English 1010: Expository WritingMs. Cristy HallEssay #1; “Memory, Imagination, and Experience”The alarm finally goes off in your head around 3 p.m. Your face flushes and your hands plow through the papers on your desk. You have accidentally stood someone up for lunch. It gets worse. You can’t remember who. And still worse: You can’t recall where you left your glasses, soyou can’t look up the name in your appointment book. This is the afternoon you find yourself at a different place in life. Ten years ago, when you were 40, you would not have—could not have—forgotten anything.Why do our memories betray us? Is this a precursor of Alzheimer’s or some other serious mental disorder? How can some people command a loyal and prodigious memory well into old age? Are there ways to make everyone’s memory clear again? […] Much about memory is still baffling. “Despite all the noise we scientists make about memory, it is remarkable how little we know,” says Dr. Arnold Scheibel, director of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. He and his colleagues can be forgiven. The brain has as many as 100 billion neurons, many with 100,000 or more connections through which they can send signals to neighboring neurons. The number of potential pathways would be beyond the ability of the most advanced supercomputers to match.(Excerpt from Lee Smith’s “What We Now Know About Memory”)Introductory comments: Drawing upon Smith’s commentary, this first essay will help us explore a central question: How much faith can we place in the power of our memory as a record of the truth? In the reading selections we have discussed thus far, we might say that memory is the mysterious force that allows each writer to paint their experiences with such vivid intensity. In “Dwellings,” Linda Hogan describes a favorite childhood hangout, explaining,This hill is a place that could be the starry skies of night turned inward into the thousand round holes where solitary bees have lived and died. It is a hill of tunneling rooms. At themouths of some of the excavations, half-circles of clay beetle out like awnings shading a doorway. It is earth that is turned to clay in the mouths of the bees and spit out as they mined deeper into their dwelling places. […] This place where the bees reside is at an angle safe from rain. It faces the southern sun. It is a warm and intelligent architecture of memory, learned by whatever memory lives in the blood. Many of the holes still contain the gold husks of dead bees, their faces dry and gone, their flat eyes gazing out from death’s land toward the other uninhabited half of the hill that is across the creek from these catacombs. (273) In “One Remembers Most What One Loves” Asiya S. Tschannerl speaks of her memory with confidence, as though she possesses an extra-ordinary ability. As she explains,I have often been commended for my memory. I can even remember being held when Iwas adopted at three months of age. Perhaps one only recalls events which profoundlychange one’s life […] I remember my youth very clearly. How the seasons would change!September would bring its chilly air and a nervous start of a new school year. November would be full of excitement, with its strong gusts of wind and swirling sandstorms. It wasamazing to look at a grain of sand know that it had come from over two thousand miles away, from the Gobi desert. I remember leaning back against that wind and not being able to fall. I can still see that stream of bicycles going to the city, every head clad with a thin scarf to protect against the sand […] How well I know that bitter coldness of the winter, bringing snowballs and ice-skating on the lake at the Summer Palace. February fireworks, noodles, and mooncakes for the New Year, our home always filled with friendly visits. I remember the monsoon rains of April and how the rice fields behind our apartment would sway as if they had a life of their own. And how could I forget the long, hot summers of bandminton, evening walks, and mosquito nets? […] Perhaps my memory is fostered by the countless nights I spent memorizing Chinese characters. In any case, I cannot forget. (278-79)Assignment:Option 1: Write about how a specific fragrance reminds you of a past memory (whether it be an innocent childhood adventure or a deep personal experience). For example, suppose that the smell of apple cider reminds you of the summers you spent as a child at your grandfather’s apple orchard. You talk about yourself as a ten-year-old child, eating all the apples you please, while the sweet scent of apple juice runs down your chin and sticks to your shirt on a hot July afternoon. How is this meaningful to you now? Maybe because in the hustle and bustle of college life these experiences are so far, few, and in-between. Still, you always have these experiences to go back to; so long as you still haveaccess to apples, you can easily conjure up these memories.You might also choose a certain fragrance just because as you think back over your life it seems to be present at major events (like your grandmother’s homemade potato salad). In this case, the scent itself just becomes the “stimulus” that sparks different memories; it doesn’t create the meaning but just directs your attention to those seemingly forgotten moments that now pop into your mind and won’t go away. You might conclude in your paper that this scent provides a “connecting point” in your life, which allows you string together past events and experiences. In any case, make sure you also include some “evaluation” or “analysis” of the memory you choose to write. This reflection could be scattered throughout your essay or come as the concluding paragraph. Just make sure you reveal a mature perspective of why the memory you’ve chosen is meaningful to you now. Even so, don’t get bogged down in the deeper meaning of your experiences too early. Using your free-writing exercise as your guide, remember that your main purpose is to DESCRIBE for me in as vivid detail those memories that still linger in your mind and can easily be called up whenever you are exposed to this specific scent. The meaning will undoubtedly surface as you allow your sense of smell to transport you to another moment in time–to revisit that place from the comfort and convenience of your home or dorm room; this is the power of memoryOption 2:Describe for me in as vivid detail as possible a portrait of