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Coffee and Cup

© Virginia Marin

Folklore Table of Contents

Continuing with the simile of the cave from Plato's Republic, this paper deals with viewpoints. A few fairy tales and some of the world's best known English nursery rhymes were written to cloak politically explosive viewpoints of the day. Viewpoints are often determined by our thoughts and how we perceive appearance as opposed to reality. On the other hand, our ideas are often shaped by the world in which we live, whether a cave or a coffee cup...

Coffee and Cup

Coffee: You know, cup, I've been thinking about what you said the other day--that I'm not real and you are; that I'm just a shadow, a flicker on the cave's wall.

Cup: Well, that's true. I hold you. I contain you. If it weren't for me, you would loose your shape. I make you what you are.

Coffee: I AM what I AM.

Cup: Not without ME. Without me you simply would have no purpose.

Coffee: Don't you have this turned around? I'm the coffee. I'm the thing that people drink for stimulation. People don't drink cups! They drink coffee!

Cup: You're confusing sensation with meaning. Sure, you stimulate, but I provide meaning.

Coffee: But, if I represent sensation and you represent meaning how do you determine which one of us is real and which is shadow?

Cup: Each day you come and go. Tomorrow I'll be the same as I am today.

Coffee: So, you're saying that real means how long something lasts?

Cup: Yes.

Coffee: And because I must be remade every day I am not real.

Cup: Yes.

Coffee: So, you're saying that real is what continues on in the same shape and form.

Cup: Yes.

Coffee: But, I have heard that cups break even before they have held anything. I have also heard that cups leak and even that cups are dirty. Cups also lose their shape. If cups can be so many things, how do I tell a real cup from a shadow cup?

Cup: Well, listen--I AM more real than you are!

Coffee: I also heard that once, a long time ago, a cup broke and the coffee poured out onto the world and left a stain that would not wash away. Many cups came. Many cups went, but the stain remained. Doesn't this contradict your idea that you are more permanent than I and thereby more real?

Cup: You are saying that without a good cup--a good grasp of reality, coffee will leave its shadow on the land. You are, of course, only proving my point!

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