I enjoy fine whisky and stories about fine whisky, especially when they inspire the imagination into spinning tales. Hatozaki is a renowned Japanese fine whisky that’s smooth, uses no food coloring and is pleasantly smoky and sweet. Although Hatozaki leans toward the pricier side for Japanese whisky, the combination of color and delicious flavor are worth it.
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It is with a bemused grin and precarious phase of heart I describe to you, dear reader, the freshly hewn and stacked limestone masonry that looms precipitously overhead. The square base, perfect in symmetry, deceives my eye as each of these four sides of this pyramid gently bow towards its center: twisted and tortured lines being bent by irregular stones within their graceful curves.
In place of a solid capstone posing atop the monolith, a lone flickering wick is imprisoned within the bleak confines of a wooden cage. It wavers, mimicking the sea waves below the bluff as wax, effervescing sweet honey into the evening air, issues between the wooden bars from its pedestal. The wax gleams, amplifying the candlelight that calls lost sailors home, lest their ships be dashed against nearby craggy basalt walls.
It is an ancient––from your perspective, no doubt––lighthouse of curved lines saved for the single-block steps climbing toward the starry flame. Perhaps, an old lighthouse seems a comical thing to behold with such bewilderment, and this I may concede, except by when: at what era, at what time it is observed.
Most assuredly, were you to stand where I am standing, staring at this hulking geometric mass of stone and beauty, to your eyes this lighthouse would be a faded beige, bleached by half of a millennium of scorching sun. The irregular stones, carved and stacked to form logarithmic curves are, to you, chipped by thrashing winds and weathered beyond any semblance of smoothness; like the calcified marrow of giants’ bones.
But to me, as I ink this paper in symbols wholly foreign to the onlookers peering over my shoulders, the structure stands new, no more than a year since its construction.
Now, dear reader, it will undoubtedly be your turn to look upon that which is before you, indeed my very words, with bemusement and a hearty grin, if ever they survive the centuries ahead of them. And if my meddling with the ancient powers does not cause the destruction of the English language in years to come––your years––then both you and I will have dissuaded catastrophe.
I would describe here the esoteric devices had drawn; I would reveal the incantations and the revelry of the gods of whom I implored to reach this point: point distant from every other peak or basin on Earth by hundreds of years if I did not fear the simplicity of their recreation, a recreation to the outcome of every halfwit and tyrant’s whim, particulating the smooth workings of history into mere shambles of broken cogs and sand.
Not that, through my direction by way of incoherent ramblings, even a master of many arts and mystic teachings could read a useable schematic of my most abhorrent leap through time. It is both the mathmagician and the fool that would leave the world profitless should they, by means of intellect or cruel chance, decipher what subtle clues I have thus far encoded into this message, and which I leave as a memento of my own vanity, genius, and stupidity. Though it could undo the material universe itself.
Perhaps I leave it for you, who may one day find this. Maybe I leave it for a more distant self.
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It’s not always enough to just write about something. Inspiration is amorphous and can manifest in unexpected ways, even if it is unconventional. So, the above Japanese-whisky-inspired story was written not necessarily about Hatozaki, but because of Hatozaki. Some people like to read fiction sometimes, some people like to read informative material sometimes, but no one wants to read only one thing all the time.
Hatozaki Japanese Whisky has quite the engrossing non-fiction story, although the inspiration for their distillery name, Akashi, is shared by me. I recommend you take a look through their excellent photographs and compelling story. You may just find what my story, and their story, have in common. And that’s my final clue to you, dear reader.
Anyway, that’s my 2¢. Thanks for reading.
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Spirits expert, Cocktail.com
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