Lift (or Drop) Your Monkey

This bolt is called a saru, or monkey, supposedly because a monkey won’t let go once it has its paws on something. It’s a good name. They’re found on the amado, or rain shutters, on all old Japanese houses, and they’re the only thing between the outside and inside other than some pretty flimsy locks. I once came down to spend the weekend without the front door keys and spent a long couple of hours believing I could get past them. But the monkeys held their ground.

The vertical piece slides up into the jamb, and the horizontal one slides across to hold it there, like those wooden Chinese puzzles. This is an agezaru, or “lifting monkey,” whereas the one that go down into the floor are “drop monkeys,” otoshizaru.

The aloe that fronts the house has bloomed so it must really be winter. Their blossoms rise out of the plants on long stalks, and they're not the most attractive flower . . . oh hell, they're ugly as sin, and those stalks are like the weird appendages on the aliens in War of the Worlds. If I didn't cut these plants back every year, we'd be fighting our way through an aloe forest everytime we left the house.