A Cup of Palm Wine, A Lesson in Living

Palm wine was like a veil that was an excellent secret sliding down the tilting bottle into the red cup. It was not a drink--it was too old to be touched by the hands that touched it.

According to my uncle, palm wine bears no memories. The trees are whispering it, of how it is that the tapper scurries up in the dark, of how the rope clangs, of the first cut which breaks the sweet sap. It has time before it gets to your lips.

Even the low bubbling foam which was creeping in the cup that evening was not there. I looked at it, as though it were to talk. And out it the world had cast off its girdle--cars had gone, and people screaming, but here all was very slow. The palm wine could not be mentioned.

I took a sip. A bit fresh and sweet, it was. Nor like one that is capped in a factory. This was as low and unpolished as the earth itself.

Then, I recalled what I had overheard in the moon-light: the old fellows and their faces and a row being made right and people making friends at full-up cups like that. Palm wine was not drinkable. It was an intersecting-man to man, old to new.

In this case, however, I held a cup in my hand, and there was a silence.

And up to the foam slowly he rose, perhaps to tell me that time never always lasts. Palm wine is altering--fermenting, altering. Wait too long and it is another thing such as night and day. Maybe that's the lesson.

Life similar to this drink has to be lived in the moment. Shared. Valued prior to transformation.

I looked again at the cup, and at the emptiness which was around me.

The following time, I said to myself, I will not do it by myself.

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