Sean Michaels
six Stories
No Kidding
For the thousandth time in his life, Richard was kneeling on the institutional carpet and showing his students how to plant a rhododendron seedling in a small plastic container. His shirt-cuffs were dusted with soil. One of the students said something witty and Richard took a little breath and said, “No kidding.” I do not know why this was the thing to flick Richard’s soul like a cricket breaking from the grass. He was leaning over the plastic container, his shirt-cuffs dusted with soil, and he realized that if he wished to run away with L and spend the rest of his life with them all he had to do was to go and get on with it. They could just get in his car. It was filled with perennials.
Euro Cup
There was something about the Spanish team that year. They were not the fastest or the most precise. They were not especially aggressive or particularly meek. But their play seemed to come from a different place than the other teams’. They moved like fireflies in a copse. They could pass silently across the field, through and among their opponents. Their only sound was the ripple and flick of their royal-blue uniforms. The Spaniards were tireless and strange. They raised one arm when they wanted a pass; they had dark eyes; the balls seemed to follow them; they touched, they touched, they touched. The other team would not understand. They simply would not understand. The vuvuzelas sang their doleful B-flat. The Spaniards passed the ball to and fro, crisscrossing like kites, 32 passes in a single play; and then finally, with something like regret, into the goal. They placed second, behind Argentina.
Cousins
A train holiday across Essex, to meet your cousins. Share a carriage with a man in an eyepatch with a brush moustache. Turns out he’s a distant relative. He teaches you to snap your fingers in a different way. Stop in Danbury. Man at the shop, selling peppery cheese rolls, he’s a cousin too. Cousins everywhere. A cousin at the used bookshop, opening pop-up books. A cousin at city hall, rubber-stamping pub licenses. Cousins in the elevators, cousins on the escalators, cousins dusting your bedroom while you’re gone. You climb a tree: cousins. You lift a rock: cousins. You go swimming, see cousins down in the swirling weeds. You fall in love with a cousin, get in a fight with a cousin, get arrested by a cousin and then a cousin sets you free. Hail a taxi; find a stranger; ride in silence to the plane.
Rockchomper
Rockchompers loungin’, stretched out basalt on their monumental chaises longues. One rockchomper tosses a boulder into his mouth, chews. Another rockchomper sucks ferrous sluice through a straw. “Is there a bet- ter life than the life of a rockchomper?” A yellow butterfly circles the pool. Little granite children are doing something with a stick and a flowerpot. On a plastic patio table sits a platter of feldspar and talc. A radio is playing Tom Petty. The news is full of stories about the Greek debt crisis, Stanley Cup finals, but no one cares. By the back door, a teenaged rockchomper is getting, yes, stoned.
Meanwhile, in Texas, a rockchomper is driving home from work. The grey highway glints. The rockchomper’s stomach growls. There are cacti along the side of the road; there are oryxes; there is lots of sand. The radio is singing “Free Fallin”. The rockchomper is trying to feel excited about going home, rejoining his wife and two kids, chips off the ol’ block. But he is simply tired. He is tired of pouring his life into his work, like sludge from a concrete mixer. He is tired of his boss, who wears a BlueTooth headset at all times, who keeps a bowl of individually-wrapped garnets on her desk. He is tired of closing windows on his Windows PC. Sometimes the rockchomper clicks on different spots on his computer and clicks on Start and clicks on Shut Down and then lets his mouse hover over the spot that says Restart. He changes lanes. He squints. He watches a lone vulture dip in the sky, surging a warm air current, adjusting.
Silken Reset
The silken reset was invented by a hacker in Yemen. The date wasn’t clear. One month the resets were as they had always been: abrupt, crisp; the next month, some of them were silken. A silken reset on your favorite website, a silken reset on your nearest traffic light. Soon, joked the TV pre- senters, a silken reset on your life. It was autumn and it was easy to believe that this could soon be true. Everything crisply divided might soon be softly changing. One thing could become another thing without a tremor or a snap. We walked around our neighborhoods slipping our hands into our pockets, our hands into our pockets, imagining that our futures might be reset, silkenly, with just as little force.
An Allegory
Imagine there is a tree, somewhere, with the most beautiful fruit. Perhaps it is just one or two fruit. Perhaps they are not the same (remember, this is a hypothetical fruit tree, a magical fruit tree): an apple, a pear and a plum, suspended and softly glowing. These fruit are the most delicious fruit in the world, sweet and tart, with supple flesh. They endow their eaters with deep wisdom, great knowledge, incredible ability. The fruit tree is not hidden. It is on every map and easy to reach. Now, imagine the fruit is allowed to remain. Imagine nobody takes it. Daughters are born, and sons, and across every generation the fruit tree is undisturbed.
photo by Julie Artacho
Sean Michaels was born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1982. Founder of the pioneering mp3blog Said the Gramophone, he has written for publications including The Guardian, The Walrus, Pitchfork, McSweeney’s and Rolling Stone. Sean’s debut novel, Us Conductors, received Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize and was recognized by NPR as one of 2014’s books of the year. He lives in Montreal.