The Peeling of an Orange

Oh, the many-fold pleasures of peeling an orange. First, there is the peel. For maximum satisfaction, I recommend nothing but the bare essentials: the fingernail. Plunge the finger and nail into the peel of the orange. Be sure not to pierce to fruit, though. Then the peeling begins. The satisfaction of removing a large, unbroken area of daffodil-meets-rose peel rivals the contentment of paring away the section of sunburnt skin--but a husk of once-epidermis--that now is only ghostly film flaking from the shoulder. Scores of minutes elapse. Still I strive to remove the orange obstruction; every whit must go. And then, an exposed citrus.

Or is it? Close your eyes. Breathe in. Then out. Now look: you are not done. An opaque layer of white flesh lingers on the so-called "orange." What to do? Too thin to use the tough protein--known as keratin--to pierce and rend the residue of peel from the pome.

A knife! Not to stab or plunge or destroy the fruit, No! But to gently coax the fleshy whiteness from the succulent profit of the sweet, sour, citrus meat of the orange. It is here that the wisdom of the orange becomes lucid; for peel and pull and prod and poke as you might, there remains more to unfasten.

Never orange. Always, still, white.

The lesson of the orange is patience, forbearance, stoicism. The true ecstacy is in the process, the journey, the methodology of creating an unsullied fruit. To reveal and create... an Orange.