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I’ve been copying Bukowski poems into my quotation bank this week, and his frequent theme of alcoholism juxtaposed with the number of my peers challenging themselves to a dry January. This inspired me to pull a collection of my boozy quotations (with accompanying color commentary). Cheers 🍻
The Good, The Bad, & The Sloshy:
Courtesy of Dall-E. Prompt: Cowboys drinking in a saloon, out of legos
The Good
Baudelaire:
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 be drunk! 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.”
- Charles Baudelaire
For those of you abstaining this month, I would still implore you to be drunk, drunk in the Baudelairean sense. Drunk with passion and drunk off life, for there is no other life worth living.
Capote:
“And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled.” - Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
I love the parallel painted and simile exacted here. As tears smear mascara, the nature of a good stiff drink is such that it can blur our perceptions, for better or for worse.
Alfonso “El Sabio”:
“Burn old logs. Drink old wine. Read old books. Keep old friends.“ - Maxim of Alfonso X of Spain, nicknamed El Sabio (“the wise”)
Wise indeed. If I can keep those four tenets in line, I’ll probably be okay.
The Bad
Bukowski:
And for the times that we’ve enjoyed just a little too much, a banger from Bukowski. The man was a controversial, troubled character and a lifelong alcoholic. But he’s got some poetry that cuts to the quick and if there ever were a master of hangovers, Bukowski would be it:
hangovers
I've probably had about more of them
than any person alive
and they haven't killed me
yet
but some of those mornings felt
awfully near
death.
as you know, the worst drinking is done
on an empty stomach, while smoking
heavily and downing many different
types of
libations.
and the worst hangovers are when you
awaken in your car or in a strange room
or in an alley or in jail.
the worst hangovers are when you
awaken to realize that you have done
something absolutely vile, ignorant and
possibly dangerous the night before
but
you can't quite remember what it
was.
and you awaken in various states of
disorder- parts of your body
damaged, your money missing
and/or possibly and often your
car, if you had one.
you might place a telephone call to
a lady, if you were with one, most
often to have her slam the phone
down on you.
or, if she is next to you then,
to feel her bristling and outrageous
anger.
drunks are never forgiven.
but drunks will forgive themselves
because they need to drink
again.
it takes an ungodly durability to
be a drinking person for many
decades.
your drinking companions are
killed by it.
you yourself are in and out of
hospitals
where the warning often is:
"One more drink will kill
you."
but
you beat that
by taking more than one more
drink.
and as you near three quarters of
a century in age
you find that it takes more and more
booze to get you
drunk.
and the hangovers are worse,
the recovery stage is
longer.
and the most remarkably stupid
thing is
that you are not unpleased that
you have done it
all
and that you are still
doing it.
I am typing this now
under the yoke of one of my
worst hangovers
while downstairs now
sit various and sundry
bottles of alcohol.
it's all been so beastly
lovely,
this mad river,
this gouging
plundering
madness
that I would wish upon
nobody
but myself,
amen.
“hangovers” - Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth PoemsThe words chosen in the final stanza and the spacing with which they’re deployed absolutely gets me. Tremendous.
Anonymous:
And for an alternatively, equally brutal outline of alcoholism:
“The door would open and I couldn’t help smiling as I took the stairs three at a time. If it wasn’t already open, the door soon would be. I never looked like a drunk, I just was a drunk. In I went. Hit the toilet first and either puked up to make room for new booze or just get the lay of the land. Then the fridge. Oh, happy white oblong. A miniature hospital in a bruised world.” - Anonymous, Diary of an Oxygen Thief
I kept this passage from long ago for its unique and unsettling beauty. The context is the protagonist entering a strangers’ home for a party, if I recall correctly, and that adds to the atmosphere of its disturbance. The verbiage with which the author outlines his time as an alcoholic vividly paints a picture. The language is so light, yet so heavy-handed. It’s specific in its nature, and the closing metaphor absolutely hammers the passage home.
As an aside: Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an incredibly dark and wild book, anonymously published.
Back to Bukowski:
the replacements
Jack London drinking his life away while
writing of strange and heroic men.
Eugene O'Neill drinking himself oblivious
while writing his dark and poetic
works.
now our moderns
lecture at universities
in tie and suit,
the little boys soberly studious,
the little girls with glazed eyes
looking
up,
the lawns so green, the books so dull,
the life so dying of
thirst.
“the replacements” - Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
A darkly sardonic take on the impact of alcoholism culturally. Many an artistic masterpiece has been the byproduct of mind-altering substances, whether that be booze, weed, or psychedelics. It’s interesting to take a moment to ponder just how interwoven so many of these substances are within the very fabric of our culture (looking at you, EDM).
The Sloshy
Hemingway:
"P.P.S. Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?" - Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters
I must confess, I’ve been there. An ice cold drink after a long, hard day of work. A little something to take off the edge, and loosen the inhibitions.
Camus:
And when you’ve taken the edge off and your sensibilities are buoyed, floating on a lazy current of booze, it’s easy to appreciate the warmth that comes from a well mixed cocktail:
"Fortunately there is gin, the sole glimmer of light in this darkness. Do you feel the golden, copper-colored light it kindles in you? I like walking through the city of an evening in the warmth of gin." - Albert Camus, The Fall
Proverbs:
Finally, a display of alcohol’s cross-cultural transcendence. Sage wisdom with different phrasing:
“What soberness conceals, drunkenness reveals.” - English proverb
"In wine, there's truth." - Latin proverb
Salud,
- W