A very small explosive book which has the color of wool and the weight of a feather will arrive in bookstores on Wednesday. An independent researcher associated with UQAM, travel writer and libertarian thinker, Thierry Pardo worked for three summers as a gentle shepherd in Maisonneuve Park for the eco-grazing project led by the Biquette organization.
For the past few years, around fifteen sheep have been grazing freely, without collars or fences, in the shade of the Olympic Stadium. The muzzle in the clover, they fit “in the slow time, in the old moment […]represent a parenthesis, a woolly interstice”.
Watching them be sheep soothes the one who keeps them, induces a gentle meditation and makes some people want to reflect on the presence of animals in the urban space, on our “feeling of ‘connection’ to nature and the living”. The first thing the shepherd notices is that he is the one following the flock! Kind, naive, followers? We may have judged the sheep too quickly, who draw their strength from numbers, hence their herd spirit.
In a text between story and essay, the writer-shepherd shares his tender observations and meticulous learning about this strangely misunderstood animal that populates children’s stories, biblical stories and also our sleepless nights.
Sweet disruptor, fluffy anarchist whose daily life is ruled by four stomachs, the sheep foments his little sheep revolution at the heart of clan life. Evolving in a non-hierarchical “elastic herd”, the sheep, together, “embodied a communal, epicurean and idle ideal […] inaccessible to humans,” writes Thierry Pardo. “This freedom is incredibly insolent at a time when everything must be under control” in a world that “shrinks up to nausea. »
A humble, dreamy and erudite work, this little eulogy has the meditative sweetness of an afternoon spinning wool with a bobbin. To be savored slowly since its reading lasts the time it takes for a cloud to cross the sky.