On Longing

 

Hannah Garrido

“The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale.” -Susan Stewart 

This image shows both of my hands with a monarch butterfly laying on them. The size of the butterflies in relation to my body shows just how small they are. This was at the very end of the spring semester of 2022. There was a white tent with screens around it in front of the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum that held monarch butterflies that were going to be released later that day. I remember this memory vividly, entering the tent with my stick that was saturated in sugar water and the feeling of wanting one to come and fly over to my hands and eat the sugar water.

Hannah Garrido
 

The souvenir speaks to a context of origin through a language of longing, for it is not an object arising out of need or use value.” -Susan Stewart

This is a picture that I have of a painting that is hanging in my room at home. I purchased it from an antique store in Jacksonville a couple years ago for 38 dollars. It was hanging in one of the booths there and my eyes immediately gravitated toward it. There is something about her that I found to be captivating, and her facial expression makes me want to know what is going on inside her head, I want to know what she knows. I felt connected to the painting for a reason that can only be explained as I felt that it is an embodiment of me. I left it at the antique store sadly after discovering it, but the next month I went back and it was still there, and I felt like it was time. Now I see her every day whenever I am home, and I hope I will have her for the rest of my life. I did not need the painting and there is no useful value to it, but I had this strong pull of having to possess it. 
 

Hannah Garrido

“To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy.” -Susan Stewart 

This is a picture of a dried-up yellow rose that I found walking out of my evening class last semester. It was just lying on the pavement, and I decided to pick it up and take it home with me. Rose is my middle name, just like many others. So, I feel a connection to them even if it is not that deep and just by association of it being in my name. I enjoy looking at them and thinking about the life and color they once held. I use dead flowers and make arrangements out of them. In some cases, I think they look more beautiful than when they were alive and they are also easier to maintain... because they are dead there is nothing to maintain. These flower specimens hold the trophy of being beautiful and having an array of meanings to them. In this photo is a yellow rose, and a yellow rose symbolizes friendship. 

Hannah Garrido

 

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

This is the first pin I ever got. It was at an antique store in Burnsville, North Carolina in the summer of 2018. I went with my grandfather and his wife along with my aunt’s family. My grandfather's wife's parents had a cabin in the mountains. That was the first time out of the two times that I had been up to the cabin and the cabin was sold in 2021. The pin was the only thing that I brought back with me besides some rocks that I found. I remember going into that antique store and looking at that pin and thinking about how strange it was that there used to be pins announcing holiday cards and that it was made by a superstore, in this case, it was Walmart. I also liked how the holiday was Easter because when I was younger, I thought my birthday was on Easter, but it was not because the date of Easter changes and my birth date stays the same. I remember going up to the cash register to pay for it and the old man who was the owner said that I can have it as a gift. This pin not only serves as a time capsule for when superstores used pins to advertise things, but it also serves as a time capsule for me for that time that I was there, a souvenir.  

 

 

Hannah Garrido

 “The place of origin must remain unavailable in order for desire to be generated" -Susan Stewart 

A big part of my childhood was that I went to Maine every summer for a month because my stepmother's mom had a little summer house that was on a campsite up there. It was in Waterford, Maine and I cherish a lot of those memories that I got to have there. However, I had to leave home and a year later my dad and my stepmother got a divorce so the chances of me ever going back are slim, but I hope one day I will.