{"id":22755,"date":"2026-10-07T01:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T00:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/?p=22755"},"modified":"2026-11-04T01:17:49","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T01:17:49","slug":"last-night-in-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/last-night-in-montreal\/","title":{"rendered":"Last night in Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Read Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Yupik, a language spoken by the Inuit along the Bering Sea, there is Ellam Yua: a kind of spiritual debt to the natural world, or a way of moving through that world with some measure of generosity, of grace, or a way of living that acknowledges the soul of another human being, or the soul of a rock or of a piece of driftwood; sometimes translated as soul, or as God, but meaning neither. In a Mayan language, K\u2019iche, there is the Nawal: one\u2019s spiritual essence but separate from the self; one\u2019s other, not exactly an alter ego or merely an avatar but a protective spirit that cannot be summoned.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How deep in our genes is the longing for flight embedded? We always were a species of nomads. Eli found it easy to imagine an instinct passed down generation to generation, a permanently thrown breaker on a genetic switchboard: flight or fight, and a switch jammed permanently in the flight position, the limitless longing for travel pulled down by hooked genes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605 In Yupik, a language spoken by the Inuit along the Bering Sea, there is Ellam Yua: a kind of spiritual debt to the natural world, or a way of moving through that world with some measure of generosity, of grace, or a way of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"status","meta":{"mf2_syndication":[],"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[898],"tags":[1544,1597],"post_format":[642],"class_list":["post-22755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-status","category-book","tag-emily-st-john-mandel","tag-1597","post_format-post-format-status","kind-note","h-entry","hentry"],"better_featured_image":null,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p57zFQ-5V1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"kind":"note","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22756,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755\/revisions\/22756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22755"},{"taxonomy":"post_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_format?post=22755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}