Mano and the orange

At what point does an orange become an ex-orange? I asked Mano, pacing up and down the kitchen. it had been a hard day. for a variety of reasons I felt as if I were going mad. I stared at the orange peel in the compost bowl. This orange i said. It's peeled and almost all eaten, but is it dead? When could one say that the orange was killed? When it was picked, when it was sliced, or when its bits started to decompose in the compost bin? That would just be more life wouldn't it - life of a different variety? And how does that relate to us? Mano looked at my hands, as if I were holding a knife instead of just a segment of orange. You'd better go upstairs he said, and write all this down before you go nuts. Because I'm not about to have a conversation with you about a dead orange. So I wrote it down.