There is an unintended truth in referring to loose change as shrapnel. In our pockets or hands, or scattered around the house, it’s not lethal, and yet, like battlefield scars, it can trigger memories. Coins are the afterthought – by twist of meaning, a memory – of using a banknote to buy a station platform coffee or a green papaya salad on a Koh Pangan beach or a glass of Yves Cuilleron Condrieu sipped over the course of an hour.
The word ‘coin’ traces its roots to the Latin cuneus, meaning wedge, because the tool for stamping the coins was wedge-shaped. Given that a wedge divides, both metaphorically and literally, there’s an irony to seeing coins of international currency as connecting me with far lands and old memories. Similarly, cuneiform, the oldest writing system in the world, is named after the tool that was used to make the indentations in the clay. Maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at the idiomatic use of wedge.
The travels that left me with these coins did, indeed, take me away from home, the most prolific of which was between 2003 and 2009. There is something of a battlefield about overcrowded airports, delayed flights, the flights themselves, not to mention negotiating public transport with luggage, and all the above while sleep deprived (and possibly hungover). Of course, one of the features of being human is that over time our memories of discomfort diminish, and we hold dearer the situations to which we cannot ever return.
I hope to return to Japan, to stroll down crowded streets, spontaneously choosing a restaurant where I cannot read a menu, and where conversing with the staff could be an exercise in patience and humour (for both parties). I want to sit on the smooth metallic seats of the MTR in Hong Kong, emerging from underground onto almost chaotic streets (although not in the cause of emergency shopping for clothes after my luggage didn’t arrive with me). Or to drive past the oversized doors at the entrance of the Gaja winery where I briefly met the man himself before being taken through a tasting of his great 1989 and 1990 vintages. I can think whimsically of being shown around the cellars of Champagne Salon in Les Mesnil by Max, an old man who spoke no English (and us no French) before being left to work our way through half a dozen special bottles while watching the sun set over the vineyards outside.
Travel is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves, for the stimulation we get from newness, for the people we meet, and for the experiences that are laid down as memories.
The bowl of coins is a kind of inverse shrapnel, bits of metal collected from all around the world, made whole once again. It’s a small thing of no value, and yet it operates like Dumbledore’s Pensieve, enabling me to retrieve treasured memories.
This treasured object also a reminder to ensure my passport is always renewed at least six months before it expires!