Twenty Images

I think I got increasingly sarcastic as I went on...

1. old and withered face, not unlike the pages of a water-stained book
2. still and broken, like the chiseled surface of water in a summer rain
3. most boys have handwriting that looks like the Hoover Dam collapsing
4. most girls have handwriting that looks like a tall glass of bubble tea
5. a bronze sky, cast in the mold of ideals
6. a frayed tablecloth of tree stumps, shrubs, and decaying rodents
7. the graying of burnt charcoal
8. the sun, hidden by clouds, looked like a bowl of soup reflected in a bent mirror
9. slowly, like a stream of water rolling down an unusually muddy hill
10. as if expecting the open drawer to yield up a redwood
11. arms swinging over the side like pendulums with hinges
12. The iron gate pronounced itself on the landscape, curling and spiking with a tenacity generally reserved only for matriarchs interrogating prospective sons-in law.
13. fingers with the appearance of pickled glass shards
14. a regiment of babies brandishing pacifiers
15. The hat was being crushed, it's brim rising upwards in protest as Carson dropped his prodigious weight downward.
16. a conspiracy of post-it notes designed to strangulate in the oblivion of adhesives and yellow paper
17. convulsing like a tickle-me-elmo on fresh batteries
18. The roadkilled squirrel was dried, still, and bearing a startling resemblance to a brillo pad.
19. A forest of toothpicks blossomed above the fruit bowl.
20. Her chest is flatter than my grandmother's vintage champagne.

Rhetorical Modes

My apologies in advance for my broad interpretations of the rhetorical modes. My chosen topic is truth:

1. Truth cannot be divined, nor can it be extracted, purified, or subdivided. You will never find a vivisection of truth, for as soon as the truth is split, it ceases to be truth. It can only be recapitulated, and even then, one must be careful to leave it unaltered. A skewed version of the truth is not the truth. A part of the truth is an untruth. An absence of truth is darkness. There is no particle of truth.

2. Truth is the actual state of a matter, as opposed to a fact, which is what actually exists in reality. Philosophy is the quest for truth and various truths have been sought out for thousands of years. The truth of the meaning of life, the truth of the universe, the truth of individual pupose. All these have been investigated by means of science, religion, and philosophy. Truth is the thirst of the soul.

3. Those who fail to understand what separates truth from fact fail to see the difference between what is real and what is actually true. To quote Tom Stoppard in The Invention of Love, "He is spoiled, vindictive, utterly selfish and not very talented, but these are merely the facts. The truth is...he is the only one who understands me." One can walk about in fields and find facts everywhere. The grass is green and skies are blue and if a meteorite hits you, you will probably die. But none of these are the truth until they are applied to one's life and the broader concepts which lie beneath living. Try it for yourself and see.

4. I told him that truth is like ice held in the hand, melting and slowly vanishing until you are unsure of whether it is still there or whether it existed at all. But you cannot open your clenched fist to see, I said, because you are afraid. Afraid that by seeing, you will be forced to accept the unwanted facts that are so much less true than the truth you must believe. He smiled. I pressed on. A failure of belief is a failure of soul. The betrayal of one's self is a small matter, but the betrayal of others is the highest of crimes. Truth is the measurement to which all is compared. It is the means of our ascendance and our downfall. He laughed. I never finished.

5. There is no decided-upon method for discovering the truth. Some people have always circumvented the issue by attributing a knowledge of truth as possible only in some non-human, often divine, entity whose omniscience so overshadowed humanity that any longing for understanding was futile. Some philosophies, despite thier purpose, subscribed to this view, but eventually, many adapted it or abrogated it so as to be able to pursue truth for themselves. Nothing can be agreed upon and nothing is definite, but the search continues, as it shall always continue. That is the truth.

6. The simplest form of truth is what is merely true, and we call this fact. Fact should never be taken, for truth, however, becuase the truth can be applied to much more. In Latin, fact referred to something that had been done or performed. It is simple to see how the word has evolved. Fact is now something. Anything. Provided that it is true. Truth is what is true, as well, but in the grandest of ways. A fact is what is true, but the truth is what is actually real.