Knife Tricks

"Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it." -Ernest Hemingway

Seeing Things

"After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world." ~Oscar Wilde

The Old Absinthe House

The Old Absinthe House is not a place. It is not bounded by four walls. It is headquarters to an army of philosophies. From this dim corner let me range, wafting thought through every air, salient against every problem of mankind: for it will always return like Noah's dove to this ark, this strange little sanctuary of the Green Goddess which has been set down not upon Ararat, but by the banks of the "Father of Waters." ~Aleister Crowley, The Green Goddess

The Pale Opal Wine

Apollo, mourning the demise of Hyacinth,
Would not cede victory to death.
His soul, adept of transformation,
Had to find a holy alchemy for beauty.
So from his celestial hand he exhausts and crushes
The subtlest gifts from divine Flora.
Their broken bodies sigh a golden exhalation
From which he harvest our first drop of - Absinthe!

In crouching cellars, in sparkling palaces,
Alone or together, drink that potion of loving!
For it is a sorcery, a conjuration,
This pale opal wine aborts misery.
Opens the intimate sanctuary of beauty
- Bewitches my heart, exalts my soul in ecstasy.

La légende de l'Absinthe by Aleister Crowley