A lyrical reflection on peppermint, imagination, and creative renewal.

It’s the beginning of May, and I leave the house at dawn in a flimsy nightdress to pick peppermint. In a while, I will make my first mint tea of the year with fresh leaves harvested from the plant. It grows between the sage and balm, equidistant from my house and a feisty brook hidden from sight—but not sound—by a row of evergreens. Mint tea made from fresh leaves tastes more authentic than from teabags; packet teas are often enhanced with artificial flavouring.

I take off my slippers and walk barefoot along the ribbed wood of the balcony to the spiral staircase that connects my house to the garden below. With each step, the sole of my foot winces as the wood grooves pinch the skin. Goosebumps creep up my legs to my knees. I continue down, half asleep and reluctant to wake. My eyes are gritty from the night, and my legs—stiff from their long rest—need coaxing into a walk.

It’s been six months since I drank peppermint tea, and just as long since I wrote any creative prose. I used to write pieces regularly. I was in touch with my senses then—no, more than that—I was in touch with my soul. Now I wonder where it is. It appears to have left me—or someone or something has stolen it.

For many nights, I’ve asked for a dream to come and show me the way back. All through winter, dreams have stayed away. I’ve looked for inspiration in myths, stories, and poems. I’ve listened to other people’s advice. Yet, day after day, I’ve woken to a dry heart and a blank page. Each morning, I’ve cursed the night for not giving me ideas. I’ve scratched my head and knocked loudly on my hard skull.

All this fuss has woken my enemy within. His tongue has wrapped itself tight around my writer’s wrists and holds my hand whenever it takes the pen: What is the use of words when there are children starving in the world? What will prose do to stop wars, feed babies’ bellies, and heal the world? I have no answers. These are questions for the soul, not the mind. My rational tongue may talk reason and logic to the enemy and make him quiet for a while, but the grasp on my wrist does not loosen.

At the bottom of the stairs, I hesitate before placing a foot onto the patio. The stones, though smoother than the wood, are colder, and my toes curl at the change in temperature. Just a few steps and I’m at the edge of the lawn. I know the grass is wet—not from a rain shower, but from heavy dew. I hesitate there too, like one does at the edge of a cold sea before plunging in.

My lawn is emerald green in this light, and bobbing over its surface are a thousand and more white daisy heads, still round and closed from the night. Green blades of grass eagerly lick between my toes as I move, sprinkling my feet with fine spray.

I crouch down. The peppermint season is young, and growth is slow above ground. The six or fewer dark leaves on each short stem are wrinkled and downy with newness. They cluster close to the main stalk, shining pink and shy in the early spring sun. I reach out to touch one. Its surface is rough—like the lick of a kitten’s tongue on bare skin. I’m sure this tongue does not find any food from a hand that itself has sucked hard on night’s dried-out teats. Nature is raw, but inviting sometimes.

I snap off the whole tip of a peppermint shoot, shake a resident ant out, wipe cuckoo spittle from the nodes, and place the harvest in my hand. A simple task—yet it is a life-saving rope, hauling me from the slapping waves of my enemy, waves that have wrecked a thousand of my creative ships before they ever managed to set sail.

I cup my palm to protect the peppermint and walk back to the patio like one wades through the sea. The lawn is my ocean, and I am a vessel bringing in the peppermint. My cupped palm is the deck, my body the mast, my nightdress the sail, and my head the crow’s nest steering me back to harbour. I greet the seagulls, look up to the sky and call, “’Tis a great day for fishing,” and their wings flap up in graceful, wide smiles.

I lay anchor close to shore, vow to return tomorrow, and set foot on dry land. The ground feels firmer than on the outward journey—for all the rocking movements of the sea I’ve experienced—and I rejoice to be back. I merrily make my way to the house, my mint—catch of the day—lying patiently and calm in my hand.

I enter and prepare my drink. It’s after sunrise, yet not quite morning. Inside, the seagulls can no longer be heard. All is still, except for a wood pigeon’s soothing coo, coo, coo, coo...

I lay the peppermint leaves in a porcelain cup and pour boiling water over them, pirouetting them around the hot pool. They flash their tails at me like playful fish, leaping and flapping colour into the water with their fins. The cup transforms into a lively lagoon of jade-coloured sea life. I sip the liquid and grasp the pen. My wrist loosens. The nib begins to make marks across the white page. I swear it is the blue ocean now flowing—coming down my arm and out through the nib of my pen. It has a force of its own, and I find I am able and willing to embrace it.

A leaf slips out of the cup as I drink and lands on my tongue. It feels weightless. I press it gently to the roof of my mouth and hold it there, closing my eyes. Mint flavour slithers over my taste buds, down my throat, into my body—criss-crossing my spine, stroking it inside and out with the smooth skin of a sea snake and a swirling dance.

Suddenly, I’m back on the ship, sailing once more across my green ocean decorated with white daisy buoys, toward the peppermint. Dozens of fish are flipping up and splashing on the surface, asking to be caught. All have scales that shine ruby, emerald, and diamond in the sun. Then the line tugs hard and I hold on strong, burning my palms. The catch is too powerful to reel in, and so I let it go. The line dances away, taking ten metres into the deep water. I grab the rod at the last second and am yanked overboard—down with the fish, into the sea, on and on.

I see the creature ahead, flying like a bird with the golden wings of a phoenix and the long tail of a serpent. It soars past rocks and coral, past turtles and hairy sea slugs, and deeper still. I realise—I am the fish’s catch.

All is dark. There is no more air to breathe. Water gushes in, filling my veins and cells, washing all human matter out and replacing it with new waters. I am neither alive nor dead, neither human nor fish, neither in this world nor the next. I am in between—in imagination—where mind and soul can meet.

It is a place where past, present, and future dance together; where all living beings who have long left this world are living new lives; and where all stories ever to be written are contained in a giant pot into which I may dip my pen and fill it to the brim with ink that never runs out—time and time again.

And I know the mint is teaching me about the true essence of life: the moment of creation. A still point in time when all is quiet and the world is linked by invisible strands of imagination—like a giant, invincible net. Each strand is a fishing line, and I, the fisherman, can cast that thread and pull from it everything imagination could ever create—which is infinite.

And the pot is bottomless, timeless, and ageless. It has been there all along—at my service—though I have not thought to make use of it. Not to create peace—my own, and that of all mankind.

And all this comes through the essence of peppermint and a pen filled with the kind of ink it creates, drunk from that pool. And the words are the fish that land on the page—pieces of prose that eventually make an entire text. One not thought up by an irrational human mind, but written from the soul: eternal and everlasting.

First published in the anthology D’Waasser am Mond (2004), published by éditions Guy Binsfeld.

— Diana Button