the subtle intimacy of clementines.

and why easy peels mean you don't care

I have a few love languages.

I love words of affirmation, tell me I did well, tell me I am amazing, tell me how I’m going to be okay because I am good one. Use your words and don’t you dare hold back.

Another is gift-giving, I love handmade stuff, and I love stuff that is a bit weird (like my current obsession is Soviet bone records, this is a very clear and big hint to all my friends reading this as to what kinda stuff I’m expecting on my birthday ), I love random things that made you think of me, I love flowers and big bows and I love spending hours making and making and making just to see the reaction of “oh wow! neat!” it brings me unexplainable warmth.

And then there is, of course, my all-time favorite love language which is - sharing a clementine.

I cannot pinpoint the first time I felt the love that sharing a clementine holds. Perhaps it’s because my father peels them for me and my mother pretty much every night. He does it in a special way, taking care to carve the peels and prop them in ways so it looks like a flower has bloomed with a little baby orange sitting in the middle. It takes him forever to peel a single one and it takes me at most 10 seconds to eat it.

Perhaps it was really hammered in thanks to my lovely ex-housemate-ex-best-friend-ex-possible-actual-only-soulmate who would buy a small crate every time we did a grocery shop. We would spend every evening after it was bought sitting next to each other on the sofa, she would peel them for me as we watched Buffy together. She wouldn’t think as she would pass me them one by one and I’d eat them, my head rested on her shoulder as we watched Xander make another dumbass mistake. We would turn to each other at the same time and roll our eyes at him, mouths full of oranges, the smell settling into our fingers.

Sometimes when I was having a particularly stressful day I would walk into my bedroom and find a peeled clementine on my desk. I could smell it before I even saw it, I could feel the orange colors filling up my room and warming me up and holding me, and then there I’d spot it, sitting waiting for me. That was love.

No tassels, no bows, no big words or gestures. Just a clementine, sat there all for me.

My friend bought a bag of clementines to our Dungeons and Dragons game the same week I was going through my rough week(/s) back in January and it made me cry. During a week when I was experiencing such cruelty from someone I cared about, finding a bag of clementines made me feel like I would be okay because I would always have someone peeling clementines for me. I would always have that love and someone taking the time and delicacy it takes to sit and peel a clementine for a friend and share it with them, for me.

I love that it’s a constant. My friends, their love, and clementines.

Nothing quite really compares to the feeling of coming home after a long hard day of lounging around on the beach and looking out at cute boys from over your book, only to take a shower and sit on the balcony to share clementines with friends. Someone’s painting their nails, someone’s plaiting their hair, someone’s reading a great gossip magazine, and someone is sitting peeling clementines to nourish the energy that fuels all of the above. And at that moment time seems to pause, and all there ever is and all there ever was, was an orange haze, and a great sunburn left to prove it.

Nobody I’ve been romantically involved with has peeled clementines for me. And if they had, they would’ve done it because they know how much it means to me and not because they wanted to…although my therapist has been telling me two things can exist at once…people can want to peel clementines for you because you want them too, and also because they want too…two things can exist at once, I’ve been reminding myself of this a lot recently. Truth be told it’s spiraled me a few times, knowing two things can exist at once for the worst too, cruelty can come hand in hand with care, this is normal, this is possible... But today I do not think about this.

Instead, I think of the smell that overpowers the room the moment the peeling process starts.

I think about how it speaks to me and says I love you. I love you, and so, I want to sit here and share with you this clementine and for us to not even notice how the room seems to have been taken over not only by this sweet scent but also by my love for you. It was being held safely in this shell and I am now pulling it apart to reveal all my love for you, it overflows and takes over the very same air we are breathing in. I will share it* with you and you will love me too.

*Other shareable fruits such as strawberries and cherries aren’t confined to a shell. This leads me to believe it’s the act of pulling it apart and sharing what once was one that makes sharing clementines in particular more special. Perhaps because it’s essentially an act of service, gift-giving, and quality time all in one..and if we push it to fit all the love languages, the act of sharing could be physical touch (?) I’m not sure how words of affirmation would fit..but who needs words when you have the taste of clementines on your tongue?

Today, I will sit here today and watch my dad peel yet another clementine with the knife he made himself. And I will devour it, and his love for me, in one sitting.

Today, I will long for the sofa waiting for me in a tiny freezing cold flat sitting above a coffee shop, and the citrusy smell that lingers in its walls.

If there’s one thing I hope you do after you read this is that I hope on your way from work today, or during your next grocery shop, you buy a clementine to peel for someone you love. And watch as they appreciate the gesture.

*note - quite a while after writing this I had the worst first date ever, and when I went to his there was a box of clementines sitting by the window. I told him I’d written about clementines recently he told me to just hurry up and take off my clothes already.

What I’ve been consuming -

Audio

Ever since Kali Uchis released Red Moon in Venus it’s all I’ve ever needed, it’s all my ears will allow me to hear.

Visual

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

This was a 3/5 for me because they opened the film with the story of Buster Scruggs and it couldn’t really be topped. I would be down for a 3-hour film on Buster alone though, give that man a feature-length film OR even better a 6 season series!!

Reading

Women Who Run With The Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estés

TL;DR - Each chapter starts off with a folk tale collected from all over the globe, followed by a dissection of that tale in the context of what it means to be a deep, feminine, wild woman (‘wild’ is meant to be a woman who is in touch with her intuition, being in touch with yourself, returning to the ‘self’ etc - not to be confused with out of control wild). I’m not too far into it yet but I’ve already taken notes all over it, and I feel so incredibly seen and understood and it’s already really helped me tap into my inner ‘feral/wild’ woman.

My Favourite Computer, An Old Mac

gr8 short read!

What’s been consuming me -

I’ve really been into etymology lately it’s full of little breadcrumb surprises! For example -

Clēmēns (‘merciful’) —> Clément (‘mild ((weather)), merciful, lenient, placid, gentle’) —> Clémentine (Clément + -ine, after the French missionary Clément Rodier - the first person to breed mandarin orange’s 1902) = Clementine !!

(Also, Clementina = the name of a Roman goddess of forgiveness. This makes me think of how peeling clementines for people and sharing them feels like an offering. To join this with Clēmēns which also created ‘clemency’, makes the whole act feels very much like “forgive me, I love you.”)

Another one of my favorites has been - Nostalgia

Nostos (‘return home’) + Algos (‘pain’) —> Heimweh (‘homesickness’) —> Nostalgia (‘acute homesickness’)

“pain” + “return home”—tells us that nostalgia is less about the specifics of the home itself, the place, and the scenery, than the fact that you can’t go back!!!