Lessons From Living in an Orchard

By
Abira Pathak
MSc Anthropology and Professional Practice

Abundance

Smells like fruit rot

Sounds like buzzing bees

Feels like a endless cycle of chores

But only when it gives, you are full

If you have peace, it’s almost divine

If you don’t have peace, it’s truly divine

But hiding in plain sight

To give is to get

Yet to give it takes a lot

Giving can be a solely selfish act performed with a strong intention to get

Yet the value of giving stays

We can evaluate intentions separately

Unclustered from each other

To prevent the rot from spreading

Grade the intentions

From best to worst or vice versa

Not wasting anything

Compote for the mushy ones

Lunch with the taut ones

When you’ve harvested abundance

Intentions can be well put to all kinds of use

Focus on the outcomes

The actions

The actions, and the actions alone can put abundance to full fruition

Only if we let them though

Can we let them?

Can we move with the abundance?

Take it all in and understand abundance?

Would it require smelling like rotten fruit?

Sounding like a buzzing bee?

Feel like a endless cycle of chores?

Photography by the author.

This piece is a kind of postscript towards Temporalities, the theme of our 2026 print issue, which you can read here.

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