A lot can be said about a single picture. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. But more than the words, a picture is full of memories. Whether it’s good times at a party, a beautiful sunset captured on vacation, or maybe just a family portrait from the 80’s; it’s all about the memories. Some might even say that memories are all that we have. To author David James

Duncan aims at giving readers a new outlook on life by using the metaphor of a river’s life cycle to that of the never-ending cycle of life. Duncan breaks it down as, “…our present-tense human experience, our lives in the inescapable present, are like living trees. Our memory of experience, our individual pasts, are like trees fallen in a river. The current in that river is the passing of time” (3). This is life and as discussed earlier, our memories or “river teeth” are all that is left behind when life ends. Although life never really “ends” because the memories which are left behind and the marks left on a broken down log; tell the stories that make life real and help it to continue to flow like a river.

Duncan, memories are like “river teeth”: time defying knots of experience that remain in us after most of our autobiographies are gone (4). It is impossible for anyone to remember all the events of their lives; there are simply too many. It is the memories that continually stand out in our minds and stay with us year after year that Duncan def

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