Get Drunk
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!"
-Charles Baudelaire-
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!"
-Charles Baudelaire-
This used to be my favorite poem. I'd read it over and over again, as I did all of Baudelaire, and by extension, I used to live by it. I never drank alcohol, so that part for me is insignificant. The poem tells us, gives us permission, to live unencumbered by the constraints of time, and even social decorum. It also acknowledges that nature, as well as the inanimate things around us, know something that we don't - that life is to be lived in giddy joy and with abandon. "Don't be martyred slaves of Time"! Ah, but for the poets' truth.
*****************
The poetry of spiritual life is fully upon us - the union of Radha-Krishna (The lover to the beloved), the bond between Shiva-Parvati (the seeker to the master), the bliss of Lakshmi-Naryana ( the wife to the husband) - these are all symbolic of the marriage of the Atma to the Paramatna. Never mind about all the science and minutia of the process, the details of which can be daunting. So much of splitting hairs is counter-productive; breaking down and analyzing every aspect of this process doesn't add to your growth. What it does is simply placate the mind that cannot understand what is happening. It comes to very little because ascension is not in the mind, it is in the heart. Opening our selves to our hearts unconditionally, and leading the way in the world with our hearts, unwaveringly, is a path that will never deceive us.
