you can never go back

i'm not as bad as i used to be, but i still get silly ideas in my head.
like "something" won't happen unless i have a special talisman.
or suffering deep grief (an exaggeration) over the loss of a souvenir.

like the 50 pesetas coin i picked up in barcelona in 1992
it was so pretty - gaudi's sagrada familia on one side, and the coin itself was a pretty flower shape
i had it for almost 20 years - and then took it to work for show and tell, and lost it! the pain deepened when i realised that the spanish have replaced pesetas with euros! i went on ebay and bought another one - and two days later found the one i thought i'd lost on the floor beneath my desk!

some months ago, i lost a keychain i bought in 2002.
it was a yayoi kusama art souvenir, she had been part of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery.
first reaction - can i replace it.  ebay gave me nothing - i couldn't even find an image of it.  then i found it on kusama's "products" page - sold out!

I have found an ersatz replacement, a "love forever" badge, small.  not the same.
why do i need to replace it at all?
when i bought the keychain all those years ago, i really was yearning for "love forever" with no guarantee of finding it.  now i actually have love forever, soul-deep unconditional love.  and i still think it's important to have a $5 talisman.
(now i've turned it into a "if i find it again, it means i'll have kids" situation.  seriously, what a fatalistic idiot!)
oh well.

anyway, it got me thinking about how the best souvenirs are the accidental or ephemeral.
both the 50 pesetas piece and the keychain were great - they were unusual, aesthetically pleasing and cheap!

some other favourites, from last year's trip to tamania

• a sturdy shopping bag from the IGA in St Helens on the east coast of tassie - $1.50, practical and cool (better than the hobart book shop bag i also picked up on last year's holiday, because more unexpected)
• a large bamboo plate/platter with kangaroos on it picked up at an opp shop for $2
• a bicheno souvenir teatowel with pelicans on it from the bicheno hardware & gift shop, $12 - all the better because i had seen (and desperately wanted) a pillow in a posh "hand-made craft" shop in hobart, that had used the same teatowel, and p had marched me away from the $90 purchase.  oh yes, cheap cool holiday pick-ups are soooo much better than a cold-blooded, expensive purchase

here are two articles that circle around the topic,

• souvenirs as art 
• art souvenirs for penny-pinchers