From Word To Word » Prose

Sprung Up

jeremylukehill — Mon, 14 May 2012 01:55:13 +0000

They have sprung up overnight, these runners. They went to seed as bankers or dentists or consultants of this or that, but they have sprouted as Saturday morning joggers, geared in reflector-striped coats, lycra leggings, spotless shoes, and earbuds. There are whole fields of their ambulatory flowers. They cover the sidewalks in reds and yellows, loping gardens of colour that drift, inevitably, into coffee shops and bakeries and specialty grocery stores, then home again, withered as soon as sprouted.

When It Was Theirs

jeremylukehill — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:47:38 +0000

I am standing in the room that was built to be theirs, added as an inner sanctum to what is otherwise only a hunting camp in the bush. The rest of the cabin is a single room, cedar posts sealed with mortar outside and nothing at all inside, heated by a woodstove, furnished with timber bunkbeds, roofed in tin. This added room, though, it is sided in split cedar outside and panelled with cut cedar inside, a small room that once had its own wood stove also, when it was theirs, and it had certainly been warm then, though it is cold now.

There are boxes of their things stacked under the window, the bits of their life that were too insignificant to be be moved to the new cabin, the one insulated and plumbed and wired, almost a house. I leave everything where it is, but I can see some of her spy novels in the tops of the boxes, a framed map of the waters around the island, a picture of their youngest son at the wheel of a fishing boat, an orange safety vest, a piece of wood with a Bible verse painted on it. There is a cake of green rat poison sitting on top of it all, and there is another in the far corner, a third on the bedside table. The bed is stripped to the mattress, leaving only coverless pillows, and everything is sprinkled with a fine dusting of pine needles.

In one corner, beside a cake of poison, there are marks on the floor where the woodstove once was. A hole gapes above it, like a wound that has released the soul of the place, leaving only this behind: the boxes of unwanted things, the nameless green poison, the uncovered bed, the litter of needles.

She Was Beautiful Once

jeremylukehill — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:33:38 +0000

She was beautiful once. I can tell by the way she holds herself, as if eyes are always on her, as if everyone is watching her, straight and tall, posing, even here at the laundromat, loading the dryers one armful at a time. There is still something pretty in the way she wears her blond hair high in a ponytail, in her slimness, but there is a tiredness about her also, as if she no longer has the energy to keep her beauty wrapped around her, to keep it against all the things that would pull it away from her. Her cotton skirt is faded, blue, with a pattern of white dots, and her flip-flops are worn almost to nothing, the thongs frayed and near to breaking, so that she drags them with her feet, with her painted toes, a sliding and awkward walk. She does not sit as she waits, neither to read nor to talk, just shuffles back and forth down the rows of machines, her arms wrapped around her slender ribs, her head bowed onto her chest. She seems to move in order not to stop once and for all, as if to stop, even for a moment, would be to stop forever.

Behind the Hoarding

jeremylukehill — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:07:40 +0000

She is standing behind the construction hoarding, and she is peering around the corner, looking off down the street, her hand resting on the latch, flicking it back and forth as far as it will go. I wonder what it is that she is watching, but the window of the cafe, large though it may be, restricts my vision, and it seems to me that she is looking at nothing at all, or perhaps that she is looking at everything, that she is essentially looking, quite apart from any object, and I wonder too whether to look like this, essentially, crucially, is also to hide, from nothing and from everything, whether looking must always also be a hiddenness and a separateness.

Her mouth is partly open, as if she is breathing heavily, but she cannot have been running. She rests too easily against the wall, and there is no sweat on her loose, cotton tanktop, pink over black where it exposes her sports bra. Besides, her loafers would not let her run far, though she wears athletic socks in them, white, pulled high on her calves. No, she is not running, is not being chased by anything. It is only that she must not be seen. She shields herself behind the hoarding so that she can keep seeing all to herself, so that she might always be the subject and not the object of sight, and I, through the window, am destroying her hiddenness.

Installing HDTV

jeremylukehill — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:00:51 +0000

This is another of those conversations that I overheard myself but still can hardly believe to be true. I was sitting in a pub, and there were two couples at the table closest to me. The one couple was speaking so loudly that it was impossible for me not to overhear them, while the other couple said almost nothing. I only started jotting their conversation down after a few minutes, and they were still sitting there when I left, so there was much more of it even than I am sharing, but I suspect that what there is will be more than enough for anyone. It is pretty much verbatim as I heard it, but I have condensed it a little and removed identifying references to the television provider in question.

- No, really, Jason, you’ve got to get HDTV. It’ll change your life. And it’s easy. Took us no time at all.

- No time at all? Rick, they forgot to give us the adapter. We couldn’t even hook it up the first day.”

- Yeah, yeah, but they gave us one when we went in the next day.”

- They gave us the wrong one the next day, remember? The wrong one.

- But then they got us the right one.

- Sure, after they sent us home to call the toll free number to get in the system or something.”

- Well, that’s not so tough, right? And everything’s been great ever since, right?

- I guess.

- So, you guys had to go into the store three times just to get the TV set up?

- See, Rick, he thinks that’s stupid too.

- Okay Molly, I’m not saying there weren’t a few screwups, but these things happen? And the service was good. I mean, they fixed things for us, didn’t they?

- Seriously, Rick? This is service? The first time we go in, to buy the stupid thing, they have to take all our information. Which is fine. That’s normal. Then we go in to tell them they forgot the adapter, which is their fault, and we have to give them all our information again. Something about two different departments. Then we take back the wrong adapter, and they won’t make a simple exchange. The same guy who saw us the day before, the same guy who made the mistake in the first place, he can’t make an exchange, he says, because we haven’t registered with the service department yet. And then the people on the phone at the service department have to take all our information again, for the third time in two days, and then we have to wait twenty-four hours to be sure our account has been activated across the whole system, and then the next day, to top it all off, the same guy at the store makes us fill everything out again on this exchange form and makes us sign some statement that basically implies we might be trying to scam the store or something. This is not good service, Rick. Not.

- Come on, Molly, you make it sound like some kind of fiasco.

- It was a fiasco, Rick. That’s exactly what it was. A fiasco.

- But at least it’s hooked up now, and the HD is totally worth it.

- So you guys notice a big difference?

- Oh yeah. It’s like being in the stands, man. Hey, Molly? Just like being there.

- Sure. I guess. Most of my shows aren’t the kind you’d really notice one way or the other. Are my shows even in HD, Rick?

- Oh, I’m sure they are. I’ll check for you when we get home. But the sports is for sure. You really notice it in the lighting. It’s like the light is, I don’t know, crisper or something.

- Crisp light?

- Yeah, something like that. You’ve gotta switch.

- I don’t even have cable, so it probably wouldn’t do me much good.

- Really? How do you see the games?

- I don’t usually.

- Well, you know, cable isn’t that expensive. You can get the sports package pretty cheap.

- Are you joking, hon? Your HD package is plenty expensive.

- Well, that’s because we’re in Canada. They gouge us on things like that. Cable, cell phones, mobile internet. You know. In the States it’s not like that. Half the price.

- But we do live in Canada, hon, so prices in the States aren’t really the question are they?

- I’m just saying, cable isn’t expensive. They’re just overcharging us.

- And this changes the bill we have to pay how?

- Come on, Molly. It’s worth every dime. I’d pay twice as much.

- Sure, so you can have another excuse not to get off your butt. You won’t even get the phone or answer the door if there’s a game on.

- It’s only ever salesmen anyway. Right? The only people who call me or come to my door are trying to sell me something. And that includes your parents.

- You guys never have friends just drop by or call to go for coffee or something?

- If I want to talk to people, I’ll go find them. If they come banging on my door, they can deal with the dogs like everyone else.

- Yeah, my girlfriends never come over anymore. They’re too scared of the dogs.

- See? Win-win scenario.

- Rick, you’re an asshole.

- I’m okay with that.

How Broken The World Can Be

jeremylukehill — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:16:56 +0000

His hand is on her thigh, just below where the thin skirt has ridden up her leg, but it is not a possessive hand, not a restraining hand. It is protective perhaps, but not jealous or insecure. It is a protection that she claims against the world, against the harshness and brokenness of the world. It is a security, and she turns into it, again and again, every time she returns to sit beside him, taking his hand and laying it again on her thigh, where she needs it, because she has already known too intimately how broken the world can be.

The Best Book in a Quarter Century

jeremylukehill — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:41:11 +0000

I came into the pub in the middle of the day, not for any reason really, not even to have a beer, just aimlessly, because I had nothing else that needed doing that afternoon, and there was a guy at the bar, the only other person in the pub, reading a book.

“What are you reading?” I asked him, because I always ask people this, even if I’ve already seen what they’re reading. I like to give them the chance to say it out loud, to confess it with their own lips.

“It’s Bolano’s 2666,” he answered. He said this quietly, only flicking his eyes away from the book for the barest of moments, annoyed, then hunched down with his brown corduroy jacket up around his neck.

“What do you think of it?” I persisted. I still hadn’t ordered anything, and the bartender hovered across the bar from me, but I wouldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t give him the chance to ask me if I needed anything. I turned my back to the bar to avoid him.

The reader looked up this time, set the book on the bar, open, hard covers spread, without its dust jacket. “Are you really asking,” he said gravely, “or are you just making small talk, because if you’re just making small talk, I’ll probably punch you in the mouth.”

His eyes were dark and round and something else, speckled maybe, and I saw that he meant it, and I thought, “This guy reads for real,” and I wanted to talk to him even more. “I really want to know,” I assured him, and I tried to sound as sincere as I could, because I’ve read 2666 twice now, and I love that book, and I’m always trying to get people to read it, so I really did want to know.

“Fine,” he said, gripping the lapels of his jacket like a child reciting a presidential speech, “let’s just start by saying it’s the greatest novel written by anyone in any language in at least a quarter century.”

“Good,” I answered, “as long as we don’t end there, I think that’s good.”

Very Sensible Shoes

jeremylukehill — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:37:20 +0000

They sit across from one another, a mother and daughter perhaps, though they never say so. They are wearing, both of them, very sensible shoes, low-heeled and closed-toed and black, the kind of shoes that are suitable for every occasion but stylish at none. Their pants are sensible too, dark and pleated and cuffed, worn with equally dark sweaters and plain, unremarkable jewellery. They talk to each other from beneath identical haircuts, short, unstyled, that never take too much time in the morning. They are eating mandarin salads from stylized oriental bowls, and the younger is teaching the older to use the chopsticks.

To See What Has Been Written

jeremylukehill — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:06:43 +0000

The light is dim, and the writing seems to appear a fraction of a moment after the pen has passed, a fraction of a moment too late, an illusion of the lighting, surely, but an illusion that is like a metaphor of how we only see for ourselves what we are doing once the moment is already gone, and then the writing stops altogether, and perhaps this is a metaphor also, because it is now too dark to see what has been written.

A Coffee in the Rain

jeremylukehill — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:01:42 +0000

The rain began falling when I turned onto Wyndham Street, close enough to home that I thought I might run for it, but the storm was soon in earnest, and I had nothing to cover the book I was reading, so I stepped under the nearest awning, an organic cafe, fair trade coffee and vegan cuisine, that sort of thing, with the menu in scribbles on dusty chalkboards, and hand painted signs on the washroom doors, and cast off wooden tables old enough to have cigarette burns from a time when it was still legal to smoke in restaurants.

The spatter from the rain on the metal patio furniture reached even to where I stood against the window of the cafe, so I retreated further from it, through the glass door, where the guy behind the bar met my eyes, his hair long and unwashed and uncombed, falling into what were not quite dreadlocks, and I felt that I should at least buy a coffee or something in return for my shelter.

“Coffee please.”

“What kind?”

“The coffee kind.”

“Cappuccino? Espresso? Americano? Latte? Breva? Macchiato? Mocha? Granita? Frappe? Lungo? Ristretto?”

“The biggest, darkest, blackest, most caffeinated, least adulterated coffee you can manufacture back there.”

“You don’t have to worry about your cream and sugar here, man. It’s totally fair trade and organic. You can indulge guilt free.”

“No. Really. Black is good.”

The barista shrugged and brushed his hair back from his face, then wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Whatever makes you tick, man.” He took one of the large mismatched clay mugs from behind him, set it under the filter, ground the beans, and poured the water. It smelled like good coffee. I tasted anticipation on my tongue.

He put the mug down, and I paid better than three times what he asked. “Keep it filled please.”

“Sure, man.” He nodded at the window and wiped his forehead again. “Looks like you might be here a while.”

“Yeah.”

“Hopefully it cools things off. I’m sweating like a pig in here.”

I carried my book and my coffee to a table. The rain was making a high pinging sound through the screen windows, striking a thousand notes simultaneously from the tin of the window awnings. The coffee was good, not as good as my own, but good, and it seemed to me that there was some relation, unnameable perhaps, but certain nonetheless, between the pinging of the awnings and the movement of the coffee in my cup as I raised it to my lips and lowered it to the table.