“The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

–Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

Dear M,

I’m afraid that without context, the following words will make as much sense as that Armenian cipher we intercepted last month. So, if you’d like a refresher on the previous memo, you can read it here.

You instructed me to apply my attention fully to one block in Budapest. You wanted the secrets that lay hidden in plain sight. The stories that people see every day and never notice. 

You thought that even in the most ordinary of scenes one could find beauty if they knew how to look. It was my job to prove you right.

My method was simple.

I circled the block 24 times in the 24 hours. I mapped it with my eyes, ears, and smell. Notice I didn’t include the sense of touch. That’s because I wanted to absolutely avoid any and all discussion about weather. 

The only interesting thing ever said about the weather came from Oscar Wilde:

“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

I’m afraid I’ve already spoken too much of it.

Back to brass tacks. 

It may come as a surprise to you to know that mission started not in the streets, but in the sheets.

Yes, that’s right. The mission started in the bed sheets. 

Stop that smiling, M. This is not a letter from Hungary with Love.

When you sent the instructions, I was in my room. Then the idea suddenly occurred that there was nothing stopping me from flipping my attention on right at that very moment.

And so it began.

12:30 AM: The Digs

I asked myself the most obvious question: who lived here before me?

The not so obvious answer: A healthy, Middle-Eastern male between the ages of 18 and 26.

It all started with a cup. Specifically, the smell of a cup.

I had taken it out of the cabinet and instinctually, following The Department’s training protocol, gave it a proper sniff. Since it didn’t smell like bitter almonds, I knew it wasn’t poison. But there was certainly a scent.

Another sniff. Protein powder?

A bigger sniff. Yes, that’s what I thought. Chocolate protein powder.

Further inspection of the kitchen led to another piece of evidence supporting the health-centric hypothesis: a food scale.

Only two types of people use food scales: bakers and gym rats who count macros. With no whisk or measuring cups in sight, we can assume the individual was not a baker (at least not a very good one).

The cabinet above the sink was packed with tea. Mint, pomegranate, cinnamon, and lots of black tea. By the flavor profiles alone we could safely bet on Middle-Eastern descent. The labels written in Arabic only confirm this. 

But that’s not evidence enough, is it? How do I know it was a male?

I already slipped the detail past you. See? I’m testing your attention as well.

The sheets, M, the sheets.

They were speckled with black hair. Specifically, a mix of chest and back hair. 

Now don’t go off squirming!

If you knew what I paid for this place you would understand. It’s to be expected. Furthermore, with Middle-Eastern blood coursing through my own veins, I can sympathize with a hairy brother. 

There is no evidence of a female’s touch. The walls are practically barren and the plants are fake.

An unmarried Middle-Eastern man typically lives with his family; that is, unless he is a student (likely aged between 18 and 26).

Case closed.

It’s time to hit the streets. 

I grabbed my black jacket and laced the boots. I’m not sure why, but every detective always has either a cigarette or a toothpick in their mouth.

I’ve already brushed the snags. Toothpick it is.

Most of my neighbors had their lights off. The only person I saw was a man a floor down sitting on his doorstep criss-crossed. It was an awkward position but one he was clearly comfortable in. His back was rounded over the glow of his screen and a cigarette dangled out of the center of his mouth. He didn’t look up when I passed.

1 AM: Not Gotham City

The first characters I saw were three women. They weren’t together and they were about my age.

One was wearing a sweet perfume, freshly applied. She was meeting someone. Judging by the hour, she trusts whoever she is going to meet. Judging by the amount of perfume, she hasn’t known him too long. Date number three then.

The other two were fixed on their phones and hardly noticed me pass.

Tell me, how many other cities with nearly two million inhabitants are safe enough for women to walk through at night? 

This isn’t a political essay, so I shan’t expound on Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, and his policies. For those who don’t know, he has been accused of horrendous and inhumane policies, on top of the regular list of corrupt actions shared by most politicians.

Nevertheless, women feel safe here in the middle of the night. 

San Francisco has less than half the population of Budapest and technically more humane policies. It’s also the closest thing I’ve seen to a Gotham City if Gotham City had no Batman.

Nothing else on the block to report on.

There was an overfed gray cat lounging in a window and a drunkard singing what sounded like a folk song.

4:30 AM: Do Androids Dream of Electric Birds?

The alarm was set for 3 AM but my sloth overpowered it. Luckily, a singing bird woke me at 4:30 AM.

The window was cracked at night because I wanted to hear what the block had to say. Largely it was the sound of engines, with an occasional bark or voice piercing through the white noise.

Later in the morning it was the beeps of a backing up construction truck, pigeons and doves cooing, my elderly neighbor’s TV, and my other neighbors cupboards shutting.

But the bird is what woke me. I’m not sure if it was the pitch or the song that made me take interest. Likely both, for the song I’d never heard and the pitch was louder than the pigeons and doves.

It was a strange tune, eerie really, though at the time I couldn’t explain why. 

This was plenty to warrant an investigation. The sound was coming from somewhere inside the building’s atrium. I opened my front door and started the search. 

All the neighbors were asleep except for the man I saw earlier. He was sitting in the exact same position doing the exact same thing: smoking and scrolling. This time I noticed he was ashing his cigarette into an old pickle jar.

The song was coming from the floor above. I crept up the stairs carefully so as not to spook it. I was close and the bird didn’t stop singing. My training is good, you know that, but not good enough to avoid detection from a wild animal. Perhaps this creature, like the young man one floor down, didn’t care about my presence at all. 

That’s when I realized why the song was eerie. It hadn’t stopped since I first heard it!

A bird that never tilts its head as it awaits a response. A man with ears sewed shut and a mouth jammed open. A world that deprived itself of nature and makes desperate attempts to reconnect by setting their screensavers as pictures of waterfalls, buying plastic plants, and installing fake birds.

The sound streamed out of a tan box that hung crookedly above the window of apartment 77.

It took all my strength to not tear its wired jugular out and hurl it four floors down. 

This was a scene straight out of P. K. Dick novel. It also wasn’t the only symptom of an oncoming dystopia that I saw in the day. We’ll come back to that.

5:30 AM: A Thief

The stillness of the morning is only disturbed by people who are brisk in their walk and not in the face. Often they are accompanied by a small mutt. Or more accurately, they are the ones accompanying the small mutt. 

I walked into the park that lays parallel to my block. I chose the bench on the far end of the park. The one that is the first to catch sunlight.

It didn't matter that the bench seemed to be designed for discomfort. I liked the quietness of the morning and the freshness of the air. There were yellow daffodils planted in long rows dividing the well trimmed green grass.

The scientific name of the daffodil genus is Narcissus, named after the character in the Greek myth—you remember, the pretty boy who fell in love with his own reflection. Apparently, he was so consumed by his own image that he forgot to sleep and starved himself to death.

The obvious warning is about vanity and self-absorption. The secondary warning is better: falling in love with something you can’t have will lead to your destruction. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby tells that story better than anything else. 

Even plants have lessons to teach if we are willing to pay attention. 

The rays of sun were just beginning to touch the top of my head when the gate creaked open. 

My eye cracked open and caught a sharp glance from a disheveled looking man. He looked upset that I was there. Maybe I had beaten him to his usual spot?

No, he walked straight past me without breaking stride. I watched him until he disappeared behind a hedge. 

Was this unusual? Well, Hungary is not Montana. People don’t offer you a head nod followed by “howdy” or “mornin”. Heck, they don’t even smile! And why would they? For the last five hundred years, they fought tooth and nail to protect their empire from waves of Ottomans, Habsburgs, and Russians. 

This is what their empire used to look like:

This is what it looks like now:

You can see why they might be a bit cold.

Still, they don’t typically scowl at foreigners. That’s why that brief glance from the passing man bothered me. 

It bothered me enough to get up to see what his problem was. The plan wasn’t to confront him but to get another glance at his eyes to help me understand his gruffness.

Newspaper in hand, I fell into pursuit. 

A mark of a seasoned agent is how long he can pursue without being detected. This poor chap didn’t even know I existed. I became his shadow.

He slowed to look at a poster. I opened the morning paper and leaned against a fence.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw he was grasping on to something. It was bright yellow.

I turned too quickly. Our eyes met. I let mine fall to his hands, where I watched the grip on a bundle of freshly stolen daffodils tighten.

Busted!

Who were the flowers for? Remember the time of day. The sun was hardly up. He wasn’t picking them for himself. Men only get flowers at their funeral. 

My theory is as follows. 

He was out all night. It started how it always starts: a beer after work with the lads. It’d been awhile since he let loose. After the second beer, a voice in his head whispered that it might do him some good to let go. His buddies agreed. Next thing he knew, it was five in the morning and he had a dozen missed calls from his lady.

This would explain his disheveled and upset composure. 

The daffodils weren’t planned. He was clearly not that clever. The park was simply on the way home (he did enter and exit from opposite ends) and the idea struck him that his wife loves fresh flowers. They might soften the blow.

Case closed. 

On the way back to my apartment, I saw a drunkard at a bus stop digging through the trash. I think it was the same one I saw a few hours prior singing folk songs. 

He picked out a wine bottle and proceeded to examine it more closely than a mother does when picking her newborn’s first mash. After a satisfied grunt, he tipped it back.

I didn’t see anything fall into his mouth. He licked his lips and reached for a beer can to repeat the process.

A young woman holding her phone turned away with disgust. An older woman holding a basket looked on with compassion.

A younger man studied all of them with great interest.

9 AM: Hilde and Ilde, the Florists

The apartment smells like someone toasted a piece of sourdough bread over an open flame then slathered it in good peanut butter. That someone was me. After slugging back a quick coffee to wash down the crumbs, I got back to work. 

The young man that looks too old is sitting in his usual fashion on his doorstep. When does he sleep? 

The lottery ticket business is open at this time. Four male customers are scratching away at little colorful sheets at the standing tables inside. 

A tired woman with red curly hair walks out of her building, cigarette in-mouth. 

Grandma is already coming back from the market with a basket full of goods. Lots of vegetables and a loaf of bread. She’s walking with a waddle that makes the basket swing into her little leg with every step. 

Baskets can't be the most optimal way to carry groceries. I've seen quite a few grandmas using them. I wonder if it's similar to carrying a fancy purse, where a woman can convey status by how intricate her basket is?

There’s a city worker with a broom worn down to a short stub. 

Another is taking his time emptying the trash. He spent four minutes doing it. For at least three of those minutes, he paused to watch pretty girls walk by. 

They didn’t notice him. No one notices each other in the morning. 

Everyone is too busy rushing to the metro, dreading the work day, thinking of the groceries they need to buy, and reading up on the latest catastrophe in a country they’ll never go to. 

What would we do without a healthy dose of morning stimulation?

There’s a few things I didn’t see worth noting.

I didn’t see any runners. Their routes are usually further west along the Danube; one of the most historic rivers in the world that splits this city into Buda and Pest.

No one was wearing open toe shoes or shorts. Not because it’s not warm enough too, but because we are technically still in spring and for some reason people care about that. 

Even the gym goers are fully dressed with their change of clothes in a duffle. It doesn’t matter if they shower there or not. They won't be caught in the streets wearing shorts and muscle shirt.

I didn’t smell any fresh bread or steaming coffee. I did, however, smell the sweetness of fresh flowers. 

Hilde, the florist on the corner, is watering her colorful assortment. She’s wearing a cute apron that fits her snuggly.

Ilde, Hilde’s daughter, works with her a few days a week. Their corner is the only section of the entire block that smells good.

Even the dumpling restaurant can’t waft enough fumes onto the street to overtake the usual city stench of dirt and used air.

Hilde is kind but always interrupts me with a “mhmm” before I can finish a sentence.

“Good morning, Hilde.”

“Jó reggelt! Where are you going today?”

“I’m going to a ca–”

“Mhmm.”

“Um. A cafe.”

“And how are the plants you bought?” 

“Well, they are good but..”

“Mhmm.”

“But the one with long leaves has turned black on..”

“Mhmm. Zane, are you going to buy flowers today?”

“Hilde, I told you I will once I meet a nice wom–”

“Mhmmmm!”

That was our conversation Wednesday morning. It’s the same conversation we have every morning.

12 PM: For Whom the Bell Tolls

For lunch, I ate potato soup with pickles and a slice of white bread on the side. It made me feel about as lively as a fat cat on a hot summer afternoon.

I was dragging my feet home when I heard the chimes of bells ring through the city. Surely it was a special occasion, for I had never heard them rung at that time before.

I was wrong. The bells have been rung every day at 12 PM for the last 568 years. I just had never listened for them.

“Look and you will find it–what is unsought will go undetected.”

–Sophocles

The story behind the ringing is about as fascinating as it can get. It’s the type of story that gets made into a folk song and lives throughout taverns in the countryside for the next millennium.

It started in the summer of ‘56 (1456).

Peasants were squabbling about bread rations and farmers were complaining about their crops. In other words, it was like every other summer. 

Except for the fact that a massive force threatened the whole of Europe. This was the same force that gruesomely conquered Constantinople (the capital of Christian Byzantium) three years prior. 

You’re correct, you little history buff you, the Ottomans were on the move again.

Under Sultan Mehmed II, the Ottoman Turks were notorious for their ruthless tactics and discipline. After a few years of slaughtering Christians throughout Anatolia (modern day Türkiye), Mehmed the Conqueror grew bored. Kebabs didn’t taste as good as they used to. He wanted a sliver of the Western World.

The odds of Hungary stopping the Turks weren’t favorable and the pope, Pope Callixtus III, knew it. So, he did what any pope would do: he ordered all Christians to pray for a Hungarian victory. 

The bells would be rung at noon as a daily reminder to pray, but that is only half the story.

A month after the pope’s orders, the Ottomans marched on Belgrade (the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary) with a force of 100,000 troops. Some records indicate an army closer to the size of 150,000.

They were met by a stout man with chestnut brown hair, a powerful mustache, and piercing blue eyes. His name was János Hunyadi and he was Hungary’s greatest general.  

We know he was good because his men didn’t simply address him as, “General Hunyadi”. They called him “Scourge of the Turks”, which doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely, but strikes fear in me and I’m not even Turkish. 

However, a reputation like that can only go so far. The fact still remained that he was facing a force of 100,000 with his 30,000.

Almost as soon as it started, the battle in Belgrade was a disaster for Hunyadi. He sent word back to Budapest probably by horse but I’ll pretend it was by pigeon and read something like:

“Boss, it’s not looking so good. The men are dropping faster than we can count.

We will continue to fight until our last breath. 

–Scourge of The Turks

P.S. Please send more sausage and wine.”

No sausage and wine arrived.

Instead, Hunyadi received the strangest group of reinforcements ever to be sent to the front lines: 20,000 men, primarily peasants armed with whatever they could find (pitchforks, scythes, probably regular forks), led by John Capistrano, a 70-year-old friar.

It would be this rag-tag team that would sway the outcome of the war in favor of the West.

That’s friar John in the middle swinging a crucifix and sword in the same hand.

At a turning point in the battle, he was recorded as yelling, “The Lord who made the beginning will take care of the end!”

The bells continue to toll to this day in remembrance and celebration of that unlikely victory that protected Western World. 

Both Hunyadi and Capistrano died a few months after the war. A highly contagious infection broke out from the tens of thousands of corpses lying around. In 1724, John Capistrano was canonized as a saint in the Catholic church.

M, your theory was right. The more you pay attention, the more interesting life becomes. 

***

It also turns out that if you pay attention, there’s actually a ton to write about. So much so that I had to split this memo into two sections.

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