On Longing

All quotations are small excerpts from Susan Stewart book "On Longing."

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

     The body being a primary mode of perceiving scale is something we experience and analyze every day but pay no attention to how we do it. We can look at a building and observe that it is however many stories tall, or will compare it to another sculpture to gauge the height comparison. However, we only are able to make these observations and comparisons because we subconsciously use our own bodies as a means of measurement, and how much larger or small things are compared to ourselves, thus further alluding to that not everyone views everything the same way with the same scale because we all analyze using ourselves as a base measurement. 

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

     Capacity alludes to the limits something can hold before exploding or overfilling, and when things overflow they tend to be memorable. If we are walking with a cup of water, and we have filled it to the top, and then we go to move and water spills all over the place, we then are more likely to not make that mistake again. Similarly, for a more personal manner, I pushed my body to the limits of stress, and lead to myself being hospitalized. This I will forever remember for the degree of pain I was in, and now have altered my diet and lifestyle because of it. It has lead to an authentic experience leading to a change. 

"The souvenir reduced the public, the monumental, and the three- dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body."

     The souvenir reduced to the miniature is something that is done quite often. We are often times given awards or praise for work we have done, and taking the large degree of work and shrinking it down to justify the awarding of a token of said work. For example, when being praised for hard work within the work place, you often times will be given either a pin, or a certificate, or a picture on the wall, to take a concept and make it physical.  

"Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss."

     Nostalgia is the longing for something lost, and by definition itself, it cannot be sustained without loss. The greatest example is growing older. When we are younger we cannot wait to grow up: get our drivers license, get a tattoo, go to college, have a family, etc.. However, with this essential coming of age comes the loss of innocence. As we grow old, we are subjected to the darker and more realistic part of life, rather than this idea of sunshine and rainbows. 

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

     The term exotic alludes to something foreign and unknown or uncommon, however due to the access to the internet and digital images and film, the majority of things fail to be considered foreign or unknown anymore. My example of an exotic souvenir would be a tattoo. The injection of ink under the skin is something uncommon to the standard humanistic makeup. We must insert this foreign material, it is not something natural, and can be shown off, as a trophy.