Get High

You must always be high. Everything depends on it: it is the only question. So as not to feel the horrible burden of Time wrecking your back and bending you to the ground, you must get high without respite.
But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, whatever you like. But get high.
And if sometimes you wake up, on palace steps, on the green grass of a ditch, in your room’s gloomy solitude, your intoxication already waning or gone, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, ask everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that moves, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask what time it is. And the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, will answer, “It is time to get high! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get high; get high constantly! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”

--Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867), from the Parisian Prowler, (transl. Edward Kaplan, 1989)

The clock

The clock

The Chinese tell time in a cat’s eyes.
One day, walking in the outskirts of Nanking, a missionary realized he had forgotten his watch, and he asked a little boy what time it was.
At first the kid from the Celestial Empire hesitated; then, reconsidering, he answered, “I am going to tell you.” Not many moments later, he reappeared, holding a very fat cat in his arms, and looking at it, as they say, straight in the eye, he asserted without hesitation, “It is not yet quite noon.” Which was true.
As for me, if I turn toward beautiful Felina, so well named, who is at once the honor of her sex, my heart’s pride and my mind’s perfume, whether it be night, whether it be day, in full light or dark shadow, I always see the time clearly, in the depths of her adorable eyes, a vast, solemn time, always the same, huge as space, without divisions into minutes or seconds—an immobile time not marked on clocks, and yet light as a sigh, swift as a glance.
And if some meddler happened to interrupt me while settling my gaze upon that delectable dial, if some rude and intolerant Genie, some Demon of untimeliness happened to ask me, “what are you watching with such care? What are you looking for in that creature’s eyes? Do you see the time there, prodigal and lazy mortal?” I would directly answer, “Yes, I see the time; it is Eternity!”
Now is this not, Madam, a truly praiseworthy madrigal, and as exaggerated as yourself? In fact, I took such delight in elaborating this pretentious romance, that I will ask nothing of you in exchange.

--Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), from the Parsian Prowler (transl. Edward Kaplan, 1989)