There is no denying it.
Everyone loves the idea of a cozy pub with its dark wooden beams, dark wood and cozy fireplace.
As the gentleman from Oregon helped remind us, there are many doors leading in and out of the Wulfshead.
Some better than others...
Each one connects to various "aspects" of this reality and...other "realities." Or so they say, sir.There are guests who claim that some of these realities are magical, while others have little or no magic to them.
There is no accounting, of course, for what people will report...under...er...under the influence, sir. And it is important to proceed in those things with caution.
The Dark Roasted Blend offers this bit of common sense:
Good signs will help you remember which place you visited, what you did there...
And where it is safe to return...
The Wulfshead's door to O-mei mountain is an old favourite. And it is not hard to understand why.
The poet Li Po---an old pillar of the Wulfshead, sir... He spoke beautifully of it."Walking west of O-mei mountain, the monk from Shu with the silk lute case," "with a light touch of the strings," had, as the poet put it, enveloped him "in the pines of a thousand valleys." I remember the gentleman talking of how he could hear the strings in the shimmering brook, and in the icy wind, sir. And of how "he felt no change as the mountain darkened and autumn's dark clouds heaped in the sky."
That fateful night when Li Po loosened his hair and took to a fishing-boat, sir... no-one really knows for sure what exactly happened.
No even I, sir.
I sometimes wonder about it.
And while we stand---however uncertainly---upon this pinnacle of romance to the slosh, allow me to recommend without reservations (none needed, bartender) an article in the summer issue of Intelligent Life. In it we read more than we ever thought we'd learn about attempts by the greatest writers in the English language to stay away from booze.
ReplyDeleteI particularly treasure this line~~~
"...sobering up is one of the more devastating acts of literary criticism an author can face."
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/tom-shone/when-novelists-sober
Yes, any history of the best American writers of the 20th century would have to take into account a great deal of drinking. Some of Sinclair Lewis's prose wobbles right off the page. Faulkner wrote when drunk, and it shows. Hemingway was blessed with a certain immunity to hangovers. He could drink into the wee hours and still get up at sunrise, clear headed, and put in a full day's stint. The examples are numerous.
ReplyDelete“Since the world can in no way answer our [their] craving.” That's a good line. I wonder if this is one reason why a generation of American writers sought the liberating spirit of French society and culture, as well as the good food, wine, relative tolerance and gaiety of Parisian life in the twenties?