Notes on an Old Fashioned

Cocktails. 700 words, 3 minute read. With Claude Sonnet and Midjourney.

You adjust your bow tie in the fading light, muscle memory from decades behind other people's bars. Through the windows of your home sanctuary, the sunset paints your bottles in amber and gold. Each vessel holds not just spirits but stories—thirty years of them, collected like precious gems.

Your hand finds the Waterford rocks glass, its weight familiar as a long-held secret. You remember the night Ellen pressed it into your trembling hands. "Here," she'd said, her voice weathered by cigarettes and long nights, "you're ready for this now." You'd protested—it was her favorite glass, the one she'd used to teach three generations of bartenders. She'd just smiled, arthritis-gnarled fingers closing yours around the crystal. "That's why it belongs to you."

Now you're teaching Maya, watching her watch you as you lift the bourbon bottle. She's good—better than you were at her age—but still searching for something beyond mere technique. You pour four careful counts, the liquid catching light like trapped honey.

"Why not simple syrup?" Maya asks, her notebook ready. You hide a smile, remembering how you'd asked Ellen the same question twenty years ago. You drop a sugar cube into the glass, watching it begin its slow surrender to the bourbon.

"Watch," you say, and Maya leans closer. The sugar dissolves crystal by crystal, each grain proceeding on its own small, critical dissolution. "Some things can't be rushed." You see understanding flicker in her eyes—the same light you'd felt when Ellen had shown you.

The Angostura bottle comes next, dark and potent. Three precisely measured dashes bloom in the glass like ink in water. You remember Ellen's hands performing this same dance, remember her voice: "Bitters are like regrets—you need them, but never too many."

You share this with Maya now, watching her write it down with the same reverence you once felt. She doesn't know yet that she'll pass these words to someone else someday, slightly changed but essentially the same, like a prayer translated through time.

The ice cracks as it meets the warm spirits—one large cube, clear as truth. Maya's eyes widen at the sound. "It's alive," she whispers, and you nod, remembering your own wonder at this small magic. Your bar spoon traces lazy circles, turning separate elements into something greater than their sum.

You select an orange, teaching through movement now. The peeler glides across its surface with hard-earned precision. "No pith," you say, but Maya's already nodding—she learned that lesson weeks ago. Her hands mirror your movements as you twist the peel, releasing oils that scatter like stars across the drink's surface.

"Most people would just drop it in," you say, Ellen's words in your voice now. Maya looks up from her notebook, catching the weight behind the words. "But you're not most people anymore."

The cherry sinks like a period at the end of a sentence. Dark, Italian, expensive—because Maya needs to learn that some things are worth the cost. The drink catches the day's last light, and for a moment you see Ellen again, her eyes bright with the wisdom she'd passed to you.

You hand the glass to Maya, watching her hold it up just as Ellen taught you. "A proper Old Fashioned is never just a drink," you say, and the words feel like a key turning in a lock. Maya takes her first sip, and you see it in her face—the moment technique becomes understanding.

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