On Longing
"Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss." This is my cousin Vicky and I. Vicky was my cousin closest in age, and someone I truly enjoyed spending time with. I was nine years old when Vicky committed suicide. Her brother and my other cousin, Jason, had died unexpectedly at a party in college prior to this. These losses were the first times I had been genuinely introduced to loss. Not only did I lose both of my cousins, but I had lost a part of my father I will never get back. I am constantly nostalgic of my childhood prior to being exposed to this kind of life-altering sorrow. Nostalgia is a bittersweet, lingering emotion. Loss has a way of making memories seem more valuable than they had been previously. I used to fear nostalgia and try to make it go away, but now I welcome it as a token of what once was. "The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three dimensional into the miniature that can be enveloped by the body." This is a...