{"id":1588,"date":"2014-11-25T14:23:41","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T04:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2014-11-25T14:24:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T04:24:43","slug":"thirty-five-animal-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1588","title":{"rendered":"thirty-five (animal bodies)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"medieval_gardener2\"<\/a>H had a small, strong body and a pixie haircut. Wisps of gold on the back of\u00a0their neck, on\u00a0their cheeks. I met H at their home in the low hills out the back of the Gold Coast when I was a uni student. We went there to trade our labour for food and knowledge. We worked for two hours in the not-quite-darkness every morning before breakfast. Six of us, almost strangers, bent over the seedlings. There was no vow of silence, but there was something about those hours that made us hold our tongues. Something about the light, and the work, and the smell of the earth.<\/p>\n

H loaned us a pile of books that we never returned. Books on seed harvesting and composting and medieval gardening. Everything\u00a0H owned, it seemed to me, was both beautiful and had a purpose. Every bowl, every spoon.<\/p>\n

Like H’s body, H’s\u00a0life – it seemed to me – was small and strong. You needed small,\u00a0strong words to describe it. To think about it.<\/p>\n

In the evenings,\u00a0H would lie on the floor with\u00a0both hands behind\u00a0their head and listen to us talking.\u00a0H was always present and listening, and always\u00a0looking at the sky. I wanted to ask what\u00a0H was looking for – what constellation, what movement – but I never did.<\/p>\n

H\u00a0disapproved of bearing children, of anything disposable, of waste and selfishness.\u00a0H taught me how to make my own soap, and meditate, and tried to convince me not to fall in love.<\/p>\n

I heard that\u00a0H had died of cancer. And that, by the time of their death,\u00a0H had divested themself of everything except\u00a0their body. That one irrefutable and unloved\u00a0object.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H had a small, strong body and a pixie haircut. Wisps of gold on the back of\u00a0their neck, on\u00a0their cheeks. I met H at their home in the low hills out the back of the Gold Coast when I was a uni student. We went there to trade our labour for food and knowledge. We…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[725,167,288],"tags":[722,727,728],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-200-words-200-days","category-on-writing","category-short-works","tag-200-days","tag-200-words","tag-microfiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/medieval_gardener2.jpg?fit=339%2C336&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-pC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1592,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}