A Brief Literary Interlude

Let's take a moment to enrich our minds, while celebrating one of our favorite things: cocktail hour. Below find Baudelaire's 1869 treatise on indulgence...not only is it food (drink?) for thought, but it's a damned good reason to pour yourself a tall one today at 5.

Be You Drunken!

One must always be drunk. That's all there is to it; that's

the only solution. In order not to feel the horrible burden of

Time breaking your shoulders and bowing your head to the

ground, you must be drunken without respite.

But; with what? With wine, poetry or virtue, as you will.

Be you drunken.

And if sometimes you awake, on the steps of a palace, in

the green herbage of a ditch or in the dreary solitude of your

room, then ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, the

clocks, ask everything that runs, that moans, that moves

on wheels, everything that sings and speaks – ask them what

is the time of day; and the wind, the waves, the stars, the

birds and the clocks will answer you: It is time to get

drunk. In order not to be the martyred slave of Time, be you

drunken; be you drunken ceaselessly! With wine, poetry or

virtue, as you will!