Eloise

This week marks the one year anniversary of my meeting with Eloise.

Then commenced a year of sharing dahl, drawing and painting on hungover Saturdays, of G&T's and poetry and magnets, Ride, of sharing nationalities, sharing loves and sharing more. Together, a year of fruitful friendship; of passionate curiosity. A year of collective abundance.

I asked Eloise when we first met, what her favorite poem was, and she sent me this:

BE DRUNK

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to bedrunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Louis Simpson