Pop and I have been friends since before the internet, or since before a lot of people knew the internet existed. We were friends when the Patriots were a joke, when Britney Spears was not, when Bill Clinton was President, when the years started with a 1. We were young and naive, sitting in small classrooms discussing political and social issues with an eye on changing the world, on being the force behind the change.
Pop and I both turned 30 this year. Age got to me first, around mid-year, and then to Pop just as the year ended. December is always a time for reflection, a chance to look at what’s gone by, to assess and critique, to congratulate or regret. At the close of this year, I am especially predisposed to such cataloging. At 30, there is no turning back, no grasping weakly at a youth slipped through the fingers of someone too careless to hold on tighter (that someone is everyone). From here, there is only looking back on it, head turned wistfully back at what’s gone before, what fun (or dread) there was in those times, while feet march slowly on into adulthood.
I’ve spent the better part of three months with my head turned backward. Maybe if I’m honest with myself, it’s been this whole year. I’ve been telling stories of the great times I’ve had, and of the horrible things I’ve done. I’ve gone over old photo albums and looked through yellowed copies of pieces I’ve written. I’ve laughed at how much I am not the person who had those times, did those things, sat for those photos or wrote those pieces. And I’ve laughed at how much I am that person, how much I will always be that person, and how much all the things that person did constitute who I am now. And then I’ve sighed, and started my cataloging all over again, no longer laughing at it, because it’s not something to laugh at on second thought.
Of course, the whole exercise is silly and it is something to laugh at. It’s solipsism, one of those things that Pop and I would argue about in our dorm rooms as we played Tenchu and listened to Wu Tang and Atmosphere. We thought we understood Aristotle and Plato and Kant and Wittgenstein. We certainly argued like we did. We certainly thought that the answers were clear, that solutions just sprouted like weeds, that though the world is a broken place, any skilled craftsman could repair it if given the opportunity.
That’s what youth is about. It is about the brightness on the horizon, the vision of a future of one’s own making, in which it is our hands that repair this broken place, heal the wounds of the past we inherited, and create a new thing so unlike the old that no one can even remember what it was like before, let alone why we engaged in such foolish practices so persistently. Or, at least, that’s what mine was about.
And all of this isn’t to say that change — for the better — isn’t desirable or possible. It’s not to suggest that it is impossible to repair and heal and better the world in which we live, nor that we can’t be a part of that change. It is simply to say that as we experience the failures, obstacles, pressures, dangers and stresses of the world, our enthusiasm dims. We are forced to look through a murkier present — murkier because that present is mingled with so much more past than before. The brightness fades; the vision of the future is clouded. Perhaps the future won’t be entirely new after all, but rather a slow and inexorable extension of the present.
But it can’t be any other way. Nor should it be, because mingled with those things that dim and cloud are those moments which brighten and clear, that pierce the shroud and light a way into the future we still imagine, in moments when we are honest with ourselves. They are the moments that give us the courage and the strength to carry on and to continue our imagining. They are the moments in which the future seems not at all like the present, but a fantastic new thing waiting to be revealed. They are the moments in which, again, it is our hands that can repair and heal. If only briefly, if only for a few moments, we give ourselves the chance to look forward not necessarily without fear, but at least with hope.
Without that hope, there is no incentive to even look ahead, let alone work toward a different future. If we lose that hope, we find ourselves only looking back, re-imagining the things we could have done rather than imagining the things we yet could do. We rearrange our pasts in order to see how our present might have been different rather than attempting to rearrange the present so that the our future will be different. We disengage with the world we live in now and become hostages of our own memory rather than authors of our own future.
Looking back is bittersweet. Thinking about a squandered youth (and all youths are, to one degree or another, considered squandered eventually) is bittersweet. Even looking ahead, with the infinite possible futures whittled down to just a few, all of them seemingly insignificantly different from the present, is bittersweet.
It needn’t be bittersweet in a melancholy sense, or even a primarily bitter sense. The admixture of bitter and sweet that comprises your memory, and your view toward the future is your own to compose. We tend to think of bittersweet as necessarily more sad than joyous, but it doesn’t have to be.
That said, as is readily apparent from the preceding, I am one of those who leans toward the bitter. Not only in my thinking, but in my tastes. I have nothing resembling a sweet tooth. I take my coffee black. My beer of choice is an IPA, crammed with hops.
Perhaps that’s why, when it comes to whiskey, I prefer rye. It’s noticeably less sweet than its cousin bourbon, and drier. It tends not to overwhelm the way that a bourbon can and carries with it less pretense than scotch. As a whiskey, it’s still a sweet drink, but the sweet notes are muted yet not absent as they might be in a smoky or peaty scotch.
But the reason I love rye, and why I’m turning to it at this point in the year, is that it mixes so well with bitter flavors. I’ve been ordering the Little Italy, Vieux Carre, Old Pal/Boulevardier, Sazerac, all rye-based drinks with Cynar, Campari, Peychaud’s, dry vermouth or some other such bitter component. But the drink I’ve come to fall in love with, the one I find myself instinctively ordering or making before I even know what my mouth or hands are doing, is the Toronto.
The Toronto is a simple drink, as nearly all good drinks tend to be. And combines the bitter and sweet such that neither overwhelms you. Nor do the two fight for supremacy as you drink. The initial sweetness of the rye — along with either a small amount of sugar or simple syrup — hits first before giving way to the bitter elements — in this drink Fernet Branca and Angostura bitters. That bitter taste holds for a moment before it too fades, beginning over again with the next sip, and then the next.
To make a Toronto and I suggest you should:
Grab either a lowball or a margarita glass. Fill it with ice or chill it otherwise.
In a second vessel of your choosing, also filled with ice, pour:
2 oz. rye
1/4 oz. of Fernet Branca (or, for those of you predisposed to more bitter, a 1/2 oz.)
Between a dash and a 1/4 tsp of sugar
Between a dash and 1/4 oz. of Angostura bitters.
Stir, slowly, and if you shake it this one, may you be spend eternity duct-taped and super-glued to a mechanical bull.
Dump the ice out of the actual drinking glass, strain your analogy/feelings into it and enjoy.
Finally, a toast to everyone: Age, memory, past, present, future, and all else in life are bittersweet. May this next year hold for all of us more sweet than bitter, more clarity than fog, more joy than sorrow, more hope than fear. Cheers.
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