The House of Memories
Memories are like bullets—coming in all shapes and sizes and unknown impacts.
Some are blanks, only hitting the sky as fine powder. Others whiz by, only spooking you.
But then there are the select few, that even when your armor is on, even if you are protected
by walls of steel, will find a way to tear you open and leave you in pieces. These bullets are
the ones that no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim,
hit you deep in the bone, rock your whole structure—the memories that remain with you
forever.
So, you can only be a blind soldier when entering the house of memories. Every
memory—the fragments, the strings, the bursts—will be thrown at you. All you can do
before going out onto the field is brace yourself in your armor and helmet. You, soldier,
have created these memories, but not even the veterans of the House can accurately recall
the force of their memory’s bullets.
You arrive at a winding staircase—smooth mahogany and cold to the touch. As you
begin to descend, time slows and quickens. The stairs themselves change: one moment, the
too tight bricks of your first house, next the stained, jam-filled carpet of your lower school.
Your feet meet the cracked cobble stone walkway of Shanghai, China and then the rough
planks of your grandparent’s home.
An etched sign in neat, small letters reads: This is not a museum. You will not find
plaques with descriptions interpreting pictures; you will not be given answers. This is a house
filled with rooms, and it’s up to you to discover its heart.
The first door comes into view. It looks harmless—paint chipped frame and all. You
wiggle the knob and put your whole weight on the wood before it...
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...ss shatters.
You slam the door shut to the room only filled with shards of glass, and your feet are
already at the top of the stairs. And you’re out of the house, out of the warzone. The first
thing you want to do is sit in on one of Grandpa’s salt and pepper interrogations. The two of
you together will be blind soldiers. And whenever Mama goes looking for you, all she will
see are two pairs of gleaming eyes: one broken with the sharp edges of stars and sky and the
other with shards of glass. Mama will know to leave.
There is a girl running through our hallway with bullet holes through her shirt and fire
beginning to eat its way towards her scalp. But worse than the missing arm and scorched
hair, she has a house, but not a home, a chocolate ganache cake, but not a Carvel, a grandpa
under a table, instead of on a chair, and a broken reflection.
a. Walk down stairs and out the door b. jump off roof c. run down stairs and out the door d. none of these
Bullets flying through the air right over me, my knees are shaking, and my feet are numb. I see familiar faces all around me dodging the explosives illuminating the air like lightning. Unfortunately, numerous familiar faces seem to disappear into the trenches. I try to run from the noise, but my mind keeps causing me to re-illustrate the painful memories left behind.
This book was published in 1981 with an immense elaboration of media hype. This is a story of a young Mexican American who felt disgusted of being pointed out as a minority and was unhappy with affirmative action programs although he had gained advantages from them. He acknowledged the gap that was created between him and his parents as the penalty immigrants ought to pay to develop and grow into American culture. And he confessed that he got bewildered to see other Hispanic teachers and students determined to preserve their ethnicity and traditions by asking for such issues to be dealt with as departments of Chicano studies and minority literature classes. A lot of critics criticized him as a defector of his heritage, but there are a few who believed him to be a sober vote in opposition to the political intemperance of the 1960s and 1970s.
Upon renovating the quaint little house on the hill with my mom, my own feelings toward the house changed dramatically. Before the project took off, I hesitated to step foot inside the building. The odor and dim lighting made it difficult to envision a successful result, but once we finished I was tempted to move in myself. This is the goal. Taking on this second project, I’d do my best to make the house one I’d love to live in while not allowing myself to implement my personal style preferences. The result is a home both move-in ready and open for visitors.
The first exhibit I saw was the “It Ain’t Braggin’ if it’s True” (one of my friends told me I had to see the shrine to Lance Armstrong and the rhinestone car). The name of the exhibit didn’t make much sense to me though; aren’t all museum exhibits, especially ones about history, supposed to be true? The big banner in the middle of the room didn’t help much either. It simply said “Vision” and had a quote about how only those with great vision can see opportunity where others see empty space. Maybe those who have this type of vision get the braggin’ rights?
... and out of my lungs as I breath, the thunderous beating in my ears is starting to resend. I look around and realize that I have fallen less than halfway to the ground. I am a live, but my job isn't done yet. I pulled my feet together and make two perfect bounds to the ground below.
mother and her husband after her mother’s death. But Eudora Welty deliberately includes a selfish character of Fay in the family to shows the important of the memories they have. Laurel discovers the significant meaning of the memories and past to her, yet she could not survive in staying fully attached to it.
on in the story; the blind can see the truth, but once the sighted sees the truth, they too shall
The article “How Our Brains Make Memories” explains how traumatic events and the memories they hold can become forgotten over time. Karim Nader recalls the day that two planes slammed into the twin towers in New York City and like almost every person in the United States he had vivid and emotional memories of that day. However he knew better than to trust his recollections of that day because he was an expert on memory. He attended college at the University of Toronto and in 1996 joined the New York University lab of Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist who studies how emotions influence memory. Fast forward to 2003, Nader is now a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, where he says “his memory of
The past is the most important thing now in the future. Memories of the past created the today’s future, which we now call the present. Modern times learned from the past and what memories has offered. In the novel, The Giver, written by Lois Lowry, it shows the most important theme developed throughout the novel. This theme shows and explains how important memory is and for it to not be forgotten to the reader and audience. Memory can be defined as something that someone remembers in the mind. This theme is important throughout the novel because if an individual makes a specific mistake and forgets it, that memory will be lost and they will never learn from what they have done wrong. People have to learn from what is wrong from right. If that so called mistake is repeated again, it could take an effect
I yell, “Ready positions!” but we immediately have to take cover as planes fly low shooting into the trenches. A line of enemy troops sprint towards us. I signal to fire, providing cover while five of our men rush to set up the machine gun.
Definition of memory and it's functions is difficult to illustrate by a single sentence. Consequently we use several metaphors to describe memory implicitly. Our beliefs, perceptions and imagination influence memory. The fact gave rise to memory being described as a reconstructive process, explaining that memory is not an exact record of a particular experience. Instead we bring various components together and fill in the blanks with our predisposed schemas while recalling. The metaphor building "an entire dinosaur skeleton from fossils" is the indirect way to describe memory as cognitive reconstruction. Remembering includes using schemas which are the mental representations of a concept, person or an event.They rejuvenate an incomplete memory such that it is perceived to be an undiminished one. Of course there are errors experienced when recalling which supports the idea of imperfect memory. These can be errors of commission, adding details which were not a part of the experience and errors of omission, which is excluding some aspects of the experience. In this paper I will support the selected metaphor and will provide evidence approving it.
Socrates’ Doctrine of Recollection is invalid because of the flawed procedure that was employed to prove it, its inability to apply to all types of knowledge, and the weakness of the premises that it is based on.
In my memory, my grandparent’s house looks lively and surrounded by garden. The front door of the house was connected with the gate of the garden by cobblestone. Along both