When I peel the russet potatoes, the carrots, the sweet potatoes (and sometimes turnips), it’s an occasion. When I cut the zucchini, asparagus, red peppers, it’s an experience. When I bring out my largest bowl and use my hands to toss them all with olive oil, white wine vinegar, oregano, the trapdoor falls open, and I drop into a softness where tongue and nose are despots. The perfect music for this dark world happens only later: the dishwasher humming in the neat empty kitchen.

I had a roasted veggie dream last night, a frustration dream. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t cut the veggies into the right shapes, and so no veggies were roasted. “The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint your intellect imposes on your imagination” was what Schiller told someone who was having trouble writing. But no, it can happen from tiredness, or impoverished creative powers, or maybe something like what Emily Dickinson meant: “the mere sense of living is joy enough.”