Ernest Hemingway, the author of the classic The Old Man and the Sea, went from moments of harsh physical activity to periods of total inactivity. Before sitting to write pages of a new novel, he’d spend hours peeling oranges and gazing into the fire.
One morning, a reporter noticed this strange habit.
“Don’t you think you’re wasting your time?” asked the journalist. “You’re so famous, shouldn’t you be doing more important things?”
“I’m preparing my soul to write, like a fisherman preparing his tackle before going out to sea,” replied Hemingway.
“If I don’t do this, and think only the fish matter, I’ll never achieve anything.”
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Each to their own, peeling oranges is a preparation for writing, that does it for him, mine is cooking, I love to cook, I cook for love, got to STOP eating such much as it’s side effects isn’t wasting time it put weight on…………
Nu ştiu de ce, dar asociez acest peeling, cu îndepărtarea de pe suflet (sau din inimă) a tot ceea ce este rău !
Toate gândurile mele bune. Vă îmbrăţişez şi vă pup pe suflet. Vă doresc mult noroc, Mariana
I remember Hemingway totally different from any other writer because his “Farewell to Arms ” was the first novel I read in English .I wonder how that journalist had come to that conclusion! Even if he had read just one short story from Hemingway he would see a man in process of creation and grow up rather than a man sitting idle and gazing in fire. His inner world had not been so calm
In what I hear of him ,I see a man who by gazing into God resembling fire flames ,tries to tune with creator for creating new creation ,his soul is lifting up ,also mentally he has to grow up to fit , getting born as new one while giving birth a new thing . Being creator for a creature comes in form of giving birth and a new birth in this world can be in form of hatching and removing cover of shell ,and grow up can be in form of getting rid of skin .
The only way to show all these in brief cannot be other than: A man peeling orange and gazing into fire.
On the other hand, he had been living in the world created by him. If he had not been living those moments himself at least once he could not make them so powerful. It is about 16 years ago I had read some of his works such as” The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” “Hills like white elephant” , ” Sun also rises” and so on , I still remember them vividly.
“Oriental orange salad
Ingredients
4 beautiful oranges
1 bouquet of mint leaves
50 grs of grated almonds
50 grs of almonds
50g of powder sugar
2 tablespoons of orange flower extract
Steps -
1.Peel oranges, peel off the white part.
cut oranges into slices.
2.Display slices like a fan on a big plate.Powder with sugar.
Sprinkle the orange juice over and the orange flower extract.
Add the grated almonds and the almonds with the mint leaves.
Serve chilled
3.Take your time and savour it.”
You might like to wash it down with a nice wine.:)
Ahhh.., True !!!
Se puede hacer cualquier producción “artistica” sin alma, solo hay que combinar ciertos parametros y ya se tienene canciones, pinturas, libros, peliculas… A veces con exito, pero el arte es diferente, te toca el alma, a veces te enseña, otras te deslumbra por la belleza, pero el arte no es lo mismo que todas esas producciones destinadas a obtener rendimiento economico, y un artista para transmitir tienen que tener algo dentro, algo que no se consigue estando todo el día riendose de la vida.
Un saludo.
per quanto possa sembrare assurdo il pelare le arance e osservare il fuoco,trovo compiere queste azioni ,qualcosa di bello.Ci sono dei comportamenti che aiutano il nostro io piu’profondo ad emergere.Penso che l’atto dello scrivere preveda un empatia profonda con l’anima del mondo.
It is interesting that some of the comments are straying from the meaning of your post. My “peeling oranges” is walking, usually. If you are distracted from dreaming how can you create? If you can do something “mindlessly” the lightning bolt can strike and that is the most sensuous feeling.
This helps me this morning, for this is where I am here and now … accepting the transition, the process and not judging it. Peeling the orange. For me, that consists of accepting not knowing here and now what to accomplish next, where my decision is leading me, where the act of listening to my heart brings me here and now … I just decided to let go what my rational mind could not identiy, stop that mind from seeking a response, which by the way will only be false, and just “be”, doing “normal” chores, etc … which the heart opened, eyes opened, ears opened to the wind, the snow, the trees, the souls surrounding me and which I encounter. I am in letting what I am emerge, freeing it from the mind, calming the mind which has no answer to why I have chosen this, have acted like that, etc … not listening to what others my think but stay linked to that small thread that brought me here and that sudden light that made me act to do so.
That topic comes in due time for me, its message is clear to me. Like your book Valkyries, angels at first go through people, and that is what happened to me this morning when I opened the blog with this silent prayer of needing to capture the voices of angels to guide me.
I will leave and just let the process go on.
Happy New Year to you Paolo and Christina, and all my friends, Warriors of Light.
Love, Jojo.
Wasting time is not wasted…
What I tell my husband when he complains about my blogging/tweeting…
I think, I am most of the … time gazing into my inner FIRE: The LIGHT! I am walking my Path in .. silence, smiling at the people around me and with the deep knowledge that THIS IS NOT our natural HOME. I do my daily tasks- peeling oranges- as ‘for the first and last time’. The precious present moment is MINE so are my Past and Future that are ‘coloured’ with my own special way: my Utopian, colourful, melodic dream. Sometimes I have been lucky and am privileged to have met, sensed, touched, listened to other people’s MUSIC, FIRE and LIGHT and these moments are what have made me think that LIFE is Beautiful.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
Dear Paulo and All,
How this story carries me back about 20 years ago to one
of the worst experiences of my life, although it didn’t last longer than a minutes for me to decide in a ‘flash’ to
….
I was under great stress, emotional pain and anxiety at the time and ACTUALLY still vividly remember the instant
that, FULLY CONSCIOUS/AWARE, i.e not under the influence of any form of medication, drugs, etc., that I FELT I was about to lose my mental ‘sanity’ (HOFFIFIC !).I couldn’t face that alone and hastily searched for the tel.nr. of a
psychiatric hospital, intention (request) being “I am losing my mind, please quickly come and pick me up”! I dialled the number and the phone was already ringing. In a split second, before anyone had answered a strong inner voice (my soul’s !) spoke to me: “that is not want you really want Susan, to be
‘hospitalised’, treated with drugs, confined between walls
with people you don’t know and being in ‘their’ hands, so to speak, however caring they might well be; you have the power, will and courage to overcome this crisis on your own”. I put the phone down and went straight to my kitchen
and started peeling potatoes, one after the other until I felt calm enough to carry on as if nothing had occurred.
I was very shaken-up, but also woken-up and I felt I had made a true ‘quantum-leap’ on my road to recovery, which much later turned out to be a serious post-traumatic-stress-disorder which I also, over many years, healed myself from without medication…instead a total change of life and the many new decisions that involved.
Peeling-off anything really is very therapeutic if done with total mind-fulness. Particularly the layers of an onion which for me ‘symbolises’ all the layers of our conditioning… to get get through to our CORE, who we REALLY ARE in essence…
Wish you all the best of luck finding your core and take good care of if, for that is your ‘belonging’…Good Luck and a Fruitful, Happy New Year, LOVE Susan
Thank you for sharing with us, Sasan.
Happy new year 2011
Every creative activity is preceded by some form of orange peeling. In my case it is either just gazing in the distance without focusing on anything in particular or walking within the room! And more intense the thoughts the more vigorous the walk!!
I started writing after I spent years in tremendous pain in the area of the liver. After years of testing and asking a surgeon to remove my gallbladder, I still had pain.
I started researching the area of the liver from a holistic approach. I found that the liver is the organ that holds emotions as is is the bodies filtration system. I had spent years holding onto my past and that pain associated with my past lived within my liver and was showing itself in a very physical way.
I started writing my own blog about this deep pain and life experiences of lessons learned and slowly the pain has dissipated. As I let go of my past through writing and forgive myself for my past I have found the pain has subside and feel myself being lifted.
Thank you for writing and sharing your gift with us.
Deanne
El gozo de saberse dueño de sus sueños, no le detiene a sentirle gusto a las pequeñas actividades que podemos realizar a diario. En cada accion nuestra, dejamos volar nuestra imaginacion y da lo mismo pelar naranjas que resolver los mas complicados misterios. disfrutar lo que hacemos.
Walter
now I know ….why I suddenly love to eat pomegranates. …. it is a mess to eat them … hated them all my life therefore.
it’s frightening to peel oranges (it goes so much against the pace of society). I did it 60% of my time this year … but it is healing on all levels, & probably this is what my body & soul needed.
Reminds me of the saying “Things are not as it appears to be”. If I saw a person staring into a fire I would never think they were doing nothing. There is something definitely going on.
“PELAR NARANJAS” ME IMAGINO AL SENOR PAULO COELHO PELANDO PERO A POLITICOS O GOBERNANTES QUE NO CUMPLEN CON SU MISION. PUES AUN QUE ES MUY CAUTO Y RESPETUOSO EN SUS RELATOS,TIENE DERECHO DE PENSARLO. “PIENSA COMO PIENSAN LOS SABIOS Y HABLA COMO HABLA LA GENTE SENCILLA” (ARISTOTELES)
peeling the orange peel – cover of the soul.. and then he was ready.. and what a scent! my favorite!
if i would pick a fruit that would be orange too :o)
Incredible! Preparing his soul…
This reminds me of The Alchemist story as well, where the merchant and Santiago needed to cleanse their minds of negative thoughts.
In Canada, a certain variety of oranges are imported from Japan in December. Most go crazy for this special treat. We took oranges along with us for an early morning outing to a bookshop. I love peeling (and eating) them. Funny how a simple activity that we enjoy doing, can empty the mind. To get to the heart.
Watched Soul Train last night. Soul train…I like that.
Great story, thankyou Paulo!
Love,
Jane xo
I have been listening to an interview by R. Cook who is a writer and also a doctor.
He said one of the reasons he writes is “because he has something to say.”
Writing and medicine are linked”.
I find this fascinating because I see the link with healing in it.
‘The better history you take the better a doctor you are.”
It is all about learning about people’s personalities and making-up a story, sprinkling it up with some humour.
One of the reasons he writes books that are based on the medical profession is because “there is a lot of grey areas, ethical ones are one of them, where profits come before ethics more and more” – apparently the readers were surprised by this…but not the doctors.
It is also teaching people to understand medical terms.”
I find this most interesting. It has been something I have always liked about French doctors – they always used the proper medical terms -
He also mentions alternative medicine, the main ones being chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathic, He cited another one – medicine based on faith – and there he makes the link between science and religion saying that “they don’t have to be completely opposite each other” -
This also reminded me of Dr Chopra’s work as well.
It makes so much sense. When you know the morphology of a person you can deal according to their history, It is like taking an anecdotal observation of a child. You can understand the child better and prepare a program.
The importance of knowing your body well so that you can deal with your history.
Thanks Dr Cook and the beautiful interview by a Portuguese journalist and writer as well.Jose Rodrigues dos Santos “Conversas de Escritores”
Do peel oranges people.
Gaze the fire..
Do whatever your soul needs,so as to be prepared to move to another trial.
Prayer, I call this..
At last the secret! I ill have to buy a big bag of oranges otherwise I will never do it :D