HEAVILY ONIONED GRATITUDE

The other day in the big city office I met Ken Rogers, managing editor of the Kyoto Journal, among other things on his diverse resume. Knowing well of my severe and protracted (if not permanent) dearth of garden-fresh onions, Ken was so kind as to present me with a very large bunch of ruthlessly purple onions from his very own garden to help me through hard times, onionwise. Ken, as you may have surmised, lives just over the mountains in the oddly monkey-deficient regions of northern Kyoto.

I pondered the diversity of nature's largesse as in heavily onioned gratitude I walked from the station up the mountain to my home, jauntily-tauntily flaunting the bag of fresh and fragrant onions before the very noses of the monkeys I knew were there in the roadside forest watching, putting little check marks next to my simianese name in their organizers, I saying loudly to no one in particular "boy are these fresh onions going to be good in onion sandwiches and salads and bolognese sauce and fried onion rings, to say nothing of onion soup and quiche..." and on I went all the way home naming onion meals, swinging the bag, spreading onion incense on air that was even now filling with the sound of simian saliva splashing on the forest floor... A delightful walk.

I'll have to ask Ken if he needs anything over there in north Kyoto; wonder if he'd like a fresh bunch of monkeys...