{"id":2663,"date":"2025-04-30T12:27:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T12:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/?p=2663"},"modified":"2025-04-30T13:41:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T13:41:31","slug":"the-waterways-are-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/?p=2663","title":{"rendered":"The waterways are old&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>as the trees, I&#8217;ve spent years mapping them in my head. But water maps are always changing shape. This last week I came down with a malady so brutal it was hard to stand, kept me three days on the slab. No warning, no idea where it came from, rougher and longer-lasting in its severity than any other flu or viral attack I&#8217;ve known. From day four I could stagger about and eat toast but now a week later I still feel it, the aftermath, far from well. Always back to Darwin, in constant struggle, other organisms fighting for their chance in the atom weave. I was just unlucky. And if that&#8217;s not the case, if it isn&#8217;t all a vast chain of random passings, encounters, chemical fusings that ended in this instance with me ambushed by a virus and fever-wracked&#8230;but by some design? That would be even more beguiling. And like Ahab, I&#8217;d want answers and accountability, some explanation and redress for my lost week. For though my wound is so slight in comparison there&#8217;s no more precious commodity than time. But who to ask? If only I could speak with the birds under the bridge near Kennington, decipher their tweets, I feel they&#8217;d have the answers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/bridge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2666\" src=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/bridge.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"486\" srcset=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/bridge.jpg 640w, https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/bridge-300x228.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>as the trees, I&#8217;ve spent years mapping them in my head. But water maps are always changing shape. This last week I came down with a malady so brutal it was hard to stand, kept me three days on the slab. No warning, no idea where it came from, rougher and longer-lasting in its severity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-henry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2667,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2663\/revisions\/2667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}