Response to On Longing by Susan Stewart

"The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale"
This sentence reminded me of the concept of self-knowledge Diane Ackerman talked about in the article "Touch."  Ackerman says that the sense of touch is crucial to understanding one's own appearance, substance, and position in space, also known as proprioception.    Similarly, I can understand how one's own  body would become a reference of scale for other objects.  For example, the experience of going to see the Eiffel Tower is directly connected to the fact that the Eiffel Tower is much, much larger than the human body.  This experience is reversed with the idea of the souvenir that can be held in the hand.  I am not sure how this would affect the emotional or mental connection with the object or experience.  Obviously the souvenir evokes a memory of the place from which the souvenir originated, but how is this affected by scale?

"The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body."
The significance of the scale change may be that this tiny object, which may represent a massive landmark, can now be transported with the person who has purchased or created it, and the memory, therefore can be voluntarily evoked at any time.  The problem with the public and monumental is that it obviously cannot be moved.  The importance of the object having the capacity to be enveloped by the body is that it has achieved a superior level of mobility.

"The place of origin must remain unattainable in order for desire to be generated."
The importance of a souvenir is memory.  Memory and experience are two different things.  An experience becomes an important memory when the uniqueness of the experience is realised.  If the experience of a place or time were easily accessible, it would most likely decline in importance for the person experiencing it, becoming a part of the mundane.  We most cherish things either that are lost to us or that we recognise as being ephemeral and fleeting.  We are less attached to the things that we believe are staples in our lives.