Michael e. Casteels, Furthermore, the Lake

 

The further I walked, the closer I got. To what, I wasn’t sure, but my feet kept moving, carrying the rest of me along with them. They had their own preconceived destination—somewhere they might finally settle down, a little slice of heaven, a place to call home. I was just their solitary witness, a quiet companion, the documenter of their long journey.

It was easy. They walked; I followed.

The path snaked along the lakeside. The sky was a dark canvas the stars punched small holes into one by one. A sickle moon crept up from behind the horizon. A large bird beat its enormous wings, faded into distance. Somewhere a duck quacked, then hushed, and the relative silence resumed.

A few soft waves lapped against the shore with a steady rhythm. The small stones cascading across one another clattered out a soft melody. It was a lullaby, though I wasn’t sure who was being lulled: me, the city, or the lake itself.

The lake sighed. I sighed.

The city drifted off into the night, far above the lake and me.

The latest from Kingston poet, editor and publisher Michael e. Casteels is the debut novel, Furthermore, the Lake (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2025), published as part of editor Stuart Ross’ 1366Books. Following a handful of chapbooks of poetry, prose and visuals, as well as his full-length collection, The Last White House at the End of the Row of White Houses (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2016) [see my review of such here], Casteels’ Furthermore, the Lake is composed as a novel of accumulated scenes that shimmer and ripple, contradict and evolve, across shifting narratives. “A night can drag its feet when it wants to,” he writes, early on, “and that night it wanted to. The occasional car. An infrequent passerby. But when the late hours finally shifted into the early hours, even these ceased. The street lights shone down on nothing but cracks in the pavement.” Casteels’ narrator might be reliable but the scenes they participate in and witness seem to contradict, offering an uncertain view. His prose is composed across short bursts and flash sections comparable to the flash fictions of writers such as Lydia Davis [see my review of one of her most recent here] or Kathy Fish [see my review of her latest here], but one that works a larger shape, although one not necessarily formed across any kind of easy or obvious concrete narrative. One has to pay close attention to detail, even across such lovely passages. And yet, the narrative does progress, moments that build upon moments, a thread within the swirl and field of further seemingly-contradictory elements.

Last but not least, you boarded the train and sat down in a window seat. You looked out at the station platform and smiled. Even from this distance your eyes were tiny lakes that mirrored whatever they saw, and what they saw was me, standing on a shoreline, waving goodbye while you drifted away in your red canoe. Waves drawing you further and further. I didn’t expect to take a second look, but I did: your train long gone for years.

Casteels’ prose has an ease to it, a compelling tone that floats across pages, amid numerous memorable lines and prose-blocks. “The bathtub is surprisingly agile for its age. You’d think it would lumber like a hippopotamus,” he writes, “but it’s more like a rhinoceros charging blindgly into the night. I’m a few hundred metres behind it and losing ground. The bathtub leaps over a white picket fence, rounds a corner, and then it’s gone.” There is something of his shifting narrative reminiscent of Canadian playwright and mathematician John Mighton’s play Possible Worlds (1990; a film adaptation was released in 2000), holding a shifting not of perception but of action, of what is actually being perceived. The unsettling of this foundation is purposeful and beautifully done, and does progress towards an understood meaning, one that rocks a foundation of loss, grief and ultimate through-line, although one that doesn’t unfold or reveal as much as finally allow, all centred around, somehow, this particular image of the lake. “The lake remembers a seagull,” he writes, “but it’s nowhere to be seen. It remembers loons, but they’re gone too. No, wait. I just heard one. A heart-wrenched wail. No response.” As he continues:

This could have been years ago. Or sometime last week. Or three days from now. It’s the type of thing that happens again and again, and once started, can’t be stopped. A strand of hair stuck to your cheek. I brushed it away. It’s the only thing that keeps me from wandering off course. It’s what passes through my mind every time I squirt a little toothpaste on my toothbrush.