My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?
I first noticed the hum during the pandemic, lying in bed at Wyldswood on a still summer night.
One could hear the subtle roar of an engine in the distance, a huge engine, just a murmur that seemed to emanate up through the floor and onto the back of my pillow. I pondered what this might be, and finally concluded that the heavy machinery over at the Buckeye paper mill, maybe a couple miles away, must vibrate down through the limestone and up under our master bedroom floor.
The hum appeared in the wee small hours throughout that summer of 2020, and I satisfied myself that I'd reached a colorable explanation.
Then we moved up to Corning, and one night at Tara I noticed it up there as well.
What could this be? Corning, Inc. still has limited manufacturing going on at the bottom of the hill in a plant next to the Chemung, so maybe they were just working late. Still, it was odd to have gone all these years living down the street from a paper mill and across the bay from a massive power plant, and never felt the earth rumble like that. My evenings sound like I'm below decks on a diesel ship that's underway, particularly when it's very still outside.
Oh, and P can't hear it. Not at all.
So I did a little research before calling in psychiatric help, and learned that this terrestrial hum is something a small percentage of us unfortunates can hear, all over the planet apparently.
No one seems to know why a few of us spend our nights listening to the rhythmic rumble of machinery that isn't there. I'm not sure how to feel about the revelation that this sound I'd explained to myself is actually, probably, an auditory hallucination.
At this point I'd normally reach for a little Oh Be Joyful to drown the unease that my senses are deceiving me, but Peg has taken that away as part of our principled stand against cannibalism.
You read that right.
Last Friday we were enjoying our anniversary dinner of fried seafood at the bar of the Perry Elks Lodge, when a friend of Peg's sidled up next to us with her beau, the first cousin of the guy who keeps cattle at Wyldswood (Taylor County is a very small community). He was quite in his cups, and started a conversation regarding everyone's drink of choice. P and I were sipping champagne, her favorite, but I told him I'd normally be nursing a Jameson's on the rocks on a Friday night.
Our new friend looked horrified, and told me he'd never buy whiskey from a family that subsidized cannibalism. Didn't we know that one of the Jameson's heirs had paid to watch a slave girl be murdered and cannibalized in Africa? He'd read it on the internet, so it must be true. We choked back the urge to chortle and roll our eyes.
Except, well, maybe the Jamesons did in fact pay for a display of human consumption.
It turns out that back in 1888, James Sligo Jameson, a rich would-be explorer in the depths of the African jungle, expressed skepticism to his Arab guide regarding stories of cannibalism among the natives. Ever eager to please, the guide used a pile of hankies Jameson gave him with which to bargain, and arranged a "show" that involved a ten-year-old girl being stabbed to death and eaten by a posse of locals as Jameson looked on in horror. So, technically he did pay to watch people eat each other, although he later reiterated that he didn't actually think they'd do it.
But hey, six hankies are six hankies. And apparently Jameson sketched the whole sordid scene. So there's that.
People boycott products for all sorts of reasons. Lefties boycott meat with origins in what were once Amazon rain forests, cleared away for pasture. Righties refuse to spend money on a visit to Disney, gagging on the political correctness of the parent company. I get it. But must I forgo one of the last remaining pleasures of my senescence, a wee sip of Jameson's at the end of a long day, just because the family paid to witness the most profane of barbeques over a century ago?
There are alternatives, of course. Proper Twelve makes a great product, and now that we've been to Slane Castle the eponymous Irish whiskey sips with meaning. And I'd drink Redbreast 12 ahead of the lot of them, but for its $75 a bottle price tag.
So I guess I'll find a replacement libation to help me while away the nocturnal hours listening to the machine hum that apparently exists only in my own ear canals.
You are worth and have earned the right to drink $75 whiskey. "Treat yo self" as some would say.