thought so don't skip it friends! Okay, I also like the idea that the Tralfamadorians don't bother to try and change their fate because they know its structured that way and they just accept that. As I've said before in my blogs that I'm a believer of fate and to me this idea sounds great! I think that if you know the way something is going to end you shouldn't avoid it by doing all that you can to "change the moment" it just can't be changed. I over think a lot of things too, just trying to plan ahead for whatever I may choose to over think at a given moment is too much. I think that learning to accept whatever is going on at the moment and just working with what I'm given is something that I should try to adapt to my daily life, but that is easier said than done of course. Anyways, Lauren brings up the good point that we're not like the Tralfamadorians and that we don't know what our future holds so we shouldn't try to change it, just prepare for it in a way. In my opinion, planning too far ahead or over thinking everything in order to avoid some kind of disappointment or to expect a reward in the future causes us to lose sight of the present. Ultimately that's all we really have, the present. No one can really tell us what the future holds and we certainly can't go back in time like Billy to relive moments or to see things backwards, just trying to live each day the best we can. Yeah, that scene in the novel stuck in my memory too and it brought many ideas about the present, fate and Carpe Diem so thank you Lauren for bringing that scene to every one's attention!
Overall, I really enjoyed this blog because it seemed so personal and at the same time thought provoking for the reader. I made connections between parts of the novel and I found out that the structure isn't as important as what is being written (quality over quantity folks). Thus the blogging assignments come to an end on Monday and everyone will probably stop using their accounts but I'll still remember the blogs that made me think, much like I can still taste the sweetness of that Popsicle that melted twenty minutes ago.