Journal
The Journal
Writing on the Self-Place Bond: how a home and the person in it shape each other, and where scent comes in.
2026
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The yellow we both mean
I was writing the colour block for lemon and I stopped in the middle of the sentence. It had come out without any hesitation: the yellow of zest, not the yellow of the fruit. Then I read it back and asked by what right.
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The textures of silence
I have lived mostly on my own for three years, and for most of that time I would have told you the silence was the best part. In a world that never stops talking, a quiet flat felt like wealth.
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Time for distance, Distance for time
Two oils I reach for often behave nothing like each other, and knowing how they differ on paper is a different thing from watching what they do in a room.
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Describing a scent, not dictating it
For me, citronella is a small roof garden. We had one once, full of plants, with a wooden swing chair where I used to read and write through the long warm afternoons.
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Half Chemistry, Half Autobiography
You walk into a room and something shifts before you have a thought about it. The light is the same. The furniture has not moved. But the air carries a smell, and the rest of you registers it faster than your mind does.
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The Selves a Home Holds
One summer at university, my friends went home and the term emptied out around me. I was left in a rented flat barely mine yet.
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What Scent Taught Me About Attention
Self-love is a phrase that’s heard everywhere these days. It’s become so routine that it sometimes feels hollow. But what if self-love isn’t where we begin?
2025
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Kirchner’s Kitchen: A Meditation on Colour and Scent
To step into Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s “Alpine Kitchen” (1918) is to enter a threshold where exterior landscape and interior life are woven together.
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Space Is Felt Before It Is Measured: Lessons from Do Ho Suh
I'd been waiting to visit Do Ho Suh's Walk the House at Tate Modern since it opened in May.
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The Scent We Can't Name: The Last Private Language
Ever caught a whiff of something that transported you back in time, but when someone asks, “What does it smell like?”, you freeze?
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The texture of a room's air
In my last piece I wrote about reading the emotional landscape of your home: noticing which spaces pull you in and which push you away.
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The rooms you avoid
You don't just live in your home. You feel it. Some rooms pull you in, and you settle without thinking. Others you pass through like a guest.
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Topography and Landscape: The Two Maps of Home
You know that feeling when you walk into your kitchen in the morning and something just shifts?
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The air remembers
You walk into your kitchen on a quiet morning. The light hasn't quite filled the room yet, but you catch the faint trace of rosemary from last night's cooking.
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How Scent Connects You to Your Home as One
Some homes feel like they're waiting for you. Others feel like you're waiting for them to notice you're there.
A letter, now and then
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