Fresh Coconut

Yesterday, I went to a restaurant downtown. I had a taste for fresh coconut, so I ordered a whole coconut that was on the menu. I ate the soft pulp and drank the sweet juice. The experience took me back to a time when I ate coconuts on the island of Dominica. The feeling of eating it now is completely different, awkward and even strange. It’s entirely strange for me to pay for a coconut when I never had to do it as a kid. Also, the full experience of having to climb the coconut tree, with the struggle of removing the coconut is lost. The entire experience is tied to the climbing, the knocking and picking, and retrieving it from the river or the ocean. Not knowing where it would land or how often the damn thing would just explode before you could retrieve it. That was the fun and the joy of the entire experience. 

Without that full experience, I’m not sure I had a coconut. In a very peculiar way, without the climb, the coconut itself feels cheated.