"On Longing" Exercise

Responses to Excerpts of "On Longing" by Susan Stewart 

"Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss"

            This is a photo of a wedding picture including my grandmother and grandfather, both of whom died recently. There is nostalgia only because they are gone, gone in a way that breeds strong emotions. This photo encompasses their love and the presence they had and it causes me to long to see them again. 

"To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy"

            This photo is one I took in Bogota, Colombia of graffiti. It is likely that this picture is covered up by now, and so it is a souvenir to me reminding me of the beautiful city in all it's exotic glory. It is a trophy because I was able to see and partially capture it before it disappeared. 

"The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale"

This photo is one of me at Castillo de San Marcos. The wall bordering the sea and the fort's size is shown in comparison to my body. One might not be able to understand the scale of the wall if my body was not in this photo. Additionally, without standing by it, I may never have been able to understand the true scale of the fort. 

"Capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience"

         This guitar pick is one I received at an A Day to Remember concert. Holding this pick and even seeing this photo takes me right back to the night that I got to see the band from my home town in a very limited venue. This pick serves as a trace of one of the coolest nights of my life. 

"The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, the 3D into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body".

This is a souvenir I got from Santa Fe, New Mexico. The city is displayed in the background of the graphic in it's full southwestern glory, shrunken but still somehow just as stunning. The colors are all indicative of the town as is the architecture shown in the drawn buildings, and yet it can be held in one hand. It evokes many memories for me, ones that take me back to standing on Santa Fe streets, but instead of smelling the desert air I am able to close my palm around it.