In Vino Veritas

Get Drunk - Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk. 

That’s it! 

The great imperative! 

In order not to feel 

Time’s horrid fardel 

bruise your shoulders, 

grinding you into the earth, 

Get drunk and stay that way. 

On what? 

On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. 

But get drunk. 

And if you sometimes happen to wake up 

on the porches of a palace, 

in the green grass of a ditch, 

in the dismal loneliness of your own room, 

your drunkenness gone or disappearing, 

ask the wind, 

the wave, 

the star, 

the bird, 

the clock, 

ask everything that flees, 

everything that groans 

or rolls 

or sings, 

everything that speaks, 

ask what time it is; 

and the wind, 

the wave, 

the star, 

the bird, 

the clock 

will answer you: 

“Time to get drunk! 

Don’t be martyred slaves of Time, 

Get drunk! 

Stay drunk! 

On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!”

The thought of this poem suddenly came back to me yesterday, when I was on grandma’s balcony alone, while commenting on a photo of me cheering a glass of wine at my school’s celebration event. So am digging in tonight…trying to “unearth” the poem from my land of emails…

You know, I’ve never been drunk..in term of being truly alive…well, at least in this last 10 years…I have always considered myself awake and sober…quite sober if you discount my full throttle of sleeping hours :p… I can’t remember when was the last time I get “drunk” on something…. Hmm…let me try to remember….Oh, basket ball. Yes, that was the last one I get drunk on…I was in junior high at that time…eh, wait…do you see the implicit meaning?…”junior high”…a place for junior to get high :p

Let me summarise my kind of definition of being drunk…am trying to pull out as much feeling of my last drunk on basket ball as I can… It is like when you don’t give a damn about a certain standard achievement…about being better than the rest…about other people’s supportive or unsupportive manner…about being humiliated or being adored… you can’t differentiate the two…you just don’t care…you’re just not aware of your surrounding…you’re too happy to have prejudice…you just thought that other people are as enthusiast as you are in getting more and more drunk that their possibly disdain gestures are translated as remarks of amazement by you…you just dive into whatever it is that make you drunk and fly high… You put your heart and soul into it…you crave for it…You forget yourself, yet you’re the centre of your own attention… 

Sounds brave, eh? or silly? or stupid? or naive…or innocent? perhaps…all those. But I can still remember that particular time of my life was timeless… Later on, I think that was somekind of a help from above…a reach out to help me cope with the lost of my mother…maybe…but whatever it was…I feel very fortunate to have that drunk moment in my life…so that I can recall it again and again…just to remind me of what it means being alive should be.. Just like the poem from Baudelaire above… so I think…I should get drunk very soon before I start to worship time and become its faithful slave..before I get too accustomed with my suppressant of regret and guilt of not being dare to live…before I start to convince myself that I am actually on the right track while am not… 

But then why am I so nervous? Is this drunkenness idea too grand? Am I dramatizing my life’s drama? I don’t know but I found a scrap of script from a movie about addicted drugs users…the movie itself is gross but its message is so deep…

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life…

I think, I’d better embrace my hangover. I’ll survive. How about you? How many time have you been drunk? Do you miss it ever time you’re sober?