Time's Horrid Burden

Sometimes, it feels as if time has a weight, doesn't it? We are heavier, our steps are like the steps of a diver on the sea bottom. We have lost our lightness and the colours have faded.

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory or the Melting Clocks

Recently I was browsing through my father's collection of Charles Baudelaire's 'Petits Poemes en Prose' when I came upon a text which I have liked since high school. I wanted to share it with you.

It gives a solution to the above situation and the solution is: get drunk.

Enivrez-Vous
Il faut être toujours ivre, tout est là ; c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.

Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu à votre guise, mais enivrez-vous!
Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à
l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge; à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est. Et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront, il est l'heure de s'enivrer ; pour ne pas être les esclaves martyrisés du temps, enivrez-vous, enivrez-vous sans cesse de vin, de poésie, de vertu, à votre guise.
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Get Drunk
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!"
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I know that this is not exactly a call for a healthy life style but Baudelaire gives us so many alternatives for getting drunk and alcohol is only one of them. Baudelaire is not paid by some wine producer and points out that poetry and virtue are also options. There must be dozens of other methods like making pictures in order to stop the passing time, playing scrabble or even cutting one's carbon footprint (I am sure Baudelaire missed that one).

But what if soberness is the intoxicating substance? Well, so be it: drunk by soberness is quite original, isn't it?

The bottomline is that we'd better find our way unless we really insist on staying sober and then risk being crashed by time's horrid burden.

'What's the time?', I am asking the dark night over Buda. It's time for a Cuba Libre.