Thursday, April 15, 2004

B"H

Questions About Spirits

I don't drink to speak of except on the holiday of Purim. I have
half a glass of sweet wine on Friday night and Saturday afternoon
before we have our Shabbat meal and if I go out with my husband for a
birthday or with a friend to a coffee house I'll have a tequila
sunrise or a Kailua (only the Kailua that is kosher, not all is) or chocolate liqueur or Tia Maria in coffee.

So, I don't really understand the phenomenon of two-fisted drinking,
even though as a young woman I worked as a barmaid and cocktail
waitress.

I've wondered about alcoholic drinks. They all have one necessary
element in common, i.e., rot. What, after all, is fermentation if
not the process of vegetable matter rotting? I wonder at that.

Another common element among all alcoholic drinks is that they
evaporate easily. Well, that's not surprising. They contain ethyl
alcohol. It is the phenomenon of the liquid becoming gaseous that I
wonder about. What does that mean? What does that really mean?

Related to the phenomenon of alcohol being so volatile is the fact
that it is called "spirits".

Let's look at that terminology; it is very interesting, at least to
me.

The carbohydrates in vegetable matter rotting produce alcohol. People
come to rot morally from too much drink as well.

Volatile means easily evaporated, but it can also mean easily
combustible or given to explode. Many, if not most, of the people
who drink too much are, likewise, volatile.

Finally, we have the reference to alcoholic beverages, specifically
the alcohol in those beverages as "spirits". Alcohol can raise or
lower our spirits. Also, in evaporating matter becomes more
elusive. Alcoholics too are often emotionally unavailable.
Evaporation is a process that allows matter to float away, become
ethereal. Is that what heavy drinker wish to be - ethereal?

Doreen