Memento - On Longing

"The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale."

Sitting on a boat in front of the bridge, I look as big as the bridge.

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


Walking out of Magic Kingdom with one of these balloons shows the world that you were in Disney.

"The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three dimensional into the miniature. That which can be enveloped by the body."


A small polaroid photo makes three people and a blue van able to fit in the palm of my hand.

"Nostalgia can be sustained without loss."

In this photo I was able to show a sense of nostalgia. Photos are the best way to show nostalgia and that there is no sense of loss.

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


When I think exotic I think of exotic animals. These birds come to my mind. They are a specimen of the day I had at the zoo and a trophy that I was able to feed them in my hand.

Touch - First Touches

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight. Touch cells in the lips make nursing possible, clutch mechanisms in the hands begin to reach out for warmth. Among other things, touch teaches us the difference between I and other, that there can be someone outside of ourselves, the mother. The first emotional comfort, touching and being touched by our mother, remains the ultimate memory of selfless love, which stays with us life long.

One of the greatest feelings in the world is when an infant who is exploring his or her sense of touch, latches on to your finger and will not let go. It’s the letting go that is the hard part. I always want those moments to last longer. It reminds me of innocence, of love, affection, and all things new in the world.

Touch - Kissing

Kissing

We don’t just kiss romantically, of course; we also kiss [as] a good-luck charm

Young women press lipsticked mouths to the backs of envelopes so that all the tiny lines will carry like fingerprint kisses to their sweethearts

A kiss on the mouth is another form of intercourse, and it’s not surprising that it should make the mind and body surge with gorgeous sensations

We kissed timelessly, because lovers throughout the ages knew our longing

We kissed wildly, almost painfully, with tough, soul-stealing rigor;

We kissed elaborately, as if we were inventing kisses for the first time;

We kissed shamelessly, with all the robust sappiness of youth;

We kissed as if kissing could save us from ourselves.

https://youtu.be/Zs4yFUfHLY0

In this moment, I realized that there was so much more to kissing than what I had ever experienced or thought of before. As I searched through a sea of tan for the one soldier I loved, I cheered alongside a dozen other girls who were doing the same thing. When he ran to the other side of the road and put his sweaty hands on my waist, the world stopped. While probably one of our shortest kisses, this is one that will last a lifetime as our touch in that moment felt more real than ever before. The sense of touch that electrifies you from the moment of contact, lip to lip, all the way until he's rounded the curve and long gone.