Phantom Lemonade

Today I embarked on a journey down culture lane. Numerous of different attractions and shops invaded my senses with different odours, lights and gimmicks. Members of the opposite gender occupied the streets with their physical features to demote the idea of human extinction. I was in the centre of the known universe and had become a part of this cultural cosmos. I felt home.

My journey led my companions and I to a restaurant which housed ambassadors of the Brazilian barbecue culture, churrascaria. The waiters kept passing our table with different types of meats and cuts which only lingered the food orgy. I had also ordered several Caipirinhas. Caipirinhas, yes, how I remembered. This drink was Phantom Lemonade. The taste of this sweet and inconspicuously intoxicating beverage made me reminisce of my trip to Brazil. It had been in Brazil that I had discovered new sides of myself. I had found an inner peace that a lot of people spend a lifetime looking for. It felt like the warm embrace of a loving mother mixed with taking your dream world back to reality. Unfortunately this unique feeling was not abundant for eternity. Since then it hadn't been possible to recapture this untamed and uncommon state of being.

I had also been keeping an eye on the waitresses. Their friendly smiles and exotic way of speaking was a rogue aphrodisiac. In particular there was one, who caught my attention. She was quiet and discrete compared to her other colleagues, yet there was something about her that I couldn't put my finger on. I knew that I had to get in contact with her. As she was very busy and always moving around I took the opportunity to talk to one of her colleagues and ask about her. I expected her colleague to be reluctant to tell me anything about her due to professional issues or that she was already in a relationship.

Reality struck me when the waitress revealed that her colleague was in fact married and had a child. I was surprised. The girl didn't look to have the age of someone who would be married and have a child as well. But looks could be deceiving. Faintly disappointed I suggested to my colleagues that we left the place.

On my way back I kept thinking about the Phantom Lemonade. It was a torrent of memories and feelings that had passed through me, while I had consumed these Brazilian tokens of gastronomy. Would I ever experience this inner peace again? Or had I been touched by the hand of God for a short time to compensate for the difficult times I was going through now?

Some people tell me that each one of us possess the power to find happiness, but I disagree. We, homo sapiens, possess the power to find temporary happiness. True happiness finds us, because we are unable to define, what we truly want. It's when we stumble upon this ecstatic sensation of inner harmony that we realize the meaning of many things. As for myself, I was privileged for a short amount of time to feel true happiness. I see now that many things have changed since then. Happiness has been forgotten and instead I have allowed myself to mentally decompose. I am like everybody else, an average neurotic product of our time remembering the bad things in life, even when they are long gone. It is time for me to let myself be found by true happiness and remember a simple lesson in life: The quality of the good times surpass the quantity of the bad times.

Edward T. Shufflebottom