On Longing

"Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss."

Last year, my father passed away. It was really tough because I feel like I never got the chance to say goodbye. As a family, we went on a summer vacation like we do every year, and, a week after we returned home to The Bahamas, he died in the hospital. Almost every evening during the week, my father and I would walk together as form of exercise from the food store by our neighborhood down to the beach and back. It was a really great way for us to spend time together. We would talk, laugh and, during the summer, pick guineps off the tree by the beach. The above photo is one of the many pictures I took of him on our walks; he never knew I was taking them. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him or wish he were around. There are so many things he's going to miss being apart of. He was the best walking partner a girl could ever have. 

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

When I think of scale, I think of weight. My first two years of college, I put on a lot of weight and I had a really bad experience at a clinic where a nurse flat out told me that I was suffering from obesity and that if I didn't lose the weight, I was going to develop high blood pressure, heart problems. and get Diabetes (all of which are rampant in my family genes). I started a weight loss journey in 2014. The above image is a before and after post I made on Instagram about my weight loss. I dropped 20 pounds. 

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

It's not everyday that you get to visit a city that's been 'frozen in time.' The above picture was taken by my sister when she visited Rome two years ago. Pompeii was an ancient city in Rome that vanished when a nearby volcano erupted two thousand years ago. The entire city was basically kept 'preserved' for a thousand years by the hot ash of the erupted volcano until it was discovered. My sister had bought me a bracelet made from the rock of the volcano and unfortunately I didn't have a picture of the bracelet but I had this picture she took of the actual city saved in my computer. The picture is a trace of my sister's experience not only when she went to Rome, but when she visited Pompeii, and the city of Pompeii is a physical trace of a piece of authentic Roman history. 

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

Guineps are a staple fruit in the Caribbean. I consider them a temporary souvenir for any tourist visiting The Bahamas or any Caribbean island where they grow. Why do I think they're exotic? Cause you can only get them during the summer. What's also interesting is that you don't eat guineps, you suck them. You bite the thin green outer shell, and suck the fruit inside out the shell into your mouth, sucking the pulp of the fruit before spitting out the seed out. Guineps are sweet and taste really good. You will never be able to have just one. Personally, my favorite part of summers in The Bahamas is the fruits that you can't get year round like mangoes, scarlett plums, hog plums and guineps, which are my favorite. The above photo is one I took one summer of a bag of guineps me and my father had picked while out on one of our walks. 

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

This photo is not so much about me and my sister but about the medal that's pinned to my shirt. I got this medal because I was nominated for a National Youth Award due to my freelance design work and entrepreneurial contribution back home in The Bahamas. While I did make the top three in my category, I did not win the final award. However, the medal is a momentum that envelopes my experience of being nominated and participating in not only the final award ceremony, but the recognition ceremony where your medal in given to you and pinned by the Governor General of The Bahamas, which is a huge honor. The medal is back home in my mother's China closet.