_{“One thing that is extremely important is the need to serve an animal. It is a service that is extraordinarily valuable, a lesson of the heart: it’s a service, a ritual service.” —James Hillman}

I don’t want to feed the chickens. That’s the main thing. Not wanting to feed the chickens, the aversion to feeding the chickens, firms up who I am, bolsters the boundary around my morning identity: the man who doesn’t want to feed chickens. Things would undoubtedly be a lot easier for me if I actually wanted to feed the chickens, or—even better—if I were indifferent to the process of putting on my puffy coat, slipping into my big black boots, and trudging 50 yards through the snow to the chicken run. Perhaps then, if I were indifferent, I would greet the day in a way that glides and floats, free of all resistance and ego turbulence. But I don’t. I’m not indifferent. I’m a wall. I don’t want to feed the chickens. I want to stay in—in my house and in my bed with the covers pulled up to my neck. Safe and warm, inside.

But I do leave the bed, shiver, put on boots and coat, and open the door. It’s this movement, up and almost outside, that begins to grind away the edges. I don’t want to feed the chickens; I’m feeding the chickens. There is subtle joy here, one that evades recall from within the shell of merely not wanting to feed chickens. January blasts me in the face and hands. I don’t want to go; let’s go. Out the door now, outside, clomping through the snow and across the yard, I feel like someone else, breaking free from the initial inertia of not wanting to feed chickens. The movement from house to unbounded sky loosens my chest into long deep breaths. The mountains, snow capped, rise up to greet—good morning—the yellow-blue sky, the key to the lock.

Back in now, in the chicken run, to the coop where the chickens, all cooped up, gargle and sing. As I open the door, they come filing out like a relieved exhalation. We meet here in the middle of joy and service. I refill their water and the bell feeder with food pellets. They circle up and have breakfast. I’m not cold anymore, not aware at all of being a man with likes and dislikes, not a wall or a door. Just chickens: yellow, black and white, orange—outside, eating, strutting around with unearned hubris. After the manic feeding subsides, a cautious chicken approaches, curious, open, hoping for a bit of pizza crust or a watermelon rind, something special. I crouch down and hold out a small handful of scratch grains. Wattle and comb bob, weave; she cocks her head on a swivel neck. I do the same. She comes closer, makes direct eye contact, and I rapidly peck the treats from his open hand.

No transition and no surprise, I watch myself smile, stand up, and walk away. He latches the door to the chicken run behind him, walks 50 yards beneath the yellow-blue sky and goes inside, back into the house and the world inside his head. Now that I’m a chicken, I definitely won’t miss all his repetitive thinking about work and money. So enclosed in the tomb of himself, waffling between religion and drinking to oblivion, constantly trying to claw his way out. At least there’s some hope in his ritual of feeding us, in that daily lesson of the heart. And perhaps writing; maybe he will in the end save himself by writing. Maybe one day he will, believing he’s making up a story, write all this about feeding chickens.