You might be surprised but at Diving & Chillin’ we read. Quite a lot in fact. Our members have extremely varied tastes and when we travel we usually have a mini library between us. From urban fantasy to french literature to history, something for everybody. So from the start I had planned to incorporate book reviews to this site.
In many ways, life is a bunch of tragedies and heartaches just waiting to happen, and it’s not like anyone makes it out alive yeah?
Rather than make everything shit and pointless, those tragedies waiting in the wings can drive us to value all our sparkling moments and make the most out of everything we’ve got; every minute with the people we care about, every encounter, every wave, every drink. In a perfect world that impermanence should push us to devour life and new things. Be more and see more, always. In practice we often get dulled and lulled by the day to day, we rarely live fast or follow our dreams/passions. Shout out to those that do. That takes some effort and fearlessness. That takes courage, and the truth is we prefer comfort. It’s a trap.
You don’t go there to dance on tables that’s for sure. This place is heavy with History and cocktail history. People on whose shoulders we stand to see further have gotten drunk there. Classic cocktails were created within those walls.
Let me back-up just a bit.
It’s perhaps a trite new ager’s cliché, but we have a lot to be thankful for. Also feeling thankful is probably nature’s benzodiazepine but without the water and fish contamination, I highly recommend it. It’s easy to conclude that everything sucks and that the world is going to hell in a handbasket but I just don’t believe that. At least I don’t think now is any different from any other time in history in terms of suckiness. If anything we currently live in the best moment of human history. I mean it, and I say that as an almost-professional-once-historian.
There’s a legit anthropological theory that says humans went from nomad hunters and gatherers to sedentary farmers because of beer, which thus becomes responsible for the greatest shift in the history of humanity. Alcohol, which we have been producing since about 7000-5000 BC (Sept. 2018 edit, 13000 yr old “brewery” found in Israel) is also credited (along with other drugs) with the birth of art and religious thought. True that. I’m not sure I’m prepared to go that far or get drawn into a debate about the evils of the materialism that comes from a sedentary society or the origins of religious experience (booze? magic mushrooms? aliens? divine revelation?). What I can say, is that for the Diving & Chillin’ Club, the chillin’ usually involves some sort of fermentation.