A Farewell

I speak to you as I stand currently, perched upon this island’s rocky outcrop overlooking the claret waters of the Pacific. For my last address, I will not provide a syllabus, nor prescribe remedy. “Sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts," wrote Locke. Just as margins form the prison of the page, the basset I’ve chosen to alight marks the island’s limits. The Spanish christened it the diver, while the Arabs might call it the albatross. Formed from sandstone left here to erode by a series of submarine tectonic landslides, the island was here long before me and will endure far past my current form. Like one of Friedrich’s Wanderers, I look from my twisted precipice across the bay towards the unknown.

As if I was Calvino under the jaguar sun, all I seek now is desempance. Relief. Time has sullied my soul, with fats slowing the bloodstream to a snail’s pace, and salts grinding the joints to a halt. A mind once beaming with confidence and animation, has resigned itself to a simple stupor, while the bowels swollen with bile and sin cry out to the tune of splanchnic agony. Nigh unto death.

To that I say nay! Destiny is mine to command and I will not yield to this nagging toil. I will not surrender to this impending suspension of sensibility. The city before me which commands a once vibrant estuary, holds my cure. An Italian import that’s taken hold, it will spring me from the teeth of Haros and together we will ride the way to enlightenment, along a river of madness flush with spirituous obsidian ambrosia. I speak of Fernet Branca, the one and only - a treatment that requires no special skills, or esoteric instrumentation, because after all...there is no time to waste. Just a brazen spirit unmuddled by doubt. As drink, as I. Viva Branca and farewell.

Still,
I.B. Drinkin