Memories Held Captive by the Water

I think that this book so far is so artistic and creatively written. The story itself is so captivating, that along with the poetic references and metaphors intertwined within the text, it created for a very well rounded, pleasant read. One line that stood out to me was a quote on page 64, which read, “But what if it wasn’t so? What if the stories that remained were just darkened and distorted shards of a mirror- or worse: what if someone had deliberately shattered the mirror in order to change the reflection?” This was a line to be considered, particularly, because it reflected the universal question of the authenticity of the things we’ve been told. So many philosophers have begged for the public’s realization, that not everything presented to them is exactly what it seems, and I think that this is a very important concept to recognize. We all take the so-called facts from our textbooks for granted. Instead of going out and exploring the world around us, we settle for the possibly deficient accounts from the ventures of other people. I think that it’s a very sad reality, but for the most part, we’re all just like recorders, picking up on the information given to us, and spitting it back out, without even being able to reproduce the clarity from which the source originated.

On page 13, Noria’s father claims that, “Now only the water remembers.” And it’s astonishing to realize that the water is able to bring out the truth in some cases. It is able to wash away the grime and dirt, and present an object in its purest form. But in a sense, it is also the best method of concealing the truth. By being able to wash away the scars of history’s mistakes, it is in turn, erasing part of a former reality. It is able to warp the image of something we once knew, and transform it into something completely unrecognizable with the ripples of time. If all we have are the stories begotten by the water, then perhaps we are only getting the distorted shards of a bigger piece. Perhaps the water was the force used to shatter the mirror altogether. But if so, the question that arises is, what was so disturbing about our reflection that it had to be destroyed? What is so alarming about our present world that it needed to be veiled? We have yet to find out the story’s take on this question, but perhaps we should all take a step back and think: In describing the world in our time to a future generation, what would we be ashamed of? If this mirror were a reflection of us as a people, what would we want to hide? What would the water want to forget, but remember nonetheless?