get drunk

I happened upon a favorite poem of mine the other day and was struck by how much the words resonated with me still. Here, you should read it to understand:

get drunk

One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing; the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite.

Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But get drunk.

And if sometimes you should happen to awake, on the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room, and find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has vanished, ask the wind and the wave, ask star, bird, or clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them the time; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird and the clock will all reply: ‘It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.’
-charles baudelaire

Yes. A colossal and resounding yes to all of the above. Of course after my birthday I am okay not getting drunk on wine for awhile, but drunk on poetry and virtue-Charles, Charles, you wise man, yes. I also would like to share my other drunken notables from the past week. I was off adventuring-so drunk on adventure, was I? Duh. Topsy-turvy drunk in fact. Whilst in the U.P. climbing waterfalls and discovering paths I didn't even know existed--so many metaphors there, just take it in--I felt this overwhelming sense of perfection. That is the only word.

Perfect jams
The Head and the Heart
Mumford
Eddie Vedder
Grouplove
Florence
(to name a few)

Perfect people
Savvy
Em
Grandma
The whole Sturos Clan
Dana
Hulz
Ryan-my adventure counterpart

We even had perfect weather!, but I digress. Let me just tell you, besides being drunk on good company, music, waterfalls, the yoop, photography, the sky and stars, Superior, game nights, quotes, I was positively intoxicated with how good it felt to be so drunk on living. Ugh. Yes. Ugh. Charles you are right! We should always be drunk.

On the very first night of camping at this spot I had passed a million times and always wanted to stop at, I woke up in the middle of the night in a state of pure unadulterated euphoria. I was wracked with it. I laid in the tent for a long, long time, not moving, hardly breathing I think, just feeling something profound. Then I got up to go to the bathroom thinking seeing the surrounding outdoors at night sounded lovely. The walk back to the tent in the middle of the night, engulfed by silence other than a light crackling of dying-down logs on forgotten fires and the vast northern sky, I felt my steps slowing and my brain churning with frenetic passion. Take it all in, take it all in, it was yooping. Then like any good drunkard on a high, I started to slip a little, drunkenness doesn't last after all. Ohh life, you're too beautiful, I want you too much, all the time, everything. Stars and northern sky, fires and tents, adventure and longing, music and passion, writing and the big city, love and splendor. My soul wanted to stay drunk. It was swinging its fist with fervency noting that drunk is the way to be.

So drunk I remained--with wanderlust and poetic delight for the entirety of vacation. Of course this led to a horrible adventure hangover once I was back to reality... but like Charles so nicely pointed out, if you find the drunkenness ebbing, um you should probably just get drunk again.
So here's to another week of getting drunk on adventure!

My new aim: to always be drunk on adventure.
Join me?