The Smell of an Orange
Dear Friend,
Chiara and me—we went out for a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon, before the light faded, just to leave the house and shift our energy. We went to the local park, but the noise was too much.
There are housing blocks being built on two sides of the park, and the sound of circular saws and drills and hydraulic systems combined with the redirected traffic, so parts of the walk were a din.
So loud that I couldn’t hear the birdsong.
A young girl in her school uniform was playing with her friends on the new giant slide the council has built for the kids. It’s a triangular wooden structure that climbs maybe four metres in the air, with a curly metal chute to slide down.
The girl was screaming like a car alarm and bashing a stick against the metal slide as her friends slid past. She kept it up long enough for us to walk the five hundred metres or so to the park exit. Through the noise of the traffic and the building site, we could still hear her intense pitch.
It was remarkable how her friends seemed perfectly at ease with what we found so invasive.
The screaming maybe meant something different to them.
We headed for the marsh.
The noise eventually receded behind us. Exiting an envelope of dissonance, we were on the muddy grass that feels like home.
So much of my time as a kid was spent looking down at the grass or up at the sky—or out to sea. Knowing nothing, everything fascinating, mysterious even if you’d seen it a thousand times. The world was fresh and new every day, as it is today.
Standing in the kitchen, when we got home, I picked an orange out of the wooden fruit bowl and inhaled the scent.
It can bring you out of mind activity.
Focusing on a scent, or a sound, or a sensation.
The warmth and the life in your hands.
The zest of an orange.
The scream of a kid in a playground.
The rise and fall of your breath.
I’ve now shared most of my personal peace manifesto. For clarity, some parts I’m holding back, mainly because they deal with shared projects that involve others.
It occurred to me that there’ll be a reason for sharing this that I’ll recognise at some time, but I can’t see it right now.
There’s something in putting out what would, at one time, have been private thoughts—in the pages of a journal—for anyone to look at, should they wish to.
“This is who I am in this moment” kind of thing.
Tomorrow I’ll be in Sheffield to play music.
I’m hoping to write to you from the train.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey