Recently I discovered a lush community garden within my neighborhood and decided to start weeding out plants for space. As I was doing that I began to form a strong relationship to the earth and soil around me, feeling as if we were one. Despite not stepping into a garden for over a decade now, it felt as if I was walking into my past backyard, to when I was doing yard work and watching my dad wrap up the garden hose. It felt like I was re-discovering a part of myself I originally thought I left behind.

I began to think about how I experience the world with regards to the objects and surroundings around me. I wondered, why do certain objects cause us to feel different emotions? Why is it that when I gaze at a tree by itself I feel loneliness and yearning? Or that when I see a cloth plant dangling, I feel a strong attachment to its color, spiraling into an array of emotions? What is the meaning of a tangled hose? Is it the way that it seems endlessly looping? Or is it more? Maybe it’s reminiscent of my father teaching me how to show love and care towards the earth. I don’t know exactly.

There are many possible answers to these questions, but I wonder if it is because I am seeing a part of myself I buried away. Maybe Marcel Proust was correct when he wrote about the past. Maybe our surroundings carry a stronger relationship to ourselves than we’d like to believe. Maybe I had stumbled into my Garden of Memories.

The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. — Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust