Chapter 26, 27 and 28 of John Barley-Corn, or Alcoholic Memoirs, by Jack London. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 26. Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid I always was an extremist. Early and late I was at it. Writing, typing, studying grammar, studying, writing in all the forms of writing, and studying the writers who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded. I managed on five hours sleep in the twenty-four and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking hours left to me. My light burned till two and three in the morning, which led a good neighbor woman into a bit of sentimental Sherlock Holmes deduction. Ever seeing me in the daytime, she concluded that I was a gambler, and that the light in my window was placed there by my mother to guide her erring son home. The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long dry spells, when there is never an editor's check and everything pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty well through that winter, and the following summer experienced the longest dryest spell of all. In the period when salaried men are gone on vacation and manuscripts lie in editorial offices until vacation is over. My difficulty was that I had no one to advise me. I didn't know a soul who had written or who had ever tried to write. I didn't even know one reporter. Also, to succeed at the writing game, I found I had to unlearn about everything the teachers and professors of literature of the high school and university had taught me. I was very indignant about this at the time, though now I can understand it. They did not know the trick of successful writing in the years 1895 and 1896. They knew all about Snowbound and Sartore Sartis, but the American editors of 1899 did not want such truck. They wanted the 1899 truck and offered to pay so well for it that the teachers and professors of literature would have quit their jobs could they have supplied it. I struggled on, stood off the butcher and the grocer, pawned my watch and bicycle and my father's Macintosh, and I worked. I really did work and went on short commons of sleep. Critics have complained about the swift education one of my characters, Martin Eden, achieved. In three years from a sailor with a common school education, I made a successful writer of him. The critics say this is impossible, yet I was Martin Eden. At the end of three working years, two of which were spent in high school and the university, and one spent at writing, and all three in studying immensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, was correcting proofs of my first book issued by Houghton Mifflin Company, was selling sociological articles to Cosmopolitan and McClure's, had declined and the associate editorship proffered me by Telegraph from New York City and was getting ready to marry. Now the foregoing means work, especially the last year of it, when I was learning my trade as a writer, and in that year, running short on sleep and taking my brain to its limit, I neither drank nor cared to drink. So far as I was concerned, alcohol did not exist.  Heavens, editorial, acceptances, and checks were all the amelioratives I needed. A thin envelope from an editor in the morning's mail was more stimulating than half a dozen cocktails. And if a check of decent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a whole drunk. Furthermore, at that time in my life I did not know what a cocktail was. I remember, when my first book was published, several Alaskans who were members of the Bohemian Club entertained me one evening at the club in San Francisco. We sat in most wonderful leather chairs, and drinks were ordered.  I didn't know what a liqueur or a high ball was, and I didn't know that Scotch meant whiskey. I knew only poor men's drinks, the drinks of the frontier and of sailor town, cheap beer and cheaper whiskey that was just called whiskey and nothing else. I was embarrassed to make a choice, and the steward nearly collapsed when I ordered claret as an after-dinner drink. Chapter 27 As I succeeded with my writing, my standard of living rose and my horizon broadened. I confined myself to writing and typing a thousand words a day, including Sundays and holidays. And I still studied hard, but not so hard as formally. I allowed myself five and one hours of actual sleep. I added this half hour because I was compelled. Financial success permitted me more time for exercise. I rode my wheel more, chiefly because it was permanently out of pawn. And I boxed and fenced, walked on my hands, jumped high and broad, put the shot and tossed the caber, and went swimming. And I learned that more sleep is required for physical exercise than for mental exercise. There were tired nights bodily when I slept six hours, and on occasion of very severe exercise I actually slept seven hours. But such sleep orgies were not frequent. There was so much to learn, so much to be done, that I felt wicked when I slept seven hours. And I blessed the man who invented alarm clocks. And still no desire to drink. I possessed too many fine faiths, was living at too keen a pitch. I was a socialist, intent on saving the world, and alcohol could not give me the fervors that were mine from my ideas and ideals. My voice, on account of my successful writing, had added weight, or so I thought. At any rate, my reputation as a writer drew me audiences that my reputation as a speaker never could have drawn. I was invited before clubs and organizations of all sorts to deliver my message. I fought the good fight, and went on studying and writing, and was very busy. Up to this time I had had a very restricted circle of friends, but now I began to go about. I was invited out, especially to dinner, and I made many friends and acquaintances whose economic lives were easier than mine had been. And many of them drank. In their own houses they drank and offered me drink. They were not drunkards any of them. They just drank temperately, and I drank temperately with them, as an act of comradeship and accepted hospitality. I did not care for it, neither wanted it, nor did not want it, and so small was the impression made by it that I do not remember my first cocktail nor my first scotch highball. Well, I had a house. When one is asked into other houses he naturally asks others into his house. Behold the rising standard of living. Having been given drink in other houses I could expect nothing else of myself than to give drink in my own house. So I laid in a supply of beer and whiskey and table-claret. Never since that has my house not been well equipped. And still, through all this period I did not care in the slightest for John Barley-Corn. I drank when others drank and with them as a social act. And I had so little choice in the matter that I drank whatever they drank. If they elected whiskey, then whiskey it was for me. If they drank root beer or sasperilla, I drank root beer or sasperilla with them. And when there were no friends in the house, why I didn't drink anything? Whiskey decanters were always in the room where I wrote, and for months and years I never knew what it was when by myself to take a drink. When out at dinner I noticed the kindly genial glow of the preliminary cocktail. It seemed a very fitting and gracious thing. Yet so little did I stand in need of it, with my own high intensity and vitality, that I never thought it worthwhile to have a cocktail before my own meal when I ate alone. On the other hand, I well remember a very brilliant man, somewhat older than I, who occasionally visited me. He liked whiskey, and I recall sitting whole afternoons in my den, drinking steadily with him, drink for a drink, until he was mildly lighted up, and I was slightly aware that I had drunk some whiskey. Now why did I do this? I don't know, save that the old schooling held, the training of the old days and nights, glass and hand with men, the drinking ways of drink and drinkers. Besides, I no longer feared John Barleycorn. Mine was that most dangerous stage when a man believes himself John Barleycorn's master. I had proved it to my satisfaction in the long years of work and study. I could drink when I wanted, refrain when I wanted, drink without getting drunk, and to cap everything I was thoroughly conscious that I had no liking for the stuff. During this period I drank precisely for the same reason I had drunk with Scotty and the Harpooner and with the Oyster Pirates, because it was an act that men performed with whom I wanted to behave as a man. These brilliant ones, these adventurers of the mind, drank. Very well, there was no reason I should not drink with them, I who knew so confidently that I had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn. And the foregoing was my attitude of mind for years. Occasionally I got well jingled, but such occasions were rare. It interfered with my work, and I permitted nothing to interfere with my work. I remember when spending several months in the East End of London, during which time I wrote a book and adventured much amongst the worst of the slum classes, that I got drunk several times and was mightily wroth with myself because it interfered with my writing. Yet these very times were because I was out on the adventure path where John Barleycorn is always to be found. Then too, with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy, there were occasions when I engaged in drinking hours with men. Of course, this was on the adventure path in various parts of the world, and it was a matter of pride. It is a queer man pride that leads one to drink with men in order to show as strong a head as they. But this queer man pride is not theory, it is fact. For instance, a wild ban of young revolutionists invited me as the guest of honour to a beer bust. It is the only technical beer bust I ever attended. I did not know the true inwardness of the affair when I accepted. I imagined that the talk would be wild and high, that some of them might drink more than they might, and that I would drink discreetly. But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of these high-spirited young fellows whereby they wild away the tedium of existence by making fools of their bedders. As I learned afterward they had got their previous guest of honour a brilliant young radical unskilled in drinking, quite pipped. When I found myself with them and the situation dawned on me up rose my queer man pride. I'd show them the young rascals. I'd show them who was husky and chesty, who had the vitality in the constitution, the stomach and the head, who could make most of a swine of himself and show at least. These unlicked cubs who thought they could out-drink me! You see, it was an endurance test, and no man likes to give another best. Faw! It was steam beer. I had learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer, but when I had, I had drunk with men, and I guessed I could show these youngsters some ability in beer-guzzling. And the drinking began, and I had to drink with the best of them. Some of them might lag, but the guest of honour was not permitted to lag. And all my esteered nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read, all the wisdom I had gathered, went glimmering before the ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the abysm of my heredity, adivistic, competitive, and brutal, lustful with strength and desire to out-swine the swine. And when the session broke up, I was still on my feet, and I walked, erect, unswaying, which was more than can be said of some of my hosts. I recall one of them in indignant tears on the street corner, weeping as he pointed out my sober condition. Little he dreamed the iron clutch, born of old training, with which I held to my consciousness in my swimming brain, kept control of my muscles and my qualms, kept my voice unbroken and easy, and my thoughts consecutive and logical. Yes, and mixed up with it all, I was privily a grin. They hadn't made a fool of me in that drinking-boat, and I was proud of myself for the achievement. Darn it, I am still proud, so strangely is man compounded. But I didn't write my thousand words next morning. I was sick, poisoned. It was a day of wretchedness. In the afternoon I had to give a public speech. I gave it, and I am confident it was as bad as I felt. Some of my hosts were there in the front rows to mark any signs on me of the night before. I don't know what signs they marked, but I marked signs on them and took consolation in the knowledge that they were just as sick as I. Never again I swore, and I have never been invagled into another beer-bust. For that matter that was my last drinking-boat of any sort. Oh, I have drunk ever since, but with more wisdom, more discretion, and never in a competitive spirit. It is thus that the seasoned drinker grows seasoned. To show that at this period in my life drinking was wholly a matter of companionship, I remember crossing the Atlantic in the old Teutonic. It chanced at the start that I chummed with an English cable operator and a younger member of a Spanish shipping firm. Now the only thing they drank was horse's-nick, a long, soft, cool drink with an apple-peel or an orange-peel floating in it. And for that whole voyage I drank horse's-nicks with my two companions. On the other hand, had they drunk whiskey, I should have drunk whiskey with them. From this it must not be concluded that I was merely weak. I didn't care. I had no morality in the matter. I was strong with youth and unafraid, and alcohol was an utterly negligible question as far as I was concerned. Chapter 28 Not yet was I ready to tuck my arms in John Barley-Corns. The older I got, the greater my success, the more money I earned, the wider was the command of the world that became mine, and the more prominently did John Barley-Corn bulk in my life. And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance with him. I drank for the sake of sociability and went alone I did not drink. Sometimes I got jingled, but I considered such jingles the mild price I paid for sociability. To show how unripe I was for John Barley-Corn when, at this time, I descended into my slough of despond, I never dreamed of turning to John Barley-Corn for a helping hand. I had life troubles and heart troubles which are neither here nor there in this narrative. But combined with them were intellectual troubles which are indeed germane. Mine was no uncommon experience. I had read too much positive science and lived too much positive life. In the eagerness of youth I had made the ancient mistake of pursuing truth too relentlessly. I had torn her veils from her and the sight was too terrible for me to stand. In brief I lost my fine faiths in pretty well everything except humanity and the humanity I retained faith in was a very stark humanity indeed. This long sickness of pessimism is too well known to most of us to be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that I had it very bad. I meditated suicide coolly as a Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for me to quit living. But that was sheer morality. What really saved me was the one remaining illusion, the people. The things I had fought for and burned my midnight oil for had failed me. Success I despised it. Recognition it was dead ashes. Society, men and women above the ruck and muck of the waterfront and the folk soul I was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity. Love of woman it was like all the rest. Money I could sleep in only one bed at a time and of what worth was an income of a hundred porter houses a day when I could eat only one. Art, culture, in the face of the iron facts of biology such things were ridiculous. The exponents of such things only the more ridiculous. From the foregoing it can be seen how very sick I was. I was born a fighter. The things I had fought for had proved not worth the fight. Remained the people. My fight was finished yet something was left still to fight for the people. But while I was discovering this one last high to bind me to life in my extremity in the depths of despond walking in the valley of the shadow my ears were deaf to John Barley corn. Never the remotest whisper arose in my consciousness that John Barley corn was the anodyne that he could lie me along to live. One way only was uppermost in my thought, my revolver the crashing eternal darkness of a bullet. There was plenty of whiskey in the house for my guests. I never touched it. I grew afraid of my revolver afraid during the period in which the radiant flashing vision of the people was forming in my mind and will.  And I was compelled to give my revolver away to others who were to lose it for me where my subconscious hand might not find it. But the people saved me. By the people was I handcuffed to life. There was still one fight left in me and here was the thing for which to fight. I threw all precaution to the winds threw myself with fiercer zeal into the fight for socialism, laughed at the editors and publishers who warned me and who were the sources of my hundred porter houses a day and was brutally careless of whose feelings I hurt and of how savagely I hurt them. As the well-balanced radicals charged at the time my efforts were so strenuous, so unsafe and unsaying, so ultra-revolutionary that I retarded the socialist development in the United States by five years. In passing I wished to remark at this late date that it is my fond belief that I accelerated the socialist development in the United States by at least five minutes. It was the people and no thanks to John Barleycorn who pulled me through my long sickness. And when I was convalescent came the love of woman to complete the cure and lull my pessimism asleep for many a long day until John Barleycorn again awoke it. But in the meantime I pursued truth less relentlessly refraining from tarry her last veils aside even when I clutched them in my hand. I no longer cared to look upon truth naked. I refused to permit myself to see a second time what I had once seen and the memory of what I had that time seen I resolutely blotted from my mind. And I was very happy. Life went well with me. I took delight in little things. The big things I declined to take too seriously. I still read the books but not with the old eagerness. I still read the books today but never again shall I read them with that old glory of youthful passion when I hacked to the call from over and beyond that whispered me on to win to the mystery at the back of life and behind the stars. The point of this chapter is that in the long sickness that at some time comes to most of us I came through without any appeal for aid to John Barley Corn. Love, socialism, the people healthy figments of man's mind were the things that cured and saved me. If ever a man was not a born alcoholic I believed that I am that man and yet, well, let the succeeding chapters tell their tale for in them will be shown how I paid for my previous quarter of a century of contact with ever accessible John Barley Corn. End of Chapter 28 Chapters 29 and 30 of John Barley Corn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack London This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 29 After my long sickness my drinking continued to be convivial. I drank when others drank and I was with them. But imperceptibly my need for alcohol took form and began to grow. It was not a body need. I boxed, swam, sailed, rode horses, lived in the open and arrantly healthful life and passed life insurance examinations with flying colors. In its inception, now that I look back upon it, this need for alcohol was a mental need, a nerve need, a good spirit's need. How can I explain? It was something like this. Physiologically, from the standpoint of palate and stomach, alcohol was, as it had always been, repulsive. It tasted no better than beer did when I was five than bitter claret did when I was seven, when I was alone, writing or studying, I had no need for it. But I was growing old or wise or both or senile as an alternative. When I was in company, I was less pleased, less excited with the things said and done. First while, worthwhile fun and stunts seemed no longer worthwhile. And it was a torment to listen to the incipities and stupidities of women to the pompous, arrogant sayings of the little half-baked men. It is the penalty one pays for reading the books too much or for being oneself a fool. In my case, it does not matter which was my trouble. The trouble itself was the fact. The condition of the fact was mine. For me, the life and light and sparkle of human intercourse were dwindling. I had climbed too high among the stars or maybe I had slept too hard. Yet I was not hysterical nor in any way overwrought. My pulse was normal. My heart was an amazement of excellence to the insurance doctors. My lungs threw the said doctors into ecstasies. I wrote a thousand words every day. I was punctiliously exact in dealing with all the affairs of life that fell to my lot. I exercised in joy and gladness. I slept at night like a babe. But, well, as soon as I got out in the company of others, I was driven to melancholy and spiritual tears. I could neither laugh with nor at the solemn utterances of men I esteemed ponderous asses.  And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I was merely bored. I had seen the same show too often, listened too often to the same songs and the same jokes. I knew too much about the box office receipts. I knew the cogs of the machinery behind the scene so well that the posing on the stage and the laughter and the song could not drown the creaking of the wheels behind. It doesn't pay to go behind the scenes and see the angel-voiced tenor beat his wife. Well, I'd been behind, and I was paying for it.  It is immaterial which was my situation. The situation is what counts, and the situation was that social intercourse for me was getting painful and difficult. On the other hand, it must be stated that on rare occasions, on very rare occasions, I did meet rare souls or fools like me with whom I could spend magnificent hours among the stars or in the paradise of fools. I was married to a rare soul or a fool who never bored me and who was always a source of new and unending surprise and delight. But I could not spend all my hours solely in her company, nor would it have been fair nor wise to compel her to spend all her hours in my company. Besides, I had written a string of successful books and society demands some portion of the recreative hours of a fellow that writes books. And any normal man of himself and his needs demands some hours of his fellow men. And now we begin to come to it. How to face the social intercourse game with the glamour gone? John Barleycorn The ever-patient one had waited a quarter of a century and more for me to reach my hand out in need of him. His thousand tricks had failed, thanks to my constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks in his bag. A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail or several before dinner enabled me to laugh wholeheartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recredest the laughter and the song and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the satisfaction of the pompous, mediocre ones who knew no other way to talk. A poor companion without a cocktail I became a very good companion with one. I achieved a false exhilaration, drugged myself to merriment, and the thing began so imperceptibly that I, old intimate of John Barleycorn, never dreamed wither it was leading me. I was beginning to call for music and wine. Soon I should be calling for matter music and more wine. It was at this time I became aware of waiting with expectancy for the pre-dinner cocktail. I wanted it, and I was conscious that I wanted it. I remember, while war corresponding in the Far East, of being irresistibly attracted to a certain home. Besides accepting all invitation to dinner, I made a point of dropping in almost every afternoon. Now the hostess was a charming woman, but it was not for her sake that I was under her roof so frequently. It happened that she made by far the finest cocktail procurable in that large city where drink mixing on the part of the foreign population was indeed an art. Up at the club, down at the hotels, and in other private houses, no such cocktails were created. Her cocktails were subtle. They were masterpieces. They were the least repulsive to the palette and carried the most kick. And yet I desired her cocktails only for sociability's sake to key myself to sociable moods. When I rode away from that city across hundreds of miles of rice fields and mountains, and through months of campaigning and on with the victorious Japanese into Manchuria, I did not drink. Several bottles of whiskey were always to be found on the backs of my pack horses. Yet I never broached a bottle for myself, never took a drink by myself, and never knew a desire to take such a drink. Oh, if a white man came into my camp, I opened a bottle, and we drank together according to the way of men. Just as he would open a bottle and drink with me if I came into his camp. I carried that whiskey for social purposes, and I so charged it up to my expense account to the newspaper for which I worked. Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth of my desire. There were little hints then that I did not take, little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the gravity of which I did not realize. For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winter to cruise for six or eight weeks on San Francisco Bay. My stout sloop yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove. A Korean boy did the cooking, and I usually took a friend or so along to share the joys of the cruise. Also, I took my machine along and did my thousand words a day. On the particular trip I have in mind, Cloudsley and Toddy came along. This was Toddy's first trip. On previous trips Cloudsley had elected to drink beer, so I had kept the yacht supplied with beer and had drunk beer with him. But on this cruise the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting Toddy's. So I brought whiskey along, a couple of gallons. Alas, many another gallon I bought. For Cloudsley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot Toddy that actually tasted delicious going down and that carried the most exhilarating kick imaginable. I liked those Toddies. I grew to look forward to the making of them. We drank them regularly, one before breakfast, one before dinner, one before supper, and a final one when we went to bed. We never got drunk, but I will say that four times a day we were very genial. And when, in the middle of the cruise, Toddy was called back to San Francisco on business, Cloudsley and I saw to it that the Korean boy mixed Toddy's regularly for us according to formula. But that was only on the boat. Back on the land in my house I took no breakfast eye-opener, no bed-going nightcap, and I haven't drunk hot Toddy's since, and that was many a year ago. But the point is, I liked those Toddies. The geniality of which they were provocative was marvelous. They were eloquent proselytites for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way. They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and deadly desire. And I didn't know. Never dreamed. I, who had lived with John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his unavailing attempts to win me. Chapter 30 Part of the process of recovering from my long sickness was to find a light in little things, in things unconnected with books and problems, in play, in games of tag in the swimming pool, in flying kites, in fooling with horses, in working out mechanical puzzles. As a result, I grew tired of the city. On the ranch, in the valley of the moon, I found my paradise. I gave up living in cities. All the cities held for me were music, the theater, and Turkish baths. And all went well with me. I worked hard, played hard, and was very happy. I read more fiction and less fact. I did not study a tithe as much as I had studied in the past. I still took an interest in the fundamental problems of existence, but it was a very cautious interest. For I had burned my fingers that time I clutched at the veils of truth and wrestled them from her. There was a bit of lie in this attitude of mine, a bit of hypocrisy, but the lie and the hypocrisy were those of a man desiring to live. I deliberately blinded myself to what I took to be the savage interpretation of biological fact. After all, I was merely forswearing a bad habit, foregoing a bad frame of mind. And I repeat, I was very happy. And I add that in all my days measuring them with cold, considerative judgment, this was far and away beyond all other periods the happiest period of my life. But the time was at hand rimless and reasonless so far as I can see when I was to begin to pay for my score of years of dallying with John Barley-Corn. Occasionally guest journey to the ranch and remained a few days. Some did not drink. But to those who did drink the absence of all alcohol on the ranch was a hardship. I could not violate my sense of hospitality by compelling them to endure this hardship. I ordered in a stock for my guests. I was never interested enough in cocktails to know how they were made. So I got a barkeeper in Oakland to make them in bulk and ship them to me. When I had no guests I didn't drink. But I began to notice when I finished my morning's work that I was glad if there was a guest for then I could drink a cocktail with him. Now I was so clean of alcohol that even a single cocktail was provocative of pitch. A single cocktail would glow the mind and tickle a laugh for the few minutes prior to sitting down to table and starting the delightful process of eating. On the other hand, such was the strength of my stomach, of my alcoholic resistance that the single cocktail was only the glimmer of a glow, the faintest tickle of a laugh. One day a friend frankly and shamelessly suggested a second cocktail. I drank the second with him. The glow was appreciably longer and warmer, the laughter deeper and more resonant. One does not forget such experiences. Sometime I almost think that it was because I was so very happy that I started on my real drinking. I remember one day Charmian and I took a long ride over the mountains on our horses. The servants had been dismissed for the day and we returned late at night to a jolly chafing-dish supper. Oh, it was good to be alive that night while the supper was preparing. The two of us alone in the kitchen, I personally was at the top of life. Such things as the books and ultimate truth did not exist. My body was gloriously healthy and healthily tired from the long ride. It had been a splendid day. The night was splendid. I was with the woman who was my mate, picnicking in gleeful abandon. I had no troubles. The bills were all paid and a surplus of money was rolling in on me. The future ever widened before me. And right there, in the kitchen, delicious things bubbled in the chafing-dish, our laughter bubbled and my stomach was keen with a most delicious edge of appetite. I felt so good that somehow, somewhere, in me arose an insatiable greed to feel better. I was so happy that I wanted to pitch my happiness even higher. And I knew the way. Ten thousand contacts with John Barleycorn had taught me. Several times I wandered out of the kitchen to the cocktail bottle and each time I left it diminished by one man's size cocktail. The result was splendid. I wasn't jingled. I wasn't lighted up. But I was warmed. I glowed. My happiness was pyramided. Munificent as life was to me, I added to that munificence. It was a great hour, one of my greatest. But I paid for it long afterwards as you will see. One does not forget such experiences and in human stupidity cannot be brought to realize that there is no immutable law which decrees that same things shall produce same results. For they don't. Else would the thousandth pipe of opium be provocative of similar delights to the first. Else would one cocktail instead of several produce an equivalent glow after a year of cocktails. One day just before I ate midday dinner after my morning's writing was done when I had no guest I took a cocktail by myself. Thereafter when there were no guests I took this daily pre-dinner cocktail and right there John Barley Corn had me. I was beginning to drink regularly. I was beginning to drink alone. And I was beginning to drink not for hospitality's sake not for the sake of the taste but for the effect of the drink. I wanted that daily pre-dinner cocktail and it never crossed my mind that there was any reason I should not have it. I paid for it. I could pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted. And what was a cocktail? One cocktail. To me who had on so many occasions for so many years had drunk inordinate quantities of stiffer stuff and been unharmed. The program of my ranch life was as follows each morning at 8.30 having been reading or correcting proofs in bed since four or five I went to my desk. Odds and ends of correspondence and notes occupied me till nine and at nine sharp invariably I began my writing. By eleven sometimes a few minutes earlier or later my thousand words were finished. Another half hour at cleaning up my desk and my day's work was done so that 11.30 I got into a hammock under the trees with my mail bag and the morning newspaper. At 12.30 I ate dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode. One morning at 11.30 before I got into the hammock I took a cocktail. I repeated this on subsequent mornings of course taking another cocktail just before I ate at 12.30 Soon I found myself seated at my desk in the midst of my thousand words looking forward to that 11.30 cocktail. At last now I was thoroughly conscious that I desired alcohol. But what of it? I wasn't afraid of John Barleycorn. I had associated with him too long. I was wise in the matter of drink. I was discreet. Never again would I drink to excess. I knew the dangers and the pitfalls of John Barleycorn the various ways by which he had tried to kill me in the past. But all that was past. Long past. Never again would I drink myself to stupefaction. Never again would I get drunk. All I wanted and all I would take was just enough to glow and warm me to kick geniality alive in me and put laughter in my throat and stir the maggots of imagination slightly in my brain. Oh, I was thoroughly master of myself and of John Barleycorn. End of Chapter 30 Chapters 31 and 32 of John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack London. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 31 But the same stimulus to the human organism will not continue to produce the same response. By and by I discovered there was no kick at all in one cocktail. One cocktail left me dead. There was no glow, no laughter tickle. Two or three cocktails were required to produce the original effect of one and I wanted that effect. I drank my first cocktail at eleven thirty when I took the morning's mail into the hammock and I drank my second cocktail an hour later just before I ate. I got into the habit of crawling out of the hammock ten minutes earlier so as to find time and decency for two more cocktails ere I ate. This became schedule. Three cocktails in the hour that intervened between my desk and dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits regular drinking and solitary drinking. I was always willing to drink when anyone was around. I drank by myself when no one was around. Then I made another step. When I had for a guest a man of limited drinking caliber I took two drinks to his one. One drink with him the other drink without him and of which he did not know. I stole that other drink and worse than that I began the habit of drinking alone when there was a guest a man, a comrade with whom I could have drunk. But John Barley-Corn furnished the extenuation. It was a wrong thing to trip a guest up with excess of hospitality and get him drunk.  What could I do but steal that every second drink or else deny myself the kick equivalent to what he got out of half the number. Please remember as I recite this development of my drinking that I am no fool, no weakling. As the world measures such things I am a success. I dare to say a success more conspicuous than the success of the average successful man and a success that required a pretty fair amount of brains and willpower. My body is a strong body. It has survived where weaklings died like flies. And yet these things which I am relating happened to my body and to me. I am a fact. My drinking is a fact. My drinking is a thing that has happened and is not theory nor speculation. And as I see it it but lays the emphasis on the power of John Barley corn. A savagery that we still permit to exist. A deadly institution that lingers from the mad old brutal days and that takes its heavy toll of youth and strength and high spirit and of very much of all of the best we breed. To return after a boisterous afternoon in the swimming pool followed by a glorious ride on horseback over the mountains or up or down the valley of the moon I found myself so keyed and splendid that I desired to be more highly keyed to feel more splendid. I knew the way. A cocktail before supper was not the way. Two or three, at the very least was what was needed. I took them. Why not? It was living. I had always dearly loved to live. This also became part of the daily schedule. Then too I was perpetually finding excuses for extra cocktails. It might be the assembling of a particularly jolly crowd. A touch of anger against my architect or against a thieving stone mason working on my barn. The death of my favorite horse in a barbed wire fence. Or news of good fortune in the morning mail from my dealings with editors and publishers. It was immaterial what the excuse might be. Once the desire had germinated in me the thing was I wanted alcohol. At last, after a score and more of years of dallying and of not wanting now I wanted it. And my strength was my weakness. I required two, three or four drinks to get an effect commensurate with the effect the average man got out of one drink. One rule I observed. I never took a drink until my day's work of writing a thousand words was done. And when done the cocktails reared a wall of inhibition in my brain between the day's work done and the rest of the day of fun to come. My work ceased from my consciousness. No thought of it flickered in my brain till next morning at nine o'clock when I sat at my desk and began my next thousand words. This was a desirable condition of mine to achieve. I conserved my energy by means of this alcoholic inhibition. John Barleycorn was not so black as he was painted. He did a fellow many a good turn and this was one of them. And I turned out work that was helpful and wholesome and sincere. It was never pessimistic the way of life I had learned in my long sickness. I knew the illusions were right and I exalted the illusions. Oh, I still turn out the same sort of work stuff that is clean, alive, optimistic and that makes toward life. And I am always assured by the critics of my superabundant and abounding vitality and of how thoroughly I am deluded by these very illusions I exploit. And while on this digression let me repeat the question I have repeated to myself ten thousand times. Why did I drink? What need was there for it? I was happy. Was it because I was too happy? I was strong. Was it because I was too strong? Did I possess too much vitality? I don't know why I drank. I cannot answer though I can voice the suspicion that ever grows in me. I had been in too familiar contact with John Barley Corn through too many years. A left-handed man by long practice can become a right-handed man. Had I a non-alcoholic by long practice become an alcoholic? I was so happy. I had won through my long sickness to the satisfying love of woman. I earned more money with less endeavor. I glowed with health. I slept like a babe. I continued to write successful books and in sociological controversy I saw my opponents confuted with the facts of the times that daily reared new buttresses to my intellectual position. From day's end to day's end I never knew sorrow, disappointment, nor regret. I was happy all the time. Life was one unending song. I begrudged the very hours of blessed sleep because by that much was I robbed of the joy that would have been mine had I remained awake. And yet I drank. And John Barley Corn, all unguessed by me, was setting the stage for a sickness all his own. The more I drank, the more I was required to drink to get an equivalent effect. When I left the valley of the moon and went to the city and dined out, a cocktail served at table was a worn and worthless thing. There was no pre-dinner kicking it. On my way to dinner I was compelled to accumulate the kick. Two cocktails, three, and if I met some fellows, four or five or six, it didn't matter within several. Once I was in a rush I had no time decently to accumulate the several drinks. A brilliant idea came to me. I told the barkeeper to mix me a double cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I ordered double cocktails. It saved time. One result of this regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew so accustomed to spring and liven by artificial means that without artificial means it refused to spring and liven. Alcohol became more and more imperative in order to meet people, in order to become sociably fit. I had to get the kick and the hit of the stuff, the crawl of the maggots, the genial brain glow, the laughter tickle, the touch of devilishness and sting, the smile over the face of things, ere I could join my fellows and make one with them. Another result was that John Barley Corn was beginning to trip me up. He was thrusting my long sickness back upon me, invagaling me into again pursuing truth and snatching her veils away from her, tricking me into looking reality stark in the face. But this came on gradually. My thoughts were growing harsh again, though they grew harsh slowly. Sometimes warning thoughts crossed my mind. Where was this steady drinking leading? But trust John Barley Corn to silence such questions. Come on and have a drink, and I'll tell you all about it, is his way. And it works. For instance, the following is a case in point, and one which John Barley Corn never wearied of reminding me. I had suffered an accident which required a ticklish operation. One morning, a week after I had come off the table, I lay on my hospital bed weak and weary. The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow. My doctor stood at my bedside on the verge of departure. He glared disapprovingly at the cigarette I was smoking. That's what you ought to quit, he lectured. It will get you in the end. I looked. He was about my own age, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, eyes sparkling and ready-cheeked with health. A finer specimen of manhood one would not ask. I used to smoke, he went on. Cigars, but I gave even them up, and look at me.  With conscious well-being. And within a month he was dead. It was no accident. Half a dozen different bugs of long scientific names had attacked and destroyed him. The complications were astonishing and painful. And for days before he died, the screams of agony of that splendid manhood could be heard for a block around. He died screaming. You see, said John Barley-Corn, he took care of himself. He even stopped smoking cigars. And that's what he got for it. Pretty rotten, eh? But the bugs will jump. There's no forefending them. Your magnificent doctor took every precaution yet they got him. When the bug jumps, you can't tell where it will land. It may be you. Look what he missed.  There is no equity in life. It's all a lottery. But I put the lying smile on the face of life and laugh at the facts. Smile with me and laugh. You'll get yours in the end, but in the meantime, laugh. It's a pretty dark world. I illuminate it for you. It's a rotten world when things can happen such as happened to your doctor. There's only one thing to do. Take another drink and forget it. And, of course, I took another drink for the inhibition that accompanied it. I took another drink every time John Barley Corn reminded me of what had happened. Yet I drank rationally, intelligently. I saw to it that the quality of the stuff was of the best. I sought the kick and the inhibition and avoided the penalties of poor quality and of drunkenness. It is to be remarked in passing that when a man begins to drink rationally and intelligently that he betrays a grave symptom of how far along the road he has traveled. But I continued to observe my rule of never taking my first drink of the day until the last word of my thousand words was written. On occasion, however, I took a day's vacation from my writing. At such times, since it was no violation of my rule, I didn't mind how early in the day I took that first drink.  Chapter 32 When the snark sailed on her long cruise from San Francisco, there was nothing to drink on board. Or rather, we were all of us unaware that there was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for many a month. This sailing with a dry boat was malice of forethought on my part. I had played John Barley-Corn a trick, and it showed that I was listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were beginning to arise in my consciousness. Of course I veiled the situation to myself and excused myself to John Barley-Corn. And I was very scientific about it. I said that I would drink only while in ports. During the dry sea stretches my system would be cleansed of the alcohol that soaked it, so that when I reached a port I should be in shape to enjoy John Barley-Corn more thoroughly. His bite would be sharper, his kick keener, and more delicious. We were twenty-seven days on the traverse between San Francisco and Honolulu. After the first day out the thought of a drink never troubled me. This I take to show how intrinsically I am not an alcoholic. Sometimes during the traverse looking ahead and anticipating the delightful LANE luncheons and dinners of Hawaii, I had been there a couple of times before, I thought naturally of the drinks that would precede those meals. I did not think of those drinks with any yearning, with any irk at the length of the voyage. I merely thought they would be nice and jolly, part of the atmosphere of a proper meal. Thus once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I was John Barley-Corn's master. I could drink when I wanted, refrain when I wanted. Therefore I would continue to drink when I wanted. Some five months were spent in the various islands of the Hawaiian group. Being ashore, I drank. I even drank a bit more than I had been accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The people of Hawaii seem to drink a bit more on the average than the people in more temperate latitudes. I do not intend to pun and can awkwardly revise the statement to, latitudes more remote from the equator. Yet Hawaii is only subtropical. The deeper I got into the tropics, the deeper I found men drank. The deeper I drank myself. From Hawaii we sailed for the marquesas. The traverse occupied sixty days. For sixty days we never raised land a sail nor a steamer smoke. But early in those sixty days the cook, giving an overhauling to the galley, made a find. Down in the bottom of a deep locker he found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These had come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch along with the home preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in the galley heat had affected some sort of a change in the thick sweet wine. I imagined. I took a taste. Delicious! And thereafter, once each day at twelve o'clock, after our observations were worked up and the snarks position charted I drank half a tumbler of the stuff. It had a rare kick to it. It warmed the cockles of my geniality and put a fairer face on the truly fair face of the sea. Each morning below sweating out my thousand words I found myself looking forward to that twelve o'clock event of the day. The trouble was I had to share the stuff and the length of the traverse was doubtful. I regretted that there were more than a dozen bottles. And when they were gone I even regretted that I had shared any of it. I was thirsty for the alcohol and eager to arrive in the marqueses. So it was that I reached the marqueses the possessor of a real man's size thirst. And in the marqueses were several white men, a lot of sickly natives, much magnificent scenery, plenty of trade rum, and immense quantity of absinthe, but neither whiskey nor gin. The trade rum scorched the skin off one's mouth. I know because I tried it. But I had ever been plastic and accepted the absinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that I had to take such inordinate quantities in order to feel the slightest effect. From the marqueses I sailed with sufficient absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I outfitted with scotch and American whiskey. And thereafter there were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not misunderstand. There was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understood. No staggering enrolling around, no befuddlement of the senses. The skilled and seasoned drinker with a strong constitution never descends to anything like that. He drinks to feel good, to get a pleasant jingle, and no more than that. The things he carefully avoids are the nausea of overdrinking, the after-effect of overdrinking, the helplessness and loss of pride of overdrinking.  And he does it by the twelve-month around without any apparent penalty. There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort in the United States today, in clubs, hotels, and in their own homes. Men who are never drunk and who, though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarely sober, and all of them fondly believe, as I fondly believed, that they are beating the game. On the sea stretches I was fairly abstemious, but ashore I drank more. I seemed to need more anyway in the tropics. This is a common experience because excessive consumption of alcohol in the tropics by white men is a notorious fact. The tropics is no place for white-skinned men. Their skin pigment does not protect them against the excessive white light of the sun. The alternate violet rays and other high-velocity and invisible rays from the upper end of the spectrum rip and tear through their tissues, just as the x-ray ripped and tore through the tissues of so many experimenters before they learned the danger. White men in the tropics undergo radical changes of nature. They become savage, merciless. They commit monstrous acts of cruelty that they would never dream of committing in their original temperate climate. They become nervous, irritable, and less moral. And they drink as they never drank before. Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration that's set in when white men are exposed too long to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn.  They don't reason about it, they just do it. The sun-sickness got me despite the fact that I had been in the tropics for only a couple of years. I drank heavily during this time, but right here I wished to forestall misunderstanding. The drinking was not the cause of the sickness nor of the abandonment of the voyage. I was strong as a bull and for many months I fought the sun-sickness and tearing my surface and nervous tissues to pieces. All through the new hebrides and the solomons and up among the atolls on the line during this period under a tropic sun rotten with malaria and suffering from a few minor afflictions such as biblical leprosy with the silvery skin I did the work of five men. To navigate a vessel through the reefs and shoals and passages and unlighted coasts of the coral seas is a man's work in itself. I was the only navigator on board. There was no one to check me up on the working out of my observations nor with whom I could advise in the ticklish darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals. And I stood all watches. There was no seaman on board whom I could trust to stand a mate's watch. I was mate as well as captain. Twenty-four hours a day were the watches I stood at sea catching catnaps when I might. Third, I was doctor and let me say right here that the doctor's job in the snark at that time was a man's job. All on board suffered from malaria the real tropical malaria that can kill in three months. All on board suffered from perforating ulcers and from the maddening itch of Ngari Ngari. A Japanese cook went insane from his two numerous afflictions. One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with black water fever. Oh yes, it was a full man's job. And I dosed and doctored and pulled teeth and dragged my patients through mild little things like tomein poisoning. Fourth, I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words a day. Every day, except when the shock of fever smoked me or a couple of nasty squalls smoked the snark in the morning. Fifth, I was a traveler and a writer eager to see things and to gather material into my notebooks. And sixth, I was master and owner of the craft that was visiting strange places where visitors are rare and where visitors are made much of.  Of course I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also I drank by myself. Doing the work of five men I thought and titled me to drink. Alcohol was good for a man who overworked. I noted its effect on my small crew when, breaking their backs and hearts at heaving up anchor in forty fathoms, they knocked off gasping and trembling at the end of half an hour and had new life put into them by stiff jolts of rum. They caught their breaths, wiped their mouths and went to it again with a will. And when we careened the snark and had to work in the water to our necks between shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade rum helped the work along. And here again we come to another side of many-sided John Barleycorn. On the face of it he gives something for nothing. Where no strength remains, he finds new strength. The wearied one rises to greater effort, for the time being there is an actual accession of strength. I remember passing coal on an ocean steamer through eight days of hell, during which time we coal-passers were kept to the job by being fed with whiskey. We toiled half drunk all the time. And without the whiskey we could not have passed the coal. This strength John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength. It is real strength. But it is manufactured out of the sources of strength. And it must ultimately be paid for and with interest. But what weary human will look so far ahead? He takes this apparently miraculous accession of strength at its face value. And many an overworked business and professional man as well as a harried common laborer has traveled John Barleycorn's death-road because of this mistake. End of Chapter 32 Chapters 33, 34 and 35 of John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack London. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 33 I went to Australia to go into hospital and get tinkered up, after which I planned to go on with the voyage. And during the long weeks I went to the hospital. From the first day I never missed alcohol. I never thought about it. I knew I should have it again when I was on my feet. But when I regained my feet I was not cured of my major afflictions. Naaman's silvery skin was still mine. The mysterious sun-sickness which the experts of Australia could not fathom ripped and tore my tissues. Malaria still festered in me and put me on my back in shivering delirium at the most unexpected moments, compelling me to cancel a double lecture tour which had been arranged. So I abandoned the snark voyage and sought a cooler climate. The day I came out of hospital I took up drinking again at dinner of course. I drank wine at meals. I drank cocktails before meals. I drank scotch high balls when anybody I chanced to be with was drinking them. I was so thoroughly the master of John Barleycorn I could take up with him or let go of him whenever I pleased just as I had done all my life. After a time for cooler climate I went down to southernmost Tasmania in 43 South and I found myself in a place where there was nothing to drink. It didn't mean anything. I didn't drink. It was no hardship. I soaked in the cool air, rode horseback and did my thousand words a day save when the fever shock came in the morning. And for fear that the idea may still lurk in some minds that my proceeding years of drinking were the cause of my disabilities I hear point out that my Japanese cabin boy Nakata still with me was rotten with fever as was Charmian who in addition was in the slough of a tropical Neurostenia that required several years of temperate climates to cure and that neither she nor Nakata drank or ever had drunk. When I returned to Hobartown where drink was obtainable I drank as of old the same when I arrived back in Australia on the contrary when I sailed from Australia on a tramp steamer commanded by an abstemious captain I took no drink along and had no drink for the 43 days passage arrived in Ecuador squarely under the equatorial sun where the humans were dying of yellow fever smallpox and the plague I promptly drank again every drink of every sort I kicked in it I caught none of these diseases neither did Charmian nor Nakata who did not drink unerrant of the tropics despite the damage done me I stopped in various places and was a long while getting back to the splendid temperate climate of California I did my thousand words a day traveling or stopping over suffered my last faint fever shock saw my silvery skin vanish and my sun-torn tissues healthily knit again and drank as a broad-shouldered chesty man made drink Chapter 34 Back on the ranch in the valley of the moon I resumed my steady drinking my program was no drink in the morning first drink time came with the completion of my thousand words then between that and the midday meal were drinks numerous enough to develop a pleasant jingle again in the hour preceding the evening meal I developed another pleasant jingle nobody ever saw me drunk for the simple reason that I never was drunk but I did get a jingle twice each day and the amount of alcohol I consumed every day if loosed in the system of one uncustom to drink would have put such a one on his back and out it was the old proposition the more I drank the more I was compelled to drink in order to get in effect the time came when cocktails were inadequate I had neither the time in which to drink them nor the space to accommodate them whiskey had a more powerful jolt it gave quicker action with less quantity bourbon or rye or cunningly aged blends constituted the pre-midday drinking in the afternoon it was scotch and soda my sleep always excellent now became not quite so excellent I had been accustomed to read myself back asleep when I chanced to awake but now this began to fail me when I had read two or three of the small hours away and was as wide awake as ever I found that a drink furnished the soporific effect sometimes two or three drinks were required so short a period of sleep then intervened before early morning rising that my system did not have time to work off the alcohol as a result I awoke with mouth parched and dry with a slight heaviness of head and with a mild nervous palpitation in the stomach in fact I did not feel good I was suffering from the morning sickness of the steady heavy drinker what I needed was a pick me up a bracer trust John Barley corn once he has broken down a man's defenses so it was a drink before breakfast to put me right for breakfast the old poison of the snake that has bitten one another custom began at this time was that of the pitcher of water by the bedside to furnish relief to my scorched and sizzling membranes I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol nor did I permit myself to be away from alcohol if I traveled to out-of-the-way places I declined to run the risk of finding them dry I took a court or several courts along in my grip in the past I had been amazed by other men guilty of this practice now I did it myself unblushingly and when I got out with the fellows I cast all rules by the board I drank when they drank what they drank and in the same way as they drank I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me the thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer there was no time in all my waking time that I didn't want a drink I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only 500 words were written it was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink the gravity of this I realized too well I made new rules resolutely I would refrain from drinking until my work was done but a new and most diabolical complication arose the work refused to be done without drinking it just couldn't be done I had to drink in order to do it I was beginning to fight now I had the craving at last and it was mastering me I would sit at my desk and dally with pad and pen but words refused to flow my brain could not think the proper thoughts because continually it was obsessed with the one thought that across the room in the liquor cabinet stood John Barley corn when in despair I took my drink at once my brain loosened up and began to roll off the thousand words in my townhouse in Oakland I finished the stock of liquor and willfully refused to purchase more it was no use because fortunately there remained in the bottom of the liquor cabinet a case of beer in vain I tried to write now beer is a poor substitute for strong waters besides I didn't like beer yet all I could think of was that beer so singularly accessible in the bottom of the cabinet not until I had drunk a pint of it did the words begin to reel off and the thousand were reeled off to the tune of numerous pints the worst of it was that the beer caused me severe heartburn but despite the discomfort I soon finished off the case the liquor cabinet was now bare not replenish it by truly heroic perseverance I finally forced myself to write the daily thousand words without the spur of John Barley coin but all the time I wrote I was keenly aware of the craving for a drink and as soon as the morning's work was done I was out of the house and away downtown to get my first drink merciful goodness if John Barley could get such sway over me a non-alcoholic what must be the sufferings of the true alcoholic battling against the organic demands of his chemistry while those closest to him sympathize little understand less and despise and deride him Chapter 35 but the freight has to be paid John Barley coin began to collect and he collected not so much from the body as from the mind the old long sickness which had been purely an intellectual sickness the old ghost long laid lifted their heads again but they were different and more deadly ghosts the old ghosts intellectual in their inception had been laid by a sane and normal logic but now they were raised by the white logic of John Barley coin and John Barley coin never lays the ghosts of his raising for this sickness of pessimism caused by drink one must drink further in quest of the anodyne that John Barley coin promises but never delivers how to describe this white logic to those who have never experienced it it is perhaps better to state how impossible such a description is take hashish land for instance the land of enormous extensions of time and space in past years I have made two memorable journeys into that far land my adventures there are seared in sharpest detail on my brain yet I have tried vainly with endless words to describe any tiny particular phase to persons who have not traveled there I use all the hyperbole of metaphor and tell what centuries to time and profounds of unthinkable agony and horror can obtain in each interval of all the intervals between the notes of a quick jig played quickly on the piano I talk for an hour elaborating that one phase of hashish land and at the end I have told them nothing and when I cannot tell them this one thing of all the vastness of terrible and wonderful things I know I have failed to give them the slightest concept of hashish land but let me talk with some other traveler in that weird region and at once am I understood a phrase, a word conveys instantly to his mind what hours of words and phrases could not convey to the mind of the non-traveler so it is with John Barley Corn's realm where the white logic reigns to those untraveled there the traveler's account must always seem unintelligible and fantastic at the best I may only beg of the untraveled ones to strive to take on faith the narrative I shall relate for there are fatal intuitions of truth that reside in alcohol Philip Solber vouches for Philip drunk in this matter there seem to be various orders of truth in this world some sorts of truth are truer than others some sorts of truth are lies and these sorts are the very ones that have the greatest use value of life that desires to realize and live at once oh untraveled reader you see how lunatic and blasphemous is the realm I am trying to describe to you in the language of John Barley Corn's tribe it is not the language of your tribe all of whose members resolutely shun the roads that lead to death and tread only the roads that lead to life for there are roads and roads and of truth there are orders and orders but have patience at least through what seems no more than verbal yammerings you may per chance glimpse faint far vistas of other lands and tribes alcohol tells truth but its truth is not normal what is normal is healthful what is healthful tends towards life normal truth is a different order and a lesser order of truth take a drae horse through all the vicissitudes of its life from first to last somehow in unguessably dim days it must believe that life is good that the drudgery in harness is good that death no matter how blind instinctively apprehended is a dread giant that life is beneficent and worthwhile that in the end with fading life it will not be knocked about and beaten and urged beyond and sprained and spavoned best that old age even is decent dignified and valuable though old age means a ribby scare crow in a hawker's cart stumbling a step to every blow stumbling dizzily on through merciless servitude and slow disintegration to the end the apportionment of its parts of its subtle flesh its pink and springy bone its juices and ferments and all the sensateness that informed it to the chicken farm the hide house the glue rendering works and the bone meal fertilizer factory to the last stumble of its stumbling end this drae horse must abide by the mandates of the lesser truth that is the truth of life and that makes life possible to persist this drae horse like all other horses like all other animals including man is life blinded and sense struck it will live no matter what the price the game of life is good though all of life may be hurt and though all lives lose the game in the end this is the order of truth that obtains not for the universe but for the live things in it if they for a little space will endure ere they pass this order of truth no matter how erroneous it may be is the sane and normal order of truth the rational order of truth that life must believe in order to live to man alone among the animals has been given the awful privilege of reason man with his brain can penetrate the intoxicating show of things and look upon the universe brazen with indifference toward him and his dreams he can do this but it is not well for him to do it to live and live abundantly to sting with life to be alive which is to be what he is it is good that man be life blinded and sense struck what is good is true and this is the order of truth lesser though it be that man must know and guide his actions by with unswerving certitude that it is absolute truth and that in the universe no other order of truth can obtain it is good that man accept at face value the cheats of sense and snares of flesh and through the fogs of sentiency pursue the lures and lies of passion it is good that he shall see neither shadows nor futilities nor be appalled by his lusts and rapacities and man does this countless men have glimpsed that other and truer order of truth and recoiled from it countless men have passed through the long sickness and lived to tell of it and deliberately to forget it to the end of their days they lived they realized life for life is what they were they did right now comes John Barley corn with the curse he lays upon the imaginative man who is lusty with life and desire to live John Barley corn sends his white logic the Argent messenger of truth beyond truth the antithesis of life cruel and bleak as interstellar space pulseless and frozen as absolute zero dazzling with the frost of irrefragable logic and unforgettable fact John Barley corn will not let the dreamer dream the liver live he destroys birth and death and dissipates to mist the paradox of being until his victim cries out as in the city of dreadful night our life's a cheat our death a black abyss and the feet of the victim of such dreadful intimacy take hold of the way of death End of Chapter 35


The next session is on doing business in the open. So let me first present our session leader, Gael Blondel, from the now European Eclipse Foundation. Gael, take it away. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Astor. So yeah, well, it's such pleasure to read this panel about doing business in the open. And yes, as you just said, we recently announced that the creation of Eclipse Foundation AISDL was finally established in Operation Universal. And that's a major step in our move to Europe, where we want to do business in the open globally, but from a strong European perspective. So thanks for inviting me to this session. And let me introduce my four speakers today. So Birgit Boss has a long history as a software engineer at Robert Bush. And currently, she's responsible for the IP standardization and open source strategy at Bush Connected Industry. She has been involved in the national and international standardization of industrial IoT systems since 2017. And she's on the board of the newly funded Industrial Digital Queen Association and chair of the semantic data structuring working group of the open manufacturing platform. Hi Birgit. Katarina Marrake is an attorney at Law and Strategic Advisor at Ambition, a subsidiary of Daimler of AG. And she is also a project professor at Kaio University in Japan, where she focuses on IP law and policy and standardization efforts for public licensing schemes. She served as the director of creative comments and other responsibilities. Hi Katarina. Hi, thanks for having me. Todd Moore is an IBM VP of Open Technology at IBM, where he leads a global IBM team developing open source technologies and working in open communities. And he currently serves as the chairperson of both Open GS Foundation Board of Directors and the CNCF Governing Board. And the quote is that if you consume open source code, you need to give back to the community just as much and more. And I love it. Hi, Todd. Thank you, thank you. And finally, Gerard Pfeiffer has been engaging in open source before that term was even coined. And he joins initially in the engineering side and then led the product organization for over 10 years, transforming the business from a Linux pioneer towards a broader open source infrastructure player. And Gerard currently serves as the CTO based in EMEA and the chair of the board of open source. Hi, Gerard. Hey. So let's start with a few short introduction with what I have observed over my own experience with open source. I would say that over the years, open source has emerged as one of the best way for collaborating with software. So we can mention the Linux, of course, Apache, Eclipse, Kubernetes, et cetera. I think, and I guess that some of you will come back on that later, that that's because of clear and well understood IP sharing models and that enables sharing and also developing a larger community of interest. That's easy to set up and that's an important point. Working in open source is more easy than creating joint ventures. So when we talk about doing business in the open, that's also about creating collaborations in open source. And I think that was mentioned in the previous panel that this complies with the antitrust regulations as well, the results are available to everybody. And so it's easier to comply with those competition regulations. And I myself started to work in the world of open source in 2004. And I think that at that time, open source was still a commoditization approach. But I also observed that in the last 10 years, we have seen that new technologies emerge directly in open source, like big data, cloud native computing, IoT, AI, et cetera. And of course, that's because of some requirements for scalability. But also certainly fostering adoption is certainly also a very important point. And with open source, after software creating the world, open source is clearly eating software. And with topics like industrial IoT that we will address with AI, with cloud, I think that open source is also moving from the traditional software companies to the more classical industry players. And that's really interesting today that we have SUSE, we have IBM, but we also have Bosch and Daimler. So I think that we have this clear separation of the two worlds. And we will see that we have good connections between them. So let's start with you, Gerard. SUSE has been a pure open source company for a very long time, so since 1992. And you have always been an open source and free software as really in the DNA of the company. And so tell me more about your perspective about doing business in the open. Yeah, I think Maria on the previous panel, she asked a very good question, what does it mean to be open? And in my experience, open source isn't actually sufficient. You can have open source software and that came up in the chat even and lock in your customers. Or you can put an open source license on a project, publish it somewhere and have no community. So what you're looking at is, if you want to be successful in open source and in a bigger context is actually the 360 degree focus on openness. How do we contact business commercially? How do we engage with partners and customers? How do we engage with open source communities? How do we engage even with entities like the European Union? And it's the openness of data, the openness of code, the openness of idea, patents being a critical issue and not so easy one all the time. That's really key. And what I found is there isn't actually one mode if I look at the overly simplifying vendor customer relationship, there isn't just one mode. There is really also an open source. There's still the classic mode of I'm a vendor, I deliver services software to you and you consume and you don't necessarily care whether it's open source or not. If you deploy a new SAP system, there is today most likely there is SUSE running, you may not even be aware and that's okay. But that's not necessarily on that front, the strengths of open source, where open source shines in that context is how do you actually develop that software? Is it with the hardware partner? Is it then with the software partner so that the overall solution becomes stronger? Where open source becomes more interesting is when you see more of the transparency that openness in what I would call the second mode or modality is where the customer is actually more engaged, is interested in participating in open source. And so for what I really enjoy is when there are conferences and I hope we'll have real conferences at one point again, but when there are conferences and you see a developer and an engineer or consumer at the customer present on the stage. So this is a Kubernetes solution and these are my requirements and this is what we did on the Kubernetes side to improve. And that's something that open source really enables. And there's even a third mode then in some cases where the customer actually engages in an open source project because they're the expert in Cetelco. And so they have very specific requirements and on those specific pieces, they engage directly, they consume the rest of the solution from vendors because that's not their expertise, but they want to engage. And so what open source and open business allows is having these dynamic relationships where it's not just you talk to me, I talk to them but you can invite others, you can invite and create communities temporarily or permanently. Thanks. We have some echoes in there. Anyway, Katharina, please tell us about the point of view of the industry.  So tell me what Ambition is doing and how do you embrace the world of open source at Ambition? Yeah, so Ambition is a full subsidiary of Daimler or to be very precise of the Mercedes-Benz AG. And I think there are many different reasons why you wanna set up a separate entity to start in-house software development. But one very important aspect of this is of course that you have in a new separate entity, you have the opportunity to implement a new way of working a different culture, et cetera. And I think we all know that Daimler is a very traditional company in the German context and in the international context. So I think coming from a new separate entity we could implement some of these new ways of working at a different culture.  So software development is different from the traditional how do you manufacture a car, right? In the hardware world, how do you make sure that the car ends up on the street? So I think Ambition really is Daimler's flagship so to speak to start in-house software development. And we can already see that because step by step we closely collaborate with colleagues in Stuttgart and Sindelfingen so maybe I should say that Ambition is based in Berlin. We try to implement this new way of working, of thinking the new culture and so on and so forth. I think this is really the core piece of the whole storyline around Ambition to try to bring software development into Daimler. And of course, I mean, this panel is about open source so we're not only talking about software development, that plays of course a huge role, right? So open source is something new, I think in the automotive industry still somewhat new and there needs to be more education, more discussion, more explanation about the benefits, how we collaborate. I think this has been discussed in this conference already extensively. What does it exactly mean, right? Collaboration in the open. And through Ambition, Daimler is approaching this and trying to bring this into the more traditional yeah, structure of the company. Thanks. Okay, so, Todd, IBM is another software actor that has invested a lot in open source for ever or so and in all domains. And of course, we all know that this commitment to open source is now even stronger with the acquisition of Red Hat. But in your different roles, can you tell us few things about how you see companies small and large succeeding in open source and what it takes? Yeah, thank you. I've had a front row seat to the open source progress here at IBM. I had a product that I needed to find a way of meeting a price point. And I couldn't solve that problem with the license I had to pay for UNIX and started seeking out Linus Torvald and eventually getting going with Linux. And it was the interest that we had already going in open source that allowed us to look at that objectively and say, look, if we invested in it, if we put a billion dollars behind it, which IBM committed. And if we decided not to assert our patents against it, actually pledged not to assert our patents, we could offer it quite a bit of protection and then have essentially enterprises be able to put their trust in something that they normally wouldn't know. That progressed, the Apache Software Foundation came about, the HTTP server which revolutionized what we were standardizing for the web, then Java and Eclipse. And of course, the formation of Eclipse with that, the original IBM code donation in there and the work that went on there. And to see that grow and become something substantial with all sorts of different projects now within it. And now with yourselves moving to be headquartered in the EU and Brussels is a sign of the times and of how the world has changed and how having positions across the world are now very important to how we go about looking at foundations and where software is done. Because I think it's the confidence in the software that's most important to both enterprises, small and large. It's that ability to look and see that there's a piece of code that if they're dependent on it, it's being openly governed, right? And that open governance creates then the level playing field, the platform by which people can then be engaged and feel comfortable that the rug won't be pulled out from underneath them at some point in the future. And then it's the participation of those companies and you're seeing it now. And Gerald talked about having customers actually get up on stage and talk about what they're doing with this offer but they're also contributing to it. They're also, they're commenting it on it in the most successful organizations that I'm part of now. And that's really been the real shift is the engagement, the contribution on the part of end users, the contribution on the part of companies. Most software out there these days that's being done in the open has a very strong contingent of people coming from enterprises or companies, right? But it's not just enough to put the code out under an open license and put it on GitHub to make people feel comfortable. What I've seen in terms of making things successful as projects is that eventually there's this friction that builds between the community and the project being maintained by a single vendor. And there's a choice to be made whether to do something different in your business model or whether to actively take that project out into open governance in a foundation. So foundations like the SIP Foundation serve the basis of that the Linux Foundation others around the world because it gives that opportunity to have that project be very, very successful and be essentially a de facto standard I think. And then you get to the point where you can get to the standardization process because early on it's very difficult as things evolve very quickly in an open source project to see your way to standardization. Maybe pieces of it can be pulled from standards and other things, but it's really very, very hard to do that. And the community members are often very resistant to that as well too. So I think that that ability to do things do things very quickly really drives both the innovation and the success of the projects as they go through time. We've learned that very honestly I do quite a bit of advising to companies who are looking to start up their own open source project offices because IBM has been at this probably longer than anybody else and we have a wealth of history. And I've seen small companies and large companies and they all wrestle with essentially some of the same things. First, how do I consume the code and know that I'm consuming something that is of high quality that I can depend on? How do I go and then start to contribute into these projects without losing my intellectual property? And there you really need to carefully look at the licensing that you're working with and how your people are gonna participate. And then I think the, you know, lastly, then how do I build this virtuous cycle within my company so that this is part of my product that I view the code that I'm using in there as my real product code. I'm doing upstream development in it. And as a result of that, I have a basis that I can be very confident. No matter what happens out there, I can jump in and have my engineers go and be part of that code process and be able to make the fixes and changes and things I need. So they all sort of go through that process. It takes them varying amounts of time. And eventually they learn to become really good community members because it's not just putting code out there on GitHub. It really isn't. It's a set of soft skills and a set of community building skills that are so essential to making things successful out there. Yeah, nothing bad about the GitHub, but that's not enough. No, GitHub, great stuff, GitLab, great stuff. It's not enough. You gotta have the soft skills to help you get over that process of working with others, you know, playing nice in the sandbox together. Couldn't agree more. Birgit, about open source and standardization. So you are in this very specific domain of industry, 4.0 that is software entering in the traditional industry and even to some extent in the factory. And so that's typically you saw in the chat before that potentially is that we had this side conversation about some standardization body. And I'm very much interested in what you can tell us about what you do in OMP and IDTA, about the articulation between open source and standardization. Yeah, so for me, so 2020 was an important year for all of us. It will stay in our minds, but also from a business point of view, from open source and industrial IoT, 2020 is also really extremely interesting because I will tell you there were a lot of organizations founded in 2020 all about industrial IoT and open source. So I think in general, the awareness of the importance of open source is increasing dramatically also in this area, in industrial IoT. And I think this domain is really a little bit different like I just said, than the IoT domain. So these are completely different players in the moment. And I think this awareness increased not only for the big players, but also for smaller companies in industry. Oh, you already mentioned it. The industry, I'm focusing mainly on the digital twin aspect because digital twin we think in platform industry 4.0 and in industrial IoT is a very, very important enabler for data-driven business and for interoperability. For the main thing is cross company interoperability. So it's about standards and open source. And the industrial digital twin association was founded just in September, so it's extremely new. And I would really say that without some effort from some colleagues who did open source to promote our specification. So we did first the specification, but of course it was a little bit difficult to make a roll out and to get the acceptance of the specification because we had nothing to show it in a way that a domain expert can understand it. So a machine builder should understand what we are doing in the IoT. And this helped really much to promote our specification and it did it in an unforeseen way. So it was really enabling companies or on one fair, I think we did a demonstrator and 10 to 15 or 20 different companies all joined. One is the same demonstrator just using this simple open source softwares to enable to use the standard and show that interoperability is possible. So this is, I would say, the reason why our specification was successful. And that's why also the industrial digital twin association was founded. It's not an open source project, but of course open source is one of the very big pillars from the very beginning because we saw we needed and it will help us drive and fasten all the industry 4.0 applications. And yeah. And okay, the other one, other initiative was already mentioned. It's Gaia X, of course. The twins will also be their topics. That's why I'm also mentioning it. And it's very interesting and it's a very important initiative. And again, also this one is not an open source project, but it has open source from the very beginning as one of its pillars. And I think that's a change of mind in doing such business. So another foundation was founded in, it's a consortium. It's a digital twin consortium in US. It was founded in the middle of 2020. So it seems somehow in 2020 it was mature to be done. But they also were also not an open source organization, but they also want to provide open source solution to show how to do digital twins somehow. But they are not doing standards or no specifications. So for them, it's not the main thing to do interoperability, enable interoperability. So I would say for them, it's just showcases whereas for IDTA and other industrial digital twin association, Gaia X, it's about interoperability. That's why it's really the combination of standard and not only open source or only standard. So that's the combination. And finally, also the open manufacturing platform, Gaia mentioned it, is another big player in the world of industrial IOT. It was already founded in 2019 by Microsoft and BMW, but Bosch, ZF and AB INVEF just joined at the beginning of 2020. And in a way, that was a real kickoff. And that's the only one, the only project that really is an open source project. So they saw the gap that was missing in industry 4.0 or in an industrial IOT in general, also in US. Yeah, that we need something more practical that we need something to show and to make it faster also, I would say. And the open manufacturing platform is under the umbrella of the Joint Development Foundation and the Joint Development Foundation Joint, the Linux Foundation in 2018. So this is also quite new all. And this also shows that because Joint Development Foundation is focusing on specific open specifications, Linux on open code development. So again, we have both parts and they are coming closer together, so standardization and open source. So they go well together, I would say. And so to summarize, I would say 2020 was the year for starting all of these initiatives. And now, okay, in 2021. Yeah, we should have a look at them, what is happening. And because really for IOT, there is not yet a leading community. It's just starting, it's not IOT. Now that all the organizations are created, that's the right time for execution. Okay. Katarina, a third is answer, covered something that is interesting, which is first you need to be able to consume software. And you created the Software Compliance Academy. So maybe you tell us a few words about it and what, where it can help companies and it's the beginning of this running curve. Sure, yeah, thank you. I think today, even still in the corporate world, the first approach to open source or the first contact with open source still quite often is through compliance, right? So it's not necessarily being admonished or something bad happening, but realizing that you do have open source in your products and the licensing model is somewhat different. So I think many companies really talk about the corporate world, many, you know, legal departments or even developers in the corporate world, at some point realize that, you know, they need to somehow learn how to handle this and how to, you know, understand the licenses and what that really means for the product. And I think this is a need that we saw happening five, six years ago that quite often companies don't really want to have legal advice being charged by the hour, but they want, you know, some support in the terms of, you know, what do we actually have to do? What does this mean? What do we need to change? And I really liked also what Todd said before, because I think open source is not only about the licensing model, it's not only about putting something up in GitHub, it's about the corporate culture, right? So what we are trying to, you know, work with clients or help companies is to understand what does this mean to make this shift from, you know, a traditional software company to an open source company. And it's really far beyond just understanding the licensing model, it's about setting up a different way of working that means, you know, certain processes, understanding how the collaboration model works, identifying with whom you want to collaborate and so on and so forth. So I think it's a big package that, you know, traditional companies have to unlock when they start working with open source, but the entry point and that, to come back to your question, in our experience quite often is through compliance, right? So the question, what do we need to do? We need to somehow deliver the source code maybe, or, you know, other obligations, helpful other obligations in the licenses. And then step by step, companies realize what this really means and what the opportunities are, right? Because they're huge opportunities. And that's when we are successful if companies are, you know, working in the open source world from successfully and not only putting stuff on GitHub and claiming that they are now an open source company. Yeah, sure. Yes, well, ASTOR asked me to go as fast as we can. So we still need more minutes, ASTOR. Take it easy. Gerard, one thing, and I see also in the chat that there's some discussion about skills and you have been doing all your career in open source. So what is your perspective about this and about skill gaps and training or this kind of stuff? You want it? Not anymore? Yes, good. We need more developers, designers, architects with skills. So one part of our skills is we need more education. And when I say education, we have very good technical universities, colleges here in Europe. What I'm sometimes missing is the softer side. So soft skills, how do you build communities, communications, how do you engage in communities? A little connected to what Todd referred to. And I think we can become better or we should become better at selling actually the diversity of open source for individuals, for employees. Because open source is an employee market if you look at it. Your skills that you develop are very portable. You can move from one open source vendor. If I got the job offer, if Todd extended me a job offer, I probably could move and work in open source projects and with the same technologies I'm aware of with a very small barrier of entrance. And also GitHub has been mentioned in those other tools. You actually, as a developer, keep promoting yourself all the time.  And so as an employee, I think, as an engineer, designer, et cetera, open source, number one, it's a lot of fun. I think you'll probably appreciate the openness, the collaborations with more partners, the engagement with customers, which can be more direct. But also you have lots of opportunities to move across the continents. In the past, I would have told you, you can work from home because many organizations in the open source arena are more skilled, have been historically skilled to do remote work and distributed work. In this day and age of the virus, that may be not that much of a differentiator anymore, but let's see two years from now. So I think working in open source is actually, apart from being very rewarding, exciting, is actually from a career perspective, a very positive thing. Thanks, girl. Yeah, so I think that I see a store where it looks like it's time to conclude and we will be able to say that the business people have saved the time that was over time from the policy people. So just as a conclusion, I think that we have several aspects. I like the idea of companies first start to consume open source code and so they need compliance and they realize they should contribute. That's an opportunity for collaboration and at some point that becomes more strategic and more of a collaboration platform for them. The second one I would say is that open source and standardization go well together, especially when you need to have some interoperability. I like to say that open source is standard that front. So you get the extra soul of the standard with the actual software. And one thing I think that in the presentation of the studies, there was a lot about the fact that the small companies, we have lots of small companies in Europe and I realize that in our panel, we have only large companies represented, I would say. But in my perspective, from my experience, I would say that there is one important aspect in open source, which is this network effect.  And yes, to conclude my conclusion, I will, that's free, but yes, publish code, publish code on GitHub, if you think that's the best platform and if you, if as a developer, that's the place to have your CV. But from publishing code on a platform to doing business in the open, there is governance, intellectual property management, community development. That's a lot of things that must be also addressed. Thanks everybody for your participation. And we are just a bit shorter. I think that you all gave us good insights and... Thank you very much, everyone. Have a good day. So thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.