There is a level of design that makes a place stand out (obviously) but that also generates a feeling of welcome and aspiration. We want to be surrounded by things that remind us of ourselves. In fact, we depend on our places to remind us who we are and who we can be. The process of making a home or social gathering shows this.

The paths of my neighborhood know me well now. They didn’t once. I have met them time and time again for many different reasons. My destinations show myself; my pathway shows myself. My life is stretched out step by step on the paths just outside. I retrace my life when I walk.

It’s an uncanny thought, strange, even, in many ways, but what is life without a sense of absurdity? 

Watching from my train window, the hills rolled past me again and the mountains just beyond were different this time. I thought of the movie I watched with my family and their own excitement to show me the mountains. “Look what we’ve used to make ourselves,” it all seemed to say.

I think this lesson was less obvious before and was made clear to many during COVID-19 lockdowns. Along with many parts of normal life being disrupted, suddenly just how comfortable your home was became very important. I remember the thought of having dodged a bullet by moving to Boston instead of New York then and living in a classic New York “is this a shoe box or a closet” style apartment. Those types of places assume that one can go somewhere else to get the space they need. Claustrophobia might be defined as too much place and not enough space. Our bodies respond to its environment at times somewhere on the irritated-relaxed scale to gauge our environmental cohesion.

And so it was that this all came rushing back to me in May as Ole and I visited a show at The Phillips Collection in DC, “Bonnard’s Worlds.” Appropriately, as the US’s first contemporary art museum, Phillips was ahead of the game in collecting many pieces from Bonnard, and I hadn’t heard his name until this show. It was a beautiful curation. And I was drawn to the places.