THE ONION
He rolls a colorless onion from one palm to another. How like it is to the illustrations of sperm in the books he was made to read, he thinks. In the onion his soul sits and the souls of so many others who tried to understand themselves. In fact, he realizes that describing someone like an onion is not a metaphor at all but probably a reference to the glowing squid-like orbs that at one time defined consciousness in the universe, floating between planets, glowing like jellyfish. A race of ever-plunging beacons that streamed from one illustrious star to the next in an existence of pure connection that was both art and task, community and enthrallment.
It was not by chance that the onion ended up being a near universal symbol for emotional complexity, he realizes. Its essential aspect in cuisine, its endearing-yet-taxing stench, all mixed up with the unforgettable layering, made it the perfect stand-in for consciousness and its guards: the faces, the stage, the layers. No, the onion is a reminder from the ancient alien race, their own image buried into the genetic future of the earth, a loving practical joke reminding the future of their enduring cross-galactic chains. Successful races play the long game, leave notes, genetic poems, on the fridge of evolution.
He has read that organic onions are higher in flavanol, which protects the heart, but he’s unconvinced. The onion before him, perhaps bearing the slight aura of pesticides, is above reproach. Realizing this, he gets sad like someone overcome suddenly by a rare yet singular regret.
Over the years, many people have attributed virility and uncanny recovery to the consumption of onions, especially pickled ones, a delicacy for which he does not yet have the taste. Yet. In fact he is still unaware of the multiple different culinary moves onions enable: caramelized, fried, sweated, or sautéed. No, his mind remains well within the metaphysical, the fantastic, like many young men. He does know in way of experience, even if it’s secondhand, that some monks in high places discourage the use of onions and other nightshades because of a polluting property, which makes him wonder if consciousness isn’t more of a polluter too. Aren’t onions torn apart then used up? Wasn’t it necessary to cut into an onion and break it irrevocably to really understand it? To carve an understanding out, you needed to cut.
Besides, the clusters of onions, grouping cold, wet with soil beneath the ground, puts him in a spiral of disgusting origins, the crevices from which all things must emerge. Even ideas are forced through the cave of a human mind in order to enter the world, and everything that is beautiful was once and will be bloody, pink flesh—no living thing is spared the process of rot, the mosaic of death.
But the pleasure of peeling is undeniable. He divides the onion by first tearing through the papery crinkle that surrounds it then plunges his nails into the flesh of the thing, struggling to get deeper inside of it, struggling with the tautness of being, its desire to stay whole. Then the onion, which has become so real and vulnerable and sensual in his hands begins to morph into a purely aesthetic object, a decoration. In his mind he walks the halls of a sunny tropical estate. Wall paper with colorful depictions of onions with leaves and flowers crisscrossing leads down the hallway and into the bright tropical air.
He’s never known such frivolous decoration, at least not intimately. His own childhood home featured just a few pictures of family in small frames and motivational phrases in plastic silhouettes. But he’d known the onion, even then. The crying sniffles, the match between the teeth, and the slight horror at reaching into the dark wooden cabinet and pulling out a darkened orb that was sprouting. Little shoots of anemic life shrieking in the absence of soil like a whining mandrake root. If the onion knew him like he knew it, he would surely dissolve into a fleshy stew. Ramses IV was buried with onions in his eye sockets.
To overcome the onion, and the questions it brings, he takes it out to the yard and he buries it.
by Ben Dreith
Ben Dreith is infamously not the famous NFL referee. His essays on architecture and Neo-Decadence can be found at bendreith.substack.com