Get Drunk

A great prose by Charles Beaudilaire in his 1869 publication, Le Spleen de Paris. Read on...

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 

 
Ohhh! I can just see him in the fields of France, laughing wildly, gesturing grandly, trumpeting this to whomever will listen. It makes me bubbly inside. It's a wonderful celebration of life, confirming for me that we should go about our daily lives with passionate and glorious appreciation for what we have and do. Wiggle! Dance! Sing! Read! Laugh! Just be silly and soak it all in.