Happy New Millennium!

Zoomer | January 1st, 2006

The most anticipated date in anyone’s memory is upon us. The hype, the warnings, the billions of dollars in computer consulting work, the jokes, the bad TV movies, the endless stories on websites; this long list leads one to ponder, what would 1999 have been without the new millennium at the end of it? (Think about it. One correct answer could be “1998, with a better economy”)

What more can one say about the “dawn of a new era”? French poet Charles Baudelaire offered some timeless  advice more than 100 years ago:

“One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease.

But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that speaks, ask of these the hr; and wind and wave and star and bird and timepiece will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will.”