CNF Writing Exercise: Exercise on Rhetorical Techniques
This particular photograph of me on my 2nd birthday, now faded and slightly deteriorating, seems to mock me with my dimples and wide-eyed smile.
The photo and the memories of my past are something that I often think of like a reflection in the water blurred by ripples. Anything can cause a ripple: a finger, a stone, or perhaps a droplet of rain. When we remember a memory, we remember the last time we remembered it, and so we don’t exactly remember an event as it happened. Our biases and emotions come into play to the point that we don’t exactly remember something as it truly happened. Much like ripples, these obstruct and change the reflected memory that I so want to remember. But all of my efforts are futile; I cannot remember what had made me so happy at that moment.
It would have been my 2nd birthday then, and that trike that I was riding a gift. I can’t recall any other thing other than that, and yet when I look at this photograph I feel a sense of longing for that joy that I must have felt. My reflection is still crystal clear after all the ripples have passed. It might have changed, but my memory is still intact. That’s the only hope that I have, that maybe someday I might be able to relive the same joy from the past that I relentlessly pursue.
