It's all about the chicken

I just put a chicken in the oven.

I realize this sounds like no big deal. You’ve probably put multiple chickens in the oven over the past month and thought nothing of it.

The path to this particular culinary moment was thwacked through the brush of a garden party gone blustery. Instead of enjoying the mock orange, clematis, and the rose named after my friend’s mother, we were gathered round her dining room table. As the dishes were cleared and desserts brought out (puddings here in Edinburgh), the conversation divided, as these things do when there are a dozen people spaced along ten feet of table.

Down my end, one of my dear friends told us how she’s suddenly realized, at seventy-eight years old, that she is in love with house cleaning. It’s a task you’re not supposed to enjoy, she explained, and so it had never occurred to her, until she was paying close attention to her own feelings, that it actually brought her joy.

And so began a seemingly breezy round robin: what brings you joy?

My brain stuttered. I’m generally ridiculously happy with my life here in Edinburgh (with moments of grump at whatever inconvenience is currently plaguing my body). But joy feels more embodied. It’s the feeling I get from a book deal or new project, an electric fizz that runs through my whole being. And maybe it’s the aforementioned physical grumps, but I haven’t had a whole lot of electric fizz in recent years.

I wasn’t the only one bamboozled by the question. The first woman asked is currently moving from her home after the death of her husband. She’s packing books and furniture, downsizing an entire life from six bedrooms to two. Everything seems betwixt and between, and even her art is stalled as she makes the transition. So, when she was asked what brings you joy, her immediate response was I don’t know.

Which made perfect sense to me and, I thought, might end the conversation.

But then she rallied. Her face brightened as her mind switched gears. Actually, I do know, she said. And out of her mouth flowed a litany of flower names, colors, scents, and songs.

So often when I am asked questions along the lines of what brings you joy, my mind goes big: family, work, travels. Suddenly, here was permission to go small: scents, textures, tastes. We went round the table, naming our favorites. I started to answer with my usual list: the lift of the wind, the ozone-scent of lightning, fresh sap…

And quickly realized these were the scent of the storm, of Hurricane Helene and the time after when we had no electricity and Asheville had no water. The months and months punctuated by the thud of falling trees and growl of chain saws.

I hadn’t before realized how many of my favorite things had been irrevocably altered.

Those of you who have been reading along for a while know the past stretch has been rough: first trying to keep a small business afloat during Covid, followed by the liminal months when I was nonfunctional with vertigo. Just as I was feeling myself again, Hurricane Helene. I often look at photos from a retreat I led just two weeks before the storm, marveling at how young I look.

Everything seemed to blow away in that hurricane. There was no book deal in the year that followed: sales for Letting Magic In disappointed my publisher. And then, of course, the move overseas which, by definition, comes with a massive amount of transition and decision making.

I’ve been feeling ancient. Not ancient and wise: ancient and done. Like I’m through all the things I needed to do in this lifetime, and it’s time to lie down on a patch of warm earth and let the chickweed grow over me.

But all of a sudden, joy was once again allowed to be something small and personal. Life was allowed to be enjoyed in the minutest of moments. I didn’t have to create a cultural movement punctuated by Instagram likes or a body of work that hit the NYTimes best-seller list. I just had to rub a linen pillowcase against my cheek or smell chicken roasting in the oven.

The day after the non-garden party, I had a tour at the Botanics. I arrived early and walked through the conifer grove. I don’t know much about conifers, but I walked slowly, comparing bark patterns and leaf whorls. The trees were going to cone and all of the cones were different. I began splitting them with my thumbnail, spilling scent into the air and onto my hands. I could feel my heart expanding, a gentle current running through my arms. Later, when I’d gathered my tour group, I asked them if they wanted to smell the conifers before I launched into our guided walk. We wandered through the trees together, remembering how to wonder.

This feeling—the sensation of being cracked open by the mystery of the natural world—is where this all began for me. Before leading courses and writing books and planning speaking engagements, there was this electric fizz. This joy.

I’ve missed it.

I’ve been thinking about those beginnings, about who I was before I was chasing book deals and doing the things one must do to keep said deals. Don’t get me wrong: I adore writing. Playing with words and creating meaning have been constants in my life since I was a teenager. But the business of being a professional author is something else, and it is grueling.

So…

So.

I need a reframe. And I’m in the process of creating one for myself. I’m not all the way there, but I’ll give you a bit of backstory and a rough sketch of how I’m changing the story arc going forward:

This newsletter began for business reasons. First, back in 2008, it was a way to stay in touch with Herbiary’s customers. Then it became a way to stay in touch with students taking my courses. In the past decade, it has been about reaching out to the readers of my books. Publishers look at my stats before giving me a book deal, which has led me to obsess about my numbers. I don’t take risks with my writing or my chosen topics.

While this might have begun as a business venture, over two decades of writing, I’ve gotten to know you. Chatting with you and getting to know you through your comments brings me full-on happiness.

This newsletter isn’t going anywhere.

But it is a perpetual motion machine. It has no end; there is always another article to write, which is not the way I write best. I love to work intensively and compulsively; I love to go so deep that I squint when I come up for light... And then I like to rest and completely forget that I’m a writer at all. That is not the pacing of a newsletter.

So it’s time to color outside the lines. I’m going to be creating projects for myself, each with a beginning, middle, and end. Each with its own timeline and specifics, kind of like writing a book. Phew!

The first project, starting at the autumn equinox, will give me back some things that bring me joy: botanical stories and dusty library shelves, the mystery hidden behind the garden gate. I’ll be telling you more about it in the coming weeks. I will simultaneously be working on a novel, one that aligns with the newsletter project. Both of these bits of writing will be about following the electric fizz of joy… of inner-knowing…not about pleasing a publisher. In fact, in shifting my focus, I may be signing my own publishing death warrant, and I’m okay with that.

For the next year, it’s going to be about you and me… and the chicken. The one I put in the oven at the beginning of this note. A culinary adventure that also began at the non-garden party, where I had ducked into the kitchen—the old unused kitchen behind the newer one in the expanded dining room—and noticed a strange terracotta cook pot. When I asked about it, the hostess offered it to me... Which reminded me that I have multiple pieces of terracotta cookware, all dragged across the ocean from my home in the States. Although I used to experiment with it all the time, I haven’t used clayware much since Andrew started eating vegan-ish, at which point I turned my limited energy to learning how to get us both enough protein sans meat and dairy. The terracotta became decor.

But this morning I went to the butcher and then came home and climbed onto the dining room banquette to reach the high shelf where I’ve displayed my crockery. I pulled down a tagine I haven’t used in years.

I didn’t quite remember how to use it. Initially, I just dumped the chicken in, whole. That didn’t look quite right. So I pulled up a recipe and began to remember: vegetables on the bottom, a little water, a little oil. I relaxed into chopping, the veg, then the chicken. As I wielded the knife, I said my thank yous to the bird, remembering the cycles of life and death and life.

Other joys started to surface as I cooked: the susurrus of the ocean and the feel of warm sand between my toes, the scent of sea pine oil, sharing breath with a horse, sitting with my back against a standing stone.

I want to cook in a way that feeds my imagination. I want to pause over my work as the scent of leeks wafts from the kitchen and through the flat. I want to rest my hands on the warm clay dome as it comes out of the oven, to contemplate the elements that m

ade the meal. And, later, when the chicken has rested, I want to eat a meal that makes me feel fed.

Join me at the table. What brings you joy?

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P.S. My thoughts on why this one hasn’t met publisher expectations?

It's only in (expensive) hardcover.

But—hint!— the audio and e-books are both reasonably priced.