Memory has a texture

We believe every material holds a capacity for memory and there are objects in the world that remembers more than we do.

Leather, for instance, It is a living skin — once alive, now given new purpose. It stretches, absorbs, conforms, resists. Over time, it molds itself to you, remembering your gait, your pauses, your restlessness and with each encounter, it changes in form and texture. That is what memory does too — it gathers story and somehow, even when it fades, it leaves behind a texture.

Material holds memory in layers — each one a different kind of texture:

• Physically, through erosion, patina, softness, weight.

• Energetically, through the intention of its making.

• Psychologically, through the associations we project onto it.

• Spiritually, through its participation in time.

Physically, material records time through surface. It remembers erosion, patina, softness, and weight. The body of an object becomes weathered by life just as ours does. And the texture it leaves behind is rough, coarse, scarred. This is the texture of presence. It tells us: something passed here. It reminds us that decay is not destruction but evidence. The creased leather, the cracked glaze, the softened edge — these are all timelines and that’s a form of memory.

Energetically, material is charged with the intention of its maker and that devotion saturates the object with energy. Before the object is touched by time, it is touched by purpose. This is a metaphysical transfer that lingers in the fibres of the thing itself. The texture here mostly, is smooth, clean, luminous — a surface still unmarked but already full of meaning. This smoothness symbolizes potential, devotion, and offering. Material is, in this sense, consecrated.

Psychologically, material takes on the texture of projection. We project meaning onto material, and in return, it mirrors our emotional topographies. This is a texture that is soft, layered, shifting. It changes with us. It is intimate. A child’s blanket becomes a mother’s memory. A necklace becomes grief. These are not arbitrary projections; they are rituals of association through which memory becomes anchored — and these objects hold what we cannot say and what we fear to forget. Their texture symbolizes attachment, echo and intimacy.

Spiritually, All matter is in relationship with time, and through that relationship, it becomes vast. It bears the texture of time itself: grainy, porous, resonant. They remind us of what endures beyond us. Their texture symbolizes transcendence, witnessing, and devotion. Objects that have stood through time become participants. Their very persistence allows them to hold a spiritual presence.

Memory does not only live in the mind, it lives in objects and it leaves behind textures.

These objects become silent witnesses to the passage of time through the intimacy of use — bearing the imprints of our interactions and experiences. When we attune ourselves to these subtle inscriptions, perceiving memory not solely as a mental occurrence but as something tangible, manifesting in surfaces, weights, and charges — we begin to engage with these objects in a profoundly different manner. Objects cease to be mere passive entities for possession or display; we begin to notice that they, too, are experiencing life.

That they carry not only what we need but who we are.

As we cultivate an awareness of this dynamic, a deeper communion unfolds between us and the things we wear, hold, and live beside — we begin to value Duration. Repair. Care. We see the life cycle of things as something to be honored.

When we remember that things remember us,

we no longer treat them as disposable.

We slow down.

We choose well.

We keep longer.

We restore what’s broken.

We live with objects that live with us, not beneath us.

To live this way is to reject the hollow appetite of accumulation

To choose intimacy.

To recognise that every object carries not only utility but presence.

We need to remember what we already have.

To touch what touches us back.

So when next you hold something of yours — a garment, a vessel, a kkerelé shoe:

ask not only what is it for,

but what has it seen?

What has it remembered of you?

What texture does it carry?

And what are you willing to remember in return?