Orange Glow

You walk through town on a Wednesday evening. The cold air smells of petrol and cigarette smoke. Someone shouts something at you. A car with obnoxiously loud engines roars past. You avert your eyes from the homeless people huddled in alcoves they haven’t been turfed out of yet. Gaggles of semi-naked revellers lurch past, lobbing empty beer cans on the floor and cackling savagely. You walk on, past sodium streetlights and neon bar signs; a city lit by pure functionality and deliberate enticement, shop fronts offering anything your lonely heart could desire - for a price.

Then, you turn a corner, and see it: the orange glow. Warmth spilling out onto the street. It doesn’t expect anything, it doesn’t try to lure you in, it’s simply an open invitation. Come in, have a cup of tea, enjoy the babble of conversations of people who are really delighted to see each other, really listening to each other. Come upstairs, sit in silence – blissful silence! - an island of it in a sea of noise; sit amongst purposefully silent figures, silent yet in a togetherness beyond words. Allow your mind to see that it doesn’t need to keep up that incessant chattering; allow your heart to see that it doesn’t need to guard itself against breaking any more. Catch a fleeting glimpse of all you could be, all we all could be, and sing yourself towards this. Light some incense; let candlelit tears roll down smiling cheeks. 

Then back into town, past the enticing lights, past the cackling revellers. But something has shifted: maybe the cigarette smoke now smells of people just trying to cope. Maybe you don’t need to shut yourself off to the misery of those huddled shapes in the alcoves. Maybe the neon lights believe their enticements are the best we can hope for in this life. Maybe the revellers are searching for the same things you are.

Deep in your being, a tiny crack opens in the armour you have been forging for such a long time, and a trickle of something luminous and so, so precious begins to flow. Look closer: it has an orange glow.

Harry Martin