Giving Souvenir Quotes

I woan let you go back to that boy--not until you give me one bec doux." A sweet kiss. Then he reached forward, unlacing the ribbon from my hair. "What are you doing?" I murmured. "Souvenir." He put it in his pocket, and for some reason that struck me as the sexiest thing I'd ever seen.

Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning. For a little break in the mourning. I will give you something to think about, I whispered. He woke up and didn't see me against the blackness of his trauma.

Han virkede som sådan en sød, gammel gentleman, så jeg tænkte, at jeg ville give han min autograf som en souvenir.

It’s not just that,” Chief Porter said. “A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There’s more flamboyant craziness these days.” Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, “Maybe it’s all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin.” “No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin,” I assured him. “Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people,” Chief Porter said, “but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense.

Now Pastor owns a small corner of the hood - or perhaps, more to the point, he owns a moment of his own experience. He can pack up his own heightened awareness like a souvenir. His opened eyes are take-home talismans. You want the tour to give you back another version of yourself, you and everyone: a more enlightened human.

But that is the way with killers, I suppose. What is the end of all innocence for you is just another Tuesday morning for them, and they walk off back to their planet of death giving no more thought to the world of the living that we would give to any other tourist destination: a place to be briefly visited and returned from with souvenirs and a haunting sensation that we could have paid less for them.

My Mother They are killing her again. She said she did it One year in every ten, But they do it annually, or weekly, Some even do it daily, Carrying her death around in their heads And practicing it. She saves them The trouble of their own; They can die through her Without ever making The decision. My buried mother Is up-dug for repeat performances. Now they want to make a film For anyone lacking the ability To imagine the body, head in oven, Orphaning children. Then It can be rewound So they can watch her die Right from the beginning again. The peanut eaters, entertained At my mother’s death, will go home, Each carrying their memory of her, Lifeless – a souvenir. Maybe they’ll buy the video. Watching someone on TV Means all they have to do Is press ‘pause’ If they want to boil a kettle, While my mother holds her breath on screen To finish dying after tea. The filmmakers have collected The body parts, They want me to see. They require dressings to cover the joins And disguise the prosthetics In their remake of my mother; They want to use her poetry As stitching and sutures To give it credibility. They think I should love it – Having her back again, they think I should give them my mother’s words To fill the mouth of their monster, Their Sylvia Suicide Doll, Who will walk and talk And die at will, And die, and die And forever be dying.

It was raining and I had to walk on the grass. I’ve got mud all over my shoes. They’re brand-new, too.” “I’ll carry you across the grass on the return trip, if you like,” Colby offered with twinkling eyes. “It would have to be over one shoulder, of course,” he added with a wry glance at his artificial arm. She frowned at the bitterness in his tone. He was a little fuzzy because she needed glasses to see at distances. “Listen, nobody in her right mind would ever take you for a cripple,” she said gently and with a warm smile. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Anyway,” she added with a wicked grin, “I’ve already given the news media enough to gossip about just recently. I don’t need any more complications in my life. I’ve only just gotten rid of one big one.” Colby studied her with an amused smile. She was the only woman he’d ever known that he genuinely liked. He was about to speak when he happened to glance over her shoulder at a man approaching them. “About that big complication, Cecily?” “What about it?” she asked. “I’d say it’s just reappeared with a vengeance. No, don’t turn around,” he said, suddenly jerking her close to him with the artificial arm that looked so real, a souvenir of one of his foreign assignments. “Just keep looking at me and pretend to be fascinated with my nose, and we’ll give him something to think about.” She laughed in spite of the racing pulse that always accompanied Tate’s appearances in her life. She studied Colby’s lean, scarred face. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a pinup, but he had style and guts and if it hadn’t been for Tate, she would have found him very attractive. “Your nose has been broken twice, I see,” she told Colby. “Three times, but who’s counting?” He lifted his eyes and his eyebrows at someone behind her. “Well, hi, Tate! I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” “Obviously,” came a deep, gruff voice that cut like a knife. Colby loosened his grip on Cecily and moved back a little. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. Tate moved into Cecily’s line of view, half a head taller than Colby Lane. He was wearing evening clothes, like the other men present, but he had an elegance that made him stand apart. She never tired of gazing into his large black eyes which were deep-set in a dark, handsome face with a straight nose, and a wide, narrow, sexy mouth and faintly cleft chin. He was the most beautiful man. He looked as if all he needed was a breastplate and feathers in his hair to bring back the heyday of the Lakota warrior in the nineteenth century. Cecily remembered him that way from the ceremonial gatherings at Wapiti Ridge, and the image stuck stubbornly in her mind. “Audrey likes to rub elbows with the rich and famous,” Tate returned. His dark eyes met Cecily’s fierce green ones. “I see you’re still in Holden’s good graces. Has he bought you a ring yet?” “What’s the matter with you, Tate?” Cecily asked with a cold smile. “Feeling…crabby?” His eyes smoldered as he glared at her. “What did you give Holden to get that job at the museum?” he asked with pure malice. Anger at the vicious insinuation caused her to draw back her hand holding the half-full coffee cup, and Colby caught her wrist smoothly before she could sling the contents at the man towering over her. Tate ignored Colby. “Don’t make that mistake again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. “If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I’ll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!” “You and the CIA, maybe!” Cecily hissed. “Go ahead and try…!” Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. “Now, now,” he cautioned. Cecily wasn’t backing down an inch. Neither was Tate.

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

Nick's number waited impatiently on the screen, tapping its foot. I could press the red button to cancel the call. Without pressing anything, I set the phone down on my bedside table, crossed my arms,and glared at it. Good:Nick wouldn't think I was chasing him. Bad:Nick would die alone in his house from complications related to his stupendous wipeout.The guilt of knowing I could have saved his life if not for my outsized ego would be too much for me to bear.I would retreat from public life.I would join a nearby convent and knit potholders from strands of my own hair.No,I would crochet Christmas ornaments in the shape of delicate snowflakes.Red snowflakes! They would be sold in the souvenir shops around town.I would support a whole orphanage from the proceeds of snowflakes I crocheted from my hair.All the townspeople of Snowfall would tell tourists the story of Crazy Sister Hayden and the tragedy of her lost love. Or I could call Nick.Jesus! I snatched up the phone and pressed the green button. His phone switched straight to voice mail.Great,I hadn't found out whether he was dying,and if he recovered later,he would see my number on his phone and roll his eyes. Damage control: Beeeeep! "Hey,Nick,it's Hayden.Just,ah, wanted to know how a crash like that feels." Wait,I was trying to get him to call me back,right?He would not return my call after a message like that. "Actually just wondering whether you're ready to make out again and then have another argument." He might not return that call,either. "Actually,I remembered your mother isn't home,and I wanted to make sure you're okay.Please give me a call back." Pressed red button.Set phone on nightstand.Folded arms.Glared at phone. Picked it up. "Freaking stupid young love!" I hollered,slamming it into the pillows on my bed. Doofus jumped up, startled. Ah-ha.

A bunch of people from one tribe boldly went into the land of another tribe looting, pillaging and raping and they brought back food, clothing and women as souvenirs of victory and they called this valor and patriotism. And the stories of these exploits would be passed on through generations as some sort of heroic saga. And nobody would question it, for questioning those stories would mean questioning the tribal traditions, which would be an act of treason. Now my question to you, the thinking human of a modern world is - this kind of behavior may have been accepted in those days as uncompromisable tradition when our ancestors were nothing more than mindless savages, but does such tribalism make any sense in a civilized abode such as ours!

At forty-two, I was still holding up pretty well, but my once effortlessly lean body now look as though it belonged in a Dove firming cream ad -- the one where they give women permission to have thighs. When I unbuttoned my jeans at night, I swore I heard the same sound that Pillsbury dough made when I twisted the cylindrical container. My hair was beginning to gray, and when I smiled, the parentheses around my mouth remained. My least favorite position in yoga class was the downward dog because, as I hung my head downward, I always felt the skin from my face was about to splatter against my mat like a pancake batter hitting the griddle. So being called the top model by a young Italian was a wonderful souvenir, though cheaper than the toys sold outside the Pantheon in Rome.

I was just saying goodnight.” Logan quipped and pecked Sienna on the cheek before slipping something in to her hand. She looked down to see it was a sleek new cellphone. He turned to leave but Mrs. Rivers interrupted him. “Your fly is undone.” She told him grimly giving him her the full extent of her medusa glare. If looks could kill, Mrs. Rivers had homicide down to a science. When had that happened? Sienna thought. Probably sometime when they were too busy pressing themselves against each other. Sienna was mortified. Logan however looked mildly amused. He zipped up his trousers and quietly thanked her. “Oh and Logan, you left your souvenir behind.” She added now giving Sienna the full extent of the medusa glare. Logan and Sienna both frowned momentarily before realizing what she meant. He snatched the condom and put it back in his pocket and quickly left the house leaving Sienna to battle with the Gorgon.

SHOPPING and SIGHTSEEING Shopping opportunities start within a few hundred feet of the cruise ship dock (many new "duty free" shops in Port Zante) and continues on into the town of Basseterre. You can shop all day long if you wish and never be more than a 10 minute walk from your ship.  Just remember, in St. Kitts they will take American dollars but give change in Eastern Caribbean dollars, so be sure to take smaller denominations of U S bills when you go ashore. Upon disembarkation, cruise ship visitors are greeted by cultural acts, displays and exhibitions, as well as many ground operators offering various island excursions. The duty-free shopping district on Port Zante, where fine jewelry, liquor and souvenirs are available along with restaurants, is just past this area. Immediately beyond the shops lies Pelican Mall, the ground floor of which houses the headquarters of the St. Kitts Tourism Authority. Here, brochures can be picked up and inquires made.

I was just beginning to wonder how long I would have to wait when finally a guard sauntered up and said, “Galloway, get your stuff, get your bed.” I ran to my cell to get my stuff and I grabbed the toothpaste. The toothpaste was in this clear tube and was clear like hair gel. It had a muted, watered-down mint flavor. Everything you got in jail was made specifically to be as safe as can be. One of the guys told me, “Don’t ever take anything from being locked up. It’s bad luck.” But I told myself, You ain’t coming back. You ain’t getting locked up again, so you’re taking a souvenir. I grabbed that little clear tube and I put it in my pocket and walked out of my cell. As I came out, all of the guys from my cellblock were lined up to say goodbye. The guard had this look on his face like, “What is going on?” I walked down the line shaking each man’s hands. They all told me they were glad they had met me. They told me that I made an impact on them. One guy said, “You came in here and you’ve been to war and back, you’re missing two limbs, but you still had a smile on your face the whole time. You’ve gone through so much and you are able to keep smiling. That motivates me.” I was really touched. I kept going down the line, shaking hands and saying my farewells, and finally I got to Michael Bolton. He said, “Hey, man, I’ve asked people this before and they never follow through with it but I believe you will. Could you print out some TV guides? Because you know we just tell them the number. We don’t know what’s on at what time, what station.” I said, “Yeah, man, I’ll do that.” And I looked around to the other guys and asked, “Does anybody want any crossword puzzles or anything like that?” They all said that would be awesome. “All right, Michael, I’ve got your address so I’m gonna send it to you. And listen, man, I’m gonna give you my email address. When you get out shoot me an email. I want to stay in touch and see how things are going.” I turned to the guard who was still baffled by what was happening and said, “I’m ready.” He rolled his eyes and opened the door. We walked out and they handed me my clothes. I pulled off the orange jumpsuit and tossed it. I changed back into my clothes. I signed everything I had to sign, got some paperwork to take with me, and walked out a free man again. Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was “I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there.” She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, “My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He’s going to be friends with everybody.

it is not a matter of denying the weight of time, very much to the contrary. An armagnac hors d’âge results from bringing together many very old armagnacs. An individual hors d’âge brings together many pasts not equally present in his memory, reconstructed pasts, and often the oldest ones are not the least tenacious and can give him the impression that his life has passed in a flash, whereas others, more recent but already fading, might easily convince him of having lived for an eternity, and still others drift in an indistinct haze at the edge of his memory, so that he can neither situate nor date them precisely: “Souvenirs? More than if I had lived a thousand years!” writes Baudelaire in Les fleurs du mal.2

Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind). I firmly believe that we all need to find something to do in our lives that stops us from eating the couch. Whether we make a profession out of it or not, we all need an activity that is beyond the mundane and that takes us out of our established and limiting roles in society (mother, employee, neighbor, brother, boss, etc.). We all need something that helps us to forget ourselves for a while—to momentarily forget our age, our gender, our socioeconomic background, our duties, our failures, and all that we have lost and screwed up. We need something that takes us so far out of ourselves that we forget to eat, forget to pee, forget to mow the lawn, forget to resent our enemies, forget to brood over our insecurities. Prayer can do that for us, community service can do it, sex can do it, exercise can do it, and substance abuse can most certainly do it (albeit with god-awful consequences)—but creative living can do it, too. Perhaps creativity’s greatest mercy is this: By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are. Best of all, at the end of your creative adventure, you have a souvenir—something that you made, something to remind you forever of your brief but transformative encounter with inspiration.

Her name was Jane,” I said, and Olivia stopped walking. “We were together for two years, married after a few months. I was happy, genuinely happy. Even though she was human, and I knew I’d outlive her, I just wanted to enjoy the time that we had together. “It all ended on a damp November morning in seventeen eighty-two. I’d been away working for Avalon for a few months and had been eager to get home. I found her inside the house we’d shared. She’d been butchered. Her blood decorated our bedroom. She was naked and appeared to have been dead for several days. My rage was…terrifying. I buried Jane with my own hands, placing her near a field that we used to love going to. And then I burnt the house to the ground.” Olivia’s shoulders sagged, but she didn’t turn and face me. “I hunted her killer for a year. I didn’t care who I hurt to get the information I needed. I was so single-minded, so determined to have vengeance. Eventually, I discovered that her murderer had been part of the king’s army, which had been going through the area. “The killer was an officer by the name of Henry. No idea what his last name was. It didn’t matter. He liked hurting women, and once he’d finished with them, he kept their hair as a souvenir. The rest of his squad had waited outside while he brutalized and murdered the woman I loved. No one had helped Jane, and no one had tried to stop him. “I discovered that they’d been on training maneuvers the day of the murder, just their squad of thirty. And after all my searching, I found them and I killed them. They died in one night of blood and rage. All but one. I left Henry until last. I took him away to a secluded place and had my fill of vengeance. It took a week for him to die, and when he finally succumbed, I buried Hellequin with him.” The memory of Henry’s blind and bloody form flashed in my mind—his pleas had long since silenced because I’d removed his tongue. I hadn’t wanted information from him; I’d just wanted to make him suffer. Before he’d lost his ability to talk, he’d told me that someone had paid him to do it, but he never said who. No matter what I did to him, he took that secret to his grave. And after a few years of searching, I decided he’d been lying. Trying to prolong his life for a short time more, hoping for mercy where there was none to give. “I no longer had the desire to go by that name,” I continued, still talking to Olivia’s back, “I no longer wanted to instill fear with a word. I hoped that the legend would die, but it didn’t, it grew, became more…fanciful. “You’re right, I’m a killer. I’ve killed thousands, and very few of them have ever stained my conscience. I can go to a dark place and do whatever I need to. But for those I care about, those I love, I will move fucking mountains to keep them safe. And I care about Tommy and Kasey, whether you grant permission or not.

And then it actually becomes the most interesting thing in the world. A single word is embossed in fancy calligraphy letters. A single word that makes it feel like the whole room is spinning. Harksbury. What in God’s name? “What is this?” I point at it and shout in Mindy’s ear. She scrunches her eyebrows. “A coaster?” I groan. “No, I mean, the name. Harksbury.” “Oh. It’s the name of the club. I don’t know what it means, though.” I do. It’s the name of a dukedom. I wonder if that means some relative of Alex’s invested in this place or something. Or if someone borrowed their name. Or what. But it has to mean Harksbury is real, that it existed. I stare down at the word again. If the shoes weren’t enough…It has to be real. And seeing it like this reminds me of how I felt there. How it felt to be Rebecca. I tuck the coaster into my back pocket and try to ignore the stare Angela is giving me. She probably thinks I’m totally nuts, stealing a paper coaster. But it’s the closest I’ll get to a souvenir of my time-bending trip. And having it on me makes me feel stronger, somehow, like I can always be that girl at the ball. I look up when the boys file in and sit down on a bright orange couch shaped like a slug. “Ladies. This is Grant, Tim, and Alex,” door-boy says. He doesn’t even introduce himself. I guess I’m supposed to know who he is. I smile at Grant and nod at Tim, but when I get to Alex, I only stare. Alex. The Alex. No, no it can’t be. His hair is shorter, his skin smooth and shaven. He’s got on a green button-up, left open at the collar, which brings out the intense emerald shade of his eyes. There’s something different. The contour of his lips, the line of his nose. It’s almost him, but not quite. And he’s staring back at me. Does he know who I am? No, that’s silly. It’s not really him. Not Alex Thorton-Hawke, the Duke of Harksbury. Just Alex, the twenty-first-century guy standing in front of me. In a nightclub. In real life. Mindy jabs me with her elbow. “This is--” “Callie,” I say, standing and reaching my hand out. “My name is Callie.” It feels so good to say that. To be me. I grin involuntarily at the realization. He smiles and shakes it. “Hey.” For a second neither of us says anything else. We just keep shaking hands and staring at each other. My heart hammers out of control. I feel sweaty already. But it’s adrenaline. Excitement. I’m not terrified anymore. Not of Angela, not of Alex. I can do this. “Do you want to dance?” I ask. Did I really just say that out loud? That couldn’t have been me. That was someone else. “Huh?” He can’t hear me over the music. “Do you want to dance?” I say, louder this time, with a little more conviction. For emphasis, I nod my head toward the floor. I’m really doing this. “Yeah.” I’m not sure I’ve heard him correctly, but then he grabs my hand and leads me away, and I risk a glance back at the group. They’re just staring. For once in my life, I’ve upstaged them. I grin back and then turn my attention to Alex. I’ve thought about getting close to him for a month. I’m about to get my chance.

The stone’s actual powers are debatable, but one thing’s for sure—the Blarney Stone is a germaphobe’s nightmare. Kissed by more than four hundred thousand people per year, it’s covered with trace bits of spit left behind with every pucker. Smooching it might not give you the gift of gab, but you could take home a different souvenir: a saliva-transmitted affliction like herpes, warts, or glandular fever. At least you’re safe from meningitis—to get it from kissing, you’d have to use a lot of tongue.

Come on.” I sigh. “Let’s go.” My fingers automatically intertwine with his finding solace in his hand. As we walk closer to the light, I see traces of my lipstick coloring his mouth. “You might want to wipe that off.” I say, pointing over to his lips. “No way. I’m keeping that.” His eyes light up in the way only his dark irises can and dons a playful little smirk. “It’s a souvenir. It says that I kissed the notorious Rebel Heart and lived to tell the tale.” I roll my eyes, laughing, and give a little shove. “Won’t people be offended?” “If people manage to be offended by that, then they deserve to feel that way. This shows that I have someone who loves me. It’s not my fault that my girl loves me more than theirs does.” He kisses my temple as we walk hand in hand back to the banquet. “There is nothing wrong with kissing. If people find it wrong that I wear your kisses proudly, then this society is all kinds of fucked up. And I want to change that.

How long did they stay there in that room, on the narrow bed? She had a scar on her shoulder, in the shape of a star, that Louis couldn't help but run his lips over. A souvenir of a fall from a horse. It got dark. They could hear the clattering of hooves, a whinny, and the high-pitched voice of the marquis giving orders at more and more distant intervals, like a motif on a flute, clear and desolate, returning again and again.

Heartache, heartache, heart was gold All it had you instant cold Lonely, lonely wasted years You're a winner with bad souvenirs You're a hero, you're a man You're a winner, take my hand'cause you are young You will always be so strong Hold on tight to your dreams, hold on You are right, don't give up

I suppose you must feel some bitterness against the historians," Roger ventured. "All the writers who got it wrong--made him out to be a hero. I mean, you can't go anywhere in the Highlands without seeing the Bonnie Prince on toffee tins and souvenir tourist mugs." Claire shook her head, gazing off in the distance. The evening mist was growing heavier, the bushes beginning to drip again from the tips of their leaves. "Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they only have what the past chose to leave them behind--for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it's a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper." There was a faint rumble in the distance. The evening passenger train from London, Roger knew. You could hear the whistle from the manse on clear nights. "No, the fault lies with the artists," Claire went on. The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king." "Are they all liars, then?" Roger asked. Claire shrugged. In spite of the chilly air, she had taken off the jacket to her suit; the damp molded the cotton shirt to show the fineness of collarbone and shoulder blades. "Liars?" she asked. "Or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?

give me laugh lines and wrinkles i want proof of the jokes we shared engrave the lines into my face like the roots of a tree that grow deeper with each passing year i want sunspots as souvenirs for the beaches we laid on i want to look like i was never afraid to let the world take me by the hand and show me what it’s made of i want to leave this place knowing i did something with my body other than trying to make it look perfect

A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on. The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic—Germans, Japanese, and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.

In our early days together we often gave each other gifts. CDs we liked, books, photographs, travel souvenirs, or cakes and other small delicacies. When people are in the process of becoming intimate they give each other things, all kinds of small, miscellaneous offerings. Every exchange leaves a mark of one's existence in the others world and gradually widens the scope of it. Thus by degrees we become special to each other. That's how we were supposed to be.

My God, I’d never have thought the idea of strangling another human being would give me such enormous satisfaction. But I’m sure if I could just get my hands around that Basta’s neck, I —” On seeing the shock in Meggie’s eyes she fell guiltily silent, but Meggie just shrugged her shoulders. “I feel the same,” she murmured and began scratching an M on the wall with the key of her bicycle lock. Weird to think she still had that key in her pants pocket—like a souvenir of another life. Elinor ran her finger down one of the runs in her stockings, and Mo turned on his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m so sorry, Meggie,” he said suddenly. “I’m so sorry I let them take the book away from me.” Meggie scratched an E into the wall. “It doesn’t make any difference,” she said, stepping back. The Gs in her name looked like nibbled Os. “You probably couldn’t have read her back out of it again anyway.” “No, probably not,” murmured Mo and went on staring at the ceiling. “It’s not your fault,” said Meggie.

Jimmy may well have read the front-page banner in late August exhorting readers to “Go and Register.” The accompanying article extolled the dual power of the franchise: “When we register and go to the polls in large numbers … we not only perform thereby a duty which is obligatory upon good citizens, but our votes make public officials more obligated to give us the recognition and consideration to which we are entitled.” 109 This paper and others sought to whip up excitement about the recent passage of a civil rights bill championed by Democratic state senator Charles C. Diggs. Declaring with some hyperbole that the bill would be the “New Emancipation,” the black Democratic organization Michigan Federated Democratic Clubs sought to use the bill to both galvanize the community and shore up support for Diggs with the “First Annual Emancipation Picnic and Dance” in his honor on August 1, 1937. Attendees received “a small pocket-size souvenir-copy of Senator Diggs Civil Rights Bill” along with “a statement of what to do if the Bill is violated.” 110 More than a decade later, Jimmy would be among a group of activists associated with the Detroit NAACP and the United Auto Workers (UAW) who mounted an effort to enforce this law by “breaking down” restaurants that discriminated against African Americans. By that time, black Detroiters had made important inroads into the UAW, and a strong coalition emerged between labor and civil rights organizations.

Melancholy pervades me every time I enter a souvenir shop. I have been to many of them around the world. I try not to buy anything for multiple reasons. One of them is because I find the way souvenir shops represent a country or a culture problematic, to say the least. The items you find there are almost always either much better or much worse than the way locals do things. Each item is glorified or trivialized – depending on the taste of the manufacturer and the demand of the buyers. They are always designed to give you a presumed idyllic and warm feeling about the country from which you buy them. In reality, many locals strive to get close to owning some of the items displayed in souvenir shops. Moreover, even if locals use items like those displayed, their daily lives are never as romantic and as smooth as the feeling you get in these shops. In a sense, then, souvenir shops are places where people and their cultures are objectified and romanticized par excellence. Their human joys are amplified. Their grand sorrows are downplayed or buried altogether. Their real histories are either erased or diluted at best. Nevertheless, I confess to you, I always end up buying honey. Perhaps because bees represent life to me. Perhaps because I find that healthy bees and wildlife speak volumes about the overall health of a place and its people?