Never get drunk

Great is the memory of a dear friend, which like all recollections, seems so real and yet so exaggerated. Even though he worked with wines professionally, he told of just two times that he ever really got drunk, in 60 whole years.

The first time was as an adolescent football player, when he'd play in makeshift suburban pitches, without a referee or a time limit, but just the pity of the opposing team and a mother calling him in for tea. On his way back home to his gran's, ripped boots, dust in every imaginable corner of his body and a thirst as dry as if he had crossed the Sahara, he saw a crystalline, clear bottle waiting for him there in the fridge, that instead of holding fresh, cool water from the well,  was full of delicious Sambuca.

As soon as his lips touched the neck of the ice-cold bottle and the dense, wonderfully refreshing nectar slid down his throat, he did all but separate from it. On the contrary, he suckled as if it were his mother's breast and then, as a newly sprouted man, started to fly..

Many years later, by now a fully fledged adult, in front of a blue sea and with play mates and women companions, he told stories, his eyes twinkling, of an evening in which the moons had become four and the waves of that same sea, took him straight to his bed, where an angel with silky skin and a warm mouth pulled him back down to Earth.

These memories, of an old friend, that for a whole lifetime had frequented vineyards and cellars, made me realize how important it is to not get drunk. So as to savour this momentary derailing, and even more so, to remember those excellent moments of being a human.