{"id":3255,"date":"2021-08-16T07:48:03","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T07:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/?p=3255"},"modified":"2022-09-02T11:28:12","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T11:28:12","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/2021\/08\/16\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading history in lockdown: one year of anxious fantasies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I moved on from the fever-dream imaginary games of childhood and a teenage obsession for any-and-all Keira Knightly period dramas with the naive plan to spend adult life as a historian.<\/h4>

At seventeen, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts with a major in history. I spent the next three years bathing in the past through mass readings turned into long essays guided by professors whose voices echoed the lecture halls. The mystery of all that had ever happened could become known through structured academic rigour \u2014 or so I thought.<\/p>

During my\u00a0undergraduate degree, friends and family gifted me history books prompted by my obnoxious studiousness. But I didn\u2019t know about Byzantium, Georgian daily life, or the lost gospel of Josephus \u2014 I knew the French Revolution, the Holocaust, the transatlantic Slave Trade. It felt irresponsible to dip into these random slivers of history sitting next to tousled gift wrapping.<\/p>

I graduated from my degree with the realisation history jobs mainly existed in academia \u2014 as if all the adults in my life hadn\u2019t already warned me that no history job was waiting on the other side of my dreams. I didn\u2019t want to give my energy up to a career detached from public life, forever chained to university politics. I pivoted into the arts industry. Then, surrounded by peers fixated on contemporary art, my obligation to history lived back in my mind as the gifted history books sat alongside battered textbooks on the shelf.<\/p>

As COVID-19 began to spread five years since graduation, the impending time at home opened space for self-indulgence away from responsibility. The gifted history books shined on the shelf, their spines still stiff, their timelines not yet in my periphery. Such an offering of connection was irresistible. I pulled out\u00a0Istanbul\u00a0<\/em>by Bettany Hughes. I am a slow reader and the incoming, open-ended hours were prime to sieve its excess of 800 pages.<\/p>

Istanbul\u00a0<\/em>is about the history of the city, from far back as we know until today. Covering such expansive time throws one back and forth with romantic energies grating against gruesome moments.\u00a0Istanbul<\/em>\u2019s comprehensiveness in covering its long history places itself as essential to understanding the city. Within this broad sweep, often details were so unfamiliar I couldn\u2019t envisage them within what I already knew. Hughes weaves everyone into the ever-evolving city fabric by covering not only rulers but the role of ethnic minorities, slave communities, sex workers, and women. In achieving this all-inclusive sense of place, the work is as much a literary pursuit as a historical one, with lines like:<\/p>

Istanbul is a settlement that, in her finest form, produces, promotes and protects the vital, hopeful notion that, wherever and whoever we end up, we understand that although humanity has many faces we share one human heart- to know Istanbul is to know what it is to be cosmopolitan- this is a city that reminds us that we are, indeed, citizens of the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>

I spent months in Hughes\u2019 vivid world. But it wasn\u2019t fantasy; I knew I needed to stay vigilant and not fall in love. I read a page twice before realising it covered the Armenian genocide \u2014 a term not used to describe the Ottoman Empire\u2019s brutality. With shame, I realised this was my first time studying Constantine the Great, the Crusades and the 1453 Fall of Constantinople. Slowly, I stitched together the city\u2019s almost three millennia. But I wondered if I could read a similarly dreamy portrayal of another place, like London as an Australian living through the cultural consequences of the British Empire\u2019s colonial pursuits, with starry eyes and little critique.<\/p>

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During the brief suspension in lockdown in May, when I at least did not realise the pandemic would stretch years, I took the tram to my favourite bookshop and returned home with\u00a0Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation<\/em>\u00a0by Roderick Beaton. The well-regarded work of scholarship surveys Greece coming into its own as a nation from 1718 until contemporary times. Unlike Hughes\u2019 use of diverse characters and visceral prose, Beaton\u2019s storytelling favours factual forwardness focussed on key uprisings, battles, and leaders. It is hard to know where he sits with an objectivity that is admirable yet isolating.\u00a0<\/em>I read it intervals when needing a break from\u00a0Istanbul.\u00a0<\/em>But when humouring its informing tone reading in a park under the late afternoon sun, I would drift into spacious naps.<\/p>

I never finished the book, but its frank account opened my mind. Obsession with ancient Greece by the West \u2013known as Philhellenism \u2014 fuelled intervention in the Greek Revolution (1821\u20131832). The British, French and Russians assisted the Greeks in their fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. After these countries came together in London and decided Greece was now an independent nation-state (so genourous of them), Bavaria sent over their Prince Otto to be the first king of Greece. Otto moved the capital to Athens, at the time a small town, and led an archaeological recovery of ancient Greece that all but destroyed its two thousand years of intervening \u201cnon-Greek\u201d history. Within this account of Greece\u2019s early modern days, Beaton contended that the new nation viewed its rebirth in a mirror of their former selves \u2014 their future blinded by a reflection of a bygone past.<\/p>

I listed the book in a workplace social newsletter, and a colleague bought it and told me she \u2018loves ancient Greece,\u2019 even though it wasn\u2019t about ancient Greece at all. Over many lockdown walks around my Greek-immigrant dominant suburb, I often passed an amateur mural of ancient Grecian vases.<\/p>

\u201cAncient Greece proved so popular partly because it could be different things to different people,\u201d writes David Mountain in\u00a0Past Mistakes<\/em>, the third history book I read over lockdown.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Mountain argues historical \u201cmistakes\u201d feed into public consciousness, and history becomes known through biases and a \u201ccollective colour blindness\u201d to the past. \u201cWhen we abandon an evidence-based approach to history,\u201d he says, \u201cour understanding of the past is liable to become skewed.\u201d<\/p>

Mountain posits a valid argument. Yet (and without blame) behind every public misunderstanding are people without time to study evidence. Instead, they rely on scattered facts and myths shaped into theories far from the truth.<\/p>

\u201cIf we are to have history, philosophy, literature, and art as subjects, we must also have their symbolic languages and put up with some of their difficulties,\u201d argued Medievalist Morton W. Bloomfield in 1974. \u201cWe must strive to open the humanities to the public, but we must remember that some of their territory is difficult and requires a specialisation that not all are ready to undertake.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>

History and our minds are incongruent: an objective picture of the past can\u2019t help but be replaced by short-sighted imagination.<\/strong><\/p>

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A memory came up on Facebook one day. \u201cWhen you find a rare source after days of searching and shout, \u201cYES!!\u201d and then remember you are in a library and have a diameter of 10 or so students look at you quizzically,\u201d my conceited self apparently wrote in 2015. \u201cUniversity: embarrassing myself one essay at a time. Oh good lord.\u201d<\/p>

Indulgent or not, I crave that student feeling of intellectual confidence. Now, years on, I am only part of the status quo. A degree taken in early adulthood can\u2019t save me from blind spots.<\/p>

\u201cHistory, however, creates ambiguities in man\u2019s mind. Man wishes both to repudiate and to embrace the past,\u201d I re-read this line by Bloomfield over and over. I am captive to my wandering mind, striving to fill the gaps, and paranoid I can\u2019t see what is most important. My days aren\u2019t spent in libraries any longer.<\/p>

A few years ago, my friends and I drove to the Billimina rock art site to see ancient paintings by the Jardwadjali, the traditional custodians of Gariwerd (also known as the Grampians). A deep ditch left us walking the final few kilometres of the road before trekking an overgrown path populated by side-eyeing kangaroos. At the site, a brief plaque sat beside a gaudy anti-vandalism gate. I cried, stunned, facing the 20,000-year-old creations. I reflected on a few nights earlier watching a prime-time television show with its host lauding a 100-year-old cottage as Australia\u2019s important heritage. If the Greeks held up a mirror to the past, Australia gauged out its own eyes. In these crosshairs of cultural dissonance, I attempted to decipher the markings \u2014 is that an emu, a man?<\/p>

Kamilaroi woman and academic Melitta Hogarth writes: Indigenous peoples know the western world. We have been subjugated to learning the ways of the coloniser since 1788\u2026. the ignorance is not ours to bear\u2026 The truth must be told. Not a white-washed history of a nation built on the stolen lands of Indigenous peoples but the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>

We filled out a rotting guest book and navigated our way out of the bush again. A year later, I read news that multinational corporation Rio Tinto expanded their iron ore mine at Juukan Gorge, Western Australia. Their blasts destroyed the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (Binigura) peoples\u2019 sacred cave, obliterating the rock art it had housed since the Ice Age.<\/p>

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After finishing\u00a0Istanbul<\/em>, I wanted to visually cement its contents and started watching the hit-Turkish show\u00a0Resurrection: Ertu\u011frul<\/em>. Each episode opens with the line \u201cinspired by our history\u201d as it proceeds to follow the 13th century narrative of Ertu\u011frul Bey- father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. In the series, the handsome Ertu\u011frul can do no wrong as he continuously saves his tribe from their evil enemies.<\/p>

\u201cErtu\u011frul, as a flawless character (brave, pious, selfless, romantic, fearless, clever etc.) is presented as the leader of both the Kay\u0131 tribe and the Islamic world as a whole,\u201d notes Turkish academic Burak \u00d6z\u00e7etin. The show was supported by public funds with Ertu\u011frul as a stand-in for President Erdo\u011fan himself, with many sources claiming the show intentionally furthers the values of AKP, Turkey\u2019s conservative ruling party. With Ertu\u011frul as its loaded figurehead, \u00d6z\u00e7etin stands that\u00a0Resurrection<\/em>\u00a0is an \u201cahistorical and teleological reading of history\u201d with its diluted past and brave men used as a tonic for political trajectories of a modern nation.<\/p>

Mountain writes, \u201cHistory is taught through the deeds of great individuals \u2026 as for the unheroic \u2018dull millions\u2019 our only duties are to worship these great men and record their achievements for posterity.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>

Watching across the world, I didn\u2019t pick up on the political nuances of Ertu\u011frul \u2014 a man we know little about anyway, a \u201cblank slate with heroic overtones.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0But I was fooled by the production\u2019s intentional nostalgic pull. I slipped into ignorance for entertainment\u2019s sake, eating up the looks between lovers, dresses in the wind, tents catching the sunset light, bodies moving during a climactic swordfight. \u201cErtu\u011frul\u2019s story is unimpeachably glorious.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>

Such cheap indulgences taste sweet in my failure to fold up history. Over lockdown, Saturday mornings involved YouTube videos called something like\u00a0Top 10 Medieval Villages to Visit in Europe\u00a0<\/em>with\u00a0<\/em>glossy drone shots scanning crumbling structures. One week, I watched all of Netflix\u2019s\u00a0The Great,\u00a0<\/em>a hyperbolic account of Catherine the Great (played by Elle Fanning) juxtaposing fact with satirical anti-histories.<\/p>

Journalist Ben Adams writes, \u201cAbsolute detachment, whether through attempted objectivity or distance of time, is both futile and a disservice to historical study.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0I tried to see through this vague line further, reading Maria Margaronis in\u00a0History Workshop Journal<\/em>:<\/p>

We must both rest on what we know about the past and imaginatively extend the way we understand it. In this way, the no-man\u2019s-land between fact and fantasy becomes fertile territory, a place to explore and perhaps to change the relationship between [history] and [our lives].<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>

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I visited Diocletian\u2019s Palace twice during a holiday in Croatia close to the end of 2019 when\u00a0Istanbul\u00a0<\/em>sat unread on the shelf. The Palace is one of the most well-preserved monuments of Roman architecture: once a luxury villa, military camp, and space for government and religious ceremonies. The first time I came by it felt too hot to navigate in the company of Split\u2019s heaving late-Summer crowds. I returned at dusk to detachedly observe the impressive designs, not knowing much about the Roman Empire in this part of the Mediterranean.After Croatia, we passed through Paris and purchased late-night tickets to the Louvre. I listened to feminist pop anthems through my headphones and drifted through the halls. I took a pleasure ride, swallowed by beauty, my visit an uncritical gaze preconditioned by the love we\u2019re meant to have for European art. I could have been better behaved, but it was the last night of my annual leave. I was in the Louvre listening to Marina. I wanted to float.<\/span>Busy market stalls and the close buzz of Friday night drinks overpowered any of the little museum-like text. The buildings appeared ageless whilst starkly opposed to the charade of modern life, but I knew little of Diocletian or his palace in the almost two millennia between us. My jet lag flared, and the palace morphed with my gloom and irritation. I grumbled at my boyfriend, and accused him of taking gross photos of me. But had I been more neutral, would I have been any closer to its truth?<\/p>

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One night in October, I felt restless, angry at my slow reading and treading through my books so uselessly. I messaged my friend the thoughts keeping me awake, \u201cIt scares me that you can learn and learn but never know enough to piece it together. But we never had this responsibility before. People didn\u2019t know much beyond their day to day. I have this access they didn\u2019t, but I am so scared to not know and never understand.\u201d He thought to be forever learning was an exciting problem.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u2014<\/p>

On New Year\u2019s Day, I curled up in an armchair facing the garden in my new rental. I was whiplashed by the exit of months of lockdown, and I wanted to see no one. I picked up\u00a0Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950<\/em>\u00a0for the twentieth time. I was only on page 30. I read a paragraph. I went on my phone. I locked my phone. I struggled through a page, trying not to speed read. Events, artists, politics were referenced with no elaboration or pause: \u201cIn Poland, where Strzeminskis avant-garde Neo Plastic Room at Museum Sztuki in \u0141\u00f3d\u017a was whitewashed over in 1950, a posthumous rehabilitation through exhibitions, as well as the publication of his Theory of Vision in 1958, was further evidence of the cultural thaw.\u201d I couldn\u2019t put the pieces together.<\/p>

With little ambience, the authors, duo Maja and Reuban Fowkes, recite whatever facts deemed necessary \u2014 as is their job. Dense language packs every sentence to the brim, a paragraph drowns, but the hi-res pictures of art held my attention. I stared at a pigeon out my window, sipped my tea, tried to read again. I debated giving up but scolded myself instead: I don\u2019t need a fun narrative. But if I can\u2019t see, what\u2019s the point? My phone died as I read a review.<\/p>

\u201cTo write in dense, dispassionate prose on a subject as comedic, sad, spontaneous, beautiful, decrepit, selfish, and wrathful as humanity can never succeed in portraying the complexity of its many faces,\u201d says Adams. \u201cAn immersion in a deep understanding of humanity within its context is the only way to write and read about the past.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>

The lonely holiday drift from Christmas to New Years left my mind in need of an embrace. I climbed into the bath with Jenny Uglow\u2019s\u00a0In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon\u2019s Wars, 1793\u20131815<\/em>. The book builds up the Napoleonic conditions which shape the changing mood of Europe which begins Beaton\u2019s\u00a0Greece<\/em>. Uglow\u2019s social focus grasps the era\u2019s atmosphere with evocative imagery, capturing everything from the thrill of reading newspapers, gasping at the sight of hot air balloons to women waving their handkerchiefs at departing military men. Her prose is straightforward like Beaton but with Hughes\u2019 intrigue while eliciting a familiarity lacking from both. On the first page, she writes, \u201c\u2026 the bullish, flamboyant figure of Napoleon came to dominate so strongly that the whole conflict was given his name and Boney became the bogeyman of children\u2019s nightmares.\u201d<\/p>

A line mentions the Wesleyan movement. In eleventh grade, I convinced my underfunded country school to let me undertake a self-directed history class. Alone in a transportable classroom, I read my collection from the Book Shed \u2014 a second-hand seller with everything under $1. At the end of term, I handed in an essay on John Wesley. A decade later, I don\u2019t feel any less like a child assigning myself texts in an unguided quest toward a more mature awareness. By the time my partner called me for dinner, I was on page 30, heart beating fast \u2014 600 pages to go.<\/p>

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In early 2021, I no longer needed to work from home \u2014 for a time, at least. During a stuffy week, I diverted on my commute home to the bookshop and reached for narrative-driven books. Biographies, no less, but not histories or essays. I began Rachel Cusk\u2019s\u00a0The Last Supper<\/em>\u00a0when staying at Blue Pool during a long weekend. It\u2019s a popular free campsite, but dig far enough on Google you can discover it\u2019s on the traditional lands of the Braiakaulung, a people forcibly removed to Ramahyuck Mission Station in 1864. I read aloud to my partner, who nodded at Cusk\u2019s descriptions of the French countryside and said it would give him good dreams.<\/p>

The following morning, we ate breakfast by the water. I laid close to the shore before moving to the shade to keep reading as the area populated with families bobbing in their floaties across the deep lake into the narrow gorge. Cusk\u2019s chapters turn into thoughts around Renaissance art and Italian village histories, and I realised it was no escape at all. She\u2019s unfamiliar and talks about traversing remnants of the past with curiosity but without the caution that suffocates my thoughts on history.<\/p>

By March, my history readings dwindled, replaced by an obsession with life unfolding again in random ways. Or maybe, I was defeated that I couldn\u2019t crack open the world\u2019s consciousness. A member of the dull billions, I ebbed into its gaze. One week, the gallery I work at had over a thousand visitors over an afternoon opening, and I said to my colleague that hardly anywhere would be experiencing busyness like this. Another day, I took an Uber with my manager to meet with a designer. We followed an assistant through a warehouse and emerged in the backyard of a mansion \u2014 \u201cthe boss\u2019 place.\u201d Sitting by the pool, the designer offered me a cigarette. A decade ago, at my scummy high school a thousand kilometres away, a friend was expelled for smoking in a toilet cubicle. I said no, thank you, and refocussed on the project management plans.<\/p>

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Recently, I messaged my London-based brother asking why Brits call it reading history instead of studying history. He only sent a forum thread with someone else posing the same question. One response went down a linguistic rabbit hole, concluding that \u2018r\u00e6dan\u2019, the Old English word for read, also meant to learn, understand and think. In a similar vein, Laura Saxton (from the Australian Catholic University\u2019s School of Arts) argues that history is \u2018not direct but textual,\u2019 and facts can only be relayed through narratives using figurative language and literary techniques. Although, she argues,\u00a0truth about the past always remains inaccessible.<\/span><\/p>

I didn\u2019t dent my shelf of unread history books after a year \u2014 as I battled it, it swelled. I wish the past was a concept, something categorisable. Its materiality lures me but then slips as I try to grasp it long after the fact. I am reminded of its intangibility again and again. It forms, a puddle of factual anecdote and fractured narratives, and personal circumstances. To quantify it is to make a meandering roadmap with no end. Despite curiosity, we can\u2019t escape each other\u2019s shadow.<\/p>

Now, in days unknown whether we are teetering toward post-pandemic life or heading deeper into this crisis as ever, the present has again taken precedence in a timeline of my own perception. Where do I start and stop my imagination?<\/p>

History will always be a compromised fantasy under this self-directed spotlight of mine \u2014 infiltrated, corrupted, alone. I remain a prisoner to its ghost, aimlessly seeking our mutual liberty.<\/p>

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A Year of Anxious Historical Fantasies <\/i>e<\/span>ssay also available on Medium.<\/span><\/span>
<\/a><\/h6>

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Texts mentioned:<\/span>
<\/h1>\n

Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: <\/em><\/a>A Tale of Three Cities<\/em> (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017).<\/p>\n

Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation<\/em><\/a> (London: Penguin, 2020).<\/p>\n

David Mountain, Past Mistakes: <\/em><\/a>How We Misinterpret History and Why It Matters<\/em> (London: Icon Books, 2021).<\/p>\n

Maja and Reuban Fowkes, Central and Eastern European Art<\/em><\/a> Since 1950<\/em> (London: Thames & Hudson, 2020).<\/p>\n

Jenny Uglow, In These Times: <\/em><\/a>Living in Britain through Napoleon\u2019s Wars, 1793\u20131815<\/em> (London: Faber & Faber, 2014).<\/p>\n

Ben Adams, \u201cHistory: <\/a>The Study of the Subjective and Unimportant,\u201d Philosophy Now<\/em>, 2012.<\/p>\n

Burak \u00d6z\u00e7etin, \u201c\u2018The Show of the People<\/a> against the Cultural Elites: Populism, Media and Popular Culture in Turkey,\u201d European Journal of Cultural Studies<\/em> 22, no. 5\u20136 (March 11, 2019): pp. 942\u2013957.<\/p>\n

Josh Carney, \u201cResurReaction:<\/a> Competing Visions of Turkey\u2019s (Proto) Ottoman Past in Magnificent Century and Resurrection Ertu\u011frul,\u201d Middle East Critique <\/em>28, no. 1 (April 2019): pp. 1\u201320. (footnote 1, 2)<\/p>\n

Laura Saxton, \u201cA True Story: <\/a>Defining Accuracy and Authenticity in Historical Fiction,\u201d The Journal of Theory and Practice<\/em> 24, no. 2 (2020): pp. 127\u2013144.<\/p>\n

Melitta Hogarth, \u201cThe ignorance of our shared history is shocking. <\/a>Morrison\u2019s denial shows us time for truth-telling is NOW,\u201d EduResearch Matters (Australian Association for Research in Education, June 22, 2020).<\/p>\n

Morton W. Bloomfield, \u201cElitism in the Humanities,\u201d<\/a> American Higher Education: Toward an Uncertain Future<\/em> 103, no. 4 (1974): pp. 128\u2013137.<\/p>\n

Maria Margronis, \u201cThe Anxiety of Authenticity:<\/a> Writing Historical Fiction at the End of the Twentieth Century,\u201d History Workshop Journal<\/em> 65, no. 1 (2008): pp. 138\u2013160.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I messaged my friend the thoughts keeping me awake, \u201cIt scares me that you can learn and learn but never know enough to piece it together. But we never had this responsibility before. People didn\u2019t know much beyond their day to day. I have this access they didn\u2019t, but I am so scared to not know and never understand.\u201d He thought to be forever learning was an exciting problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_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}},"categories":[1],"tags":[458,414,456,111,457,459,66],"class_list":["post-3255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bettany-hughes","tag-david-mountain","tag-ertugrul","tag-history","tag-istanbul","tag-roderick-beaton","tag-travel"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/1_fSVg1DbBRh-ig0zXXtUfkw.jpeg?fit=1384%2C779&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s9Pso7-history","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3255"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3423,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions\/3423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tahneyalexandramay.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}