Murakami works as a writer because he captures in prose those fleeting things that place you at the scene. Suddenly the tantalising smell of grilling cheese in the air. I stop and inhale, the scent displacing me to winter afternoons making cheese on toast. I breathe and realise I am hungry.
The polytunnel smells faintly of the garlic that I planted last week. The savoury smell makes me smile. I recall cooking ragu and the scent lingering for days on my fingertips.
I sit at the allotment. I realise how calm and serene it is here. I am bringing my stress and anxieties. If I ignore the allotment, its calm and serenity never reach me. I stay stressed and anxious.
I am trying to understand rhizomatic networks. Learning to draw these, complex, intra-dependent, interweaving networks might help. I am wondering if the autoethnography unfolds in the writing of the these. I have an instinctive feeling that the order in introduction, theoretical and methodological framework, literature review. I don’t know why it should be this way, only that this will be right.
Vulnerable and knowing vulnerability. Frail and knowing frailty. Loving and knowing love.
As I walk back from the allotment the onions I have harvested are encased in a towel. They are the size of a new born baby. I smile as I remember my son at that age. Their savoury smell reaches my nostrils. I inhale deeply. My mouth is salivating as I think of the food that I cook that baby who is now turning toward manhood. The sun shines on me as I continue.
