Drunkards

Heavy drinking. Is that what we’re doing? Are we heavy drinkers now? Are we drink-dependent?

We need it – we need drink. We need the evening’s oblivion. We need the evening’s wipe-out. We need to cross ourselves out with alcohol. Of course we do. We shouldn’t pretend we’re not otherwise. That we can be someone else. That we can be other people.

 

We’re drunkards now. We’re on the drunkards’ slope. Down, that’s where we’re going. We’re in the downward spiral.

Sinking, that’s what we’re doing. There’s a logic to drink, and we follow that logic. We do what we’re supposed to, according to that logic. We won’t resist.

We’re drinkers now – serious drinkers. We have a drink destiny. Our futures are entwined with drink. Belong to drink. We’re on the drink path. The drink slide. We’re going all the way to oblivion.

We don’t want anything else. We don’t deserve anything else. The world was too much for us. We were defeated by the world.

 

Sure, we’ll admit it: it was the world that finished us. We’ll be buried by it: the world. We’re collapsing under it: the world. We’re dead, and worse than dead.

Because we can never die. Because death’s never reached us, found us. Because death hasn’t touched us.

Why is that? Why are we alive, who shouldn’t alive? How do we go on, who shouldn’t go on?

Still alive – but alive too late, too long. Still alive, but alive when we shouldn’t be.

When we’re just dead, and profoundly dead.

But at least we know we’re dead. At least we know where we are on the death-spiral. At least we know that death’s been dealt to us. That we’re dead already.

Does no one else know? Why does no one else seem to know? Death has already claimed us. We’re already death’s. We’ve already been claimed. We’re owned. We belong to no one but death. We’re falling more and more deeply into death.

 

The end of the night. The endless end of the night.

We’ll never sleep. We’ll never wake, either. We’ll never rest. We’re too guilty for that. We’re too deeply implicated for that.

All the things we’ve done wrong. All the crimes we’ve committed, even if they’re only imaginary. We’re outside – dreadfully so. Perpetually so. We’ll never find out way back. We’ll never come home.

Cursed … is that what we are? Cursed through the night, and to the endless end of the night? How deeply lost we are. How disoriented we are. How confused we are …

 

The beauty of death: we feel that. The beautiful attraction of death. The beautiful magnetism of death. The beautiful obviousness of death. As a threshold. As a portal. As a way into nothing, into nowhere.

 

Oblivion: is that what’s we’ve always wanted. Profound oblivion. Ceaseless oblivion.

There’s no way on. Which is a way on. Which is a way through death. Through oblivion. Which is the only way.

 

To refuse – everything. All things. The world. This world. The cruel optimism of this world.

Be clear: we’re not going any further. There are no more steps to take – not for us.

The limit: we’ve reached that. The end: we’re past that. Now there’s only the after end, which is the after death. Which is the way through death.

 

Saturated in alcohol. Pickled in alcohol. Our internal organs … what state can they possibly be in?

The harm we’re doing.

We could live to ninety. To a hundred and five. And instead? Our rotten lives. Our rotted kidneys. What are we doing to our lungs?

We smoke, for God’s sake. We’re the last smokers. The last proper smokers. What are we doing to ourselves?

 

We’re destroyers. Self-destroyers. And so we should be. We’re ruiners. Auto-ruiners. What other choice could we have?

Yes, to self-destruction. Yes, to self-burial.

Where else could things go? In what other direction?

The inevitable. We honour that. Fate. We bow to that. We don’t try to resist.

We’re being led down to the dungeons. The deeper dungeons. We’re being buried. We’re burying ourselves – willingly so.

 

We know the daily ruin. We know the daily burial. We know the botching of all plans.

We know, and with an ancient knowledge. With before-we-were-born knowledge.

We know, without nostalgia. We know – and it’s a sickening knowledge. It’s an everything’s-ruined knowledge. It’s an everything’s-fucked knowledge.

 

Is there a direction to drunkenness? Is there somewhere it’s going?

Where it taking us, drunkenness? Where are we being led? Because there is a movement in the darkness. And we’re following it. We’re carried along.

 

Free fall – is that it? Are we just falling, falling through the night?

If only there was an end to our falling. If only there was something we could be smashed against. If only we could find our rest – our destruction: one and the same.

If only we could die, be freed. Both at once. By the same stroke. If only we could meet our end, be released. At the same time. By the same stroke.

If only we could coincide with ourselves. Be present to ourselves. Now – we’d say to ourselves. Here – we’d say to ourselves. When freedom and death are one.

 

We desire – and we desire by drinking. We drink because we Want and our Wanting is infinite.

We drink because nothing earthly will satisfy us. Because the Earth is not enough for us. Because the universe is not enough for us. Because time – all of time – is not enough for us.

Because this dimension is not enough for us. Because this dimension does not suffice.

 

The drink-path, the drunken path. That does not run in a straight line. That wavers, wanders. That goes its own way.

 

Desire, capital D. As if we alone understood what that means. As if we, apart from all others, can follow Following. Can seek Seeking.

 

We are moaners – wailers. But of the highest order. We’re transcendental moaners. Deep song wailers.

Happiness – that’s what we want. Truth. But they are not of this world. They are not down here. Such things break in from above. From afar. Such things come from without. In transcendence. Such things burst across you. Such things beam down to you.

We know the world has been stolen. We know that this is a false reality. That there are Interests. Powers. That do not want the good for us.

 

Faith – drunken faith. We have that. We’re waiting for the revelation. We drink, waiting for revelation.

Because it’s there, ahead of us, through all our drunken nights. It’s there, apocalyptic, at the end of our nights. And that’s what we’re searching for. That’s what we Want, capital W. We know it. We taste it. it’s in the air. In the drunken air. It’s what we want to draw closer.

Certainty. Truth. The truth you reach by way of drinking. The truth that makes you drink, that draws you to it. Let it come. Let it be close. Oh God let it come down.

Our drunken prayer. Our prayer as drinkers. Let it come. Let God come. Let the end come. We know it: death. Universal death. Coming, as from the other end of the universe. And it is coming.

 

We drink – and reach by drinking. Until the absence of what we love becomes our loving itself. We feel the absence. We know we’re lost, and how we’re lost, and how wretched we are. And we know that God loves wretches – even us drunken wretches.

Which is why we’re holy drinkers after all. Which is why this is a holy order, our drinking order.

We become almost solemn with our drink. Seriously – grandly serious. We look upwards, silently, expectantly. There, on the other side of the sky. What? On the other side … What’s there?

If only the sky itself would turn, flip over. If only the True Sun would rise – the greater sun. That shines through all pinprick stars, but is more than them. The greater sun that is God. The absence of God. That’s why we drink.

 

We live in contradiction, we know that. We crave in contradiction. We know we’re the Opposite. At the Opposite End. And yet. We know we’re miserable creatures – but at least we know we’re creatures.

This is our journey to the end of night. This is our night voyage. This is our night ride to sunset. We’ll open the doorways. It will open, above us. Soon, soon. We feel the divine imminence.

Soon, it will come. Soon, he will come. We know it as certainty – messianic certainty. We’re all messiahs when we drink. Prophets. We cry upwards. We are not lost, after all. Or our lostness was a way of seeking, finding.

We are so lost, we’ve found it. We are so fallen, we’ll rise. We are rising. We’re drinkers of the holy order.

 

If we’re not helpless with drink, then what? If we’re not staggering from drink, who are we? Our purpose; our raison d’etre: drinking. To drink. The infinitive. To drink – now and forever. We began drinking and will never stop. We’ll drink today and we’ll be drinking tomorrow, just as we drank yesterday. There’s no end to this, just as there was never really a beginning.

 It’s a naysaying to the new Prohibition. To all the anti-drinking nudges. It’s a refusal of the new teetotalitarian world. So we’ll drink! Drink! To everything. To the moon and stars. We’ll toast the lot. Toast the universe. Toast ourselves in the universe, living against the universe, refusing the universe, refusing to succumb to the universe. Toast ourselves as the last refusers standing …

 

We’re not pubists. This is not pubism. This is not a retreat into the pub, but an escape through it. The pub as launchpad.

No consolation here. No sheltering. No huddled together sharing our problems. No crying into our beer. No whisky lamentation about the state of our lives.

We’re looking to light the touchpaper. We’re looking to launch. Looking to flare upwards. To burn up. We don’t want to live low. We don’t want to sink. We’re not to be confined. If it’s oblivion we want, it’s oblivion in flames.

No pubism. No pub mediocrity. We’re mediocre in life, God knows. There’s mediocrity everywhere – God knows. But in the pub …

We’re looking to bestir ourselves. We’re looking to snatch a little transcendence from the day. We trying not to be buried with our defeats. We want to roll away our stones. We want to be resurrected. We want a last chance, in the last hours before closing time.

 

Every night, oblivion. Every night, losing ourselves happily. We drink … why? Because we do not want to be ourselves. Because we’re tired of being ourselves. Because we don’t want to be ourselves for the night.

 

We drink to forget. We drink to be suspended in forgetting. To be carried along by forgetting. By hope. Forgetting today’s lessons. What we learnt today. What was impossible for us today. How we fucked up again today. How we screwed life up for ourselves today. How we got it wrong today.

We drink to forget – our mistakes. Our blunderings. Our straying from the path. Our afternoon melancholy. We want to forget. Who we are. What we’ve been. We want another chance. The chance of another chance.

There’s an opening that we have to refind, drunkenly. Gropingly. A sense of the possible. A sense of youth – that we can recover our youths. That we can return to youth again.

We want to be innocent again – drunkenly innocent. We want to be young again, for a night. We want to lift our heads, for a night. We want to look up into the sky, for a night. Upwards! At the sky, rushing. At the clouds rushing against the sky.