We follow the filaments of memory—fine silk threads that tether the past to the present and future in a complex web of being and becoming.

The threads are formed from sensory markers. Often, we rely on visuals cues to lead us to moments our bodies have experienced and they serve as portals to pathways, sensorial or otherwise, to things once felt and catalogued, like joy or fear or safety.

Within the constantly shifting environments and moods that shaped my life, my focus has always been directed toward finding safety and peace. Not just in the present but also in the lived and in the potential.

As an example, when I was growing up, my father liked to tend the flower beds in our yards, creating a form of cultivated safety. In one of our homes, my bedroom window opened to the front yard and I remember lying in bed in the summers while honeysuckle and rose fragrances drifted through the screen. I remember the sound of wind chimes outside mingling with the calming classical and earth music I played inside and the way the warm air felt as it circulated the room and how the pages of a book felt—fine-grained texture sliding against my fingertips. I remember the rainbows cast all over the walls from the collection of prisms strung to catch and transmute the light.

It’s likely that this memory is an amalgamation of separate moments in my life when I felt safe, the feeling cast into specific sensory guardians to be called upon as needed, in which case the architecture of the memory shifts according to need or imperfect mechanics. The beauty in that is that there is agency over the process.

Often, there’s a place that resonates with us. Someplace that feels like home or that invigorates us in a way that other forces have been unable to.

When separated, we can create an echo of that place by remembering the details that made the location a living thing—its unique flora, earth forms, and water sources.

A photograph is a portal created by human intention through the medium of lens and film or binary code.

We can populate a space with these gateways—be it an entire dwelling, or a room, or a closet, something we share with others or something we decide to protect as a refuge for ourselves.

By leaning into nostalgia to evoke galvanizing emotions, utilizing the visual charge of the sun, or undertaking an expansion of self through a myriad of small changes to our environments, we can let the right energies in.