Anything Can Happen Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Roger Rosenblatt
stampedeâdreaming, that is, of my life as an impossible puzzle.
So please do not push or nudge or tap or make any effort to get me up, for I fear that I may wake into sleep and understand everything.
Instructions to the Housekeeper
Please wash the sheets and polish the silver. Please dust the piano, do the shopping, and cook dinner. Please fix the lamp in the hall and the sprinkler system. Please rebuild car engine (the Lexus). Please point up the bricks on the west wall of the house and relay the foundation (steel beams to replace locust posts). Please stop teenagers from getting tattoos. Please explain to said teens that rifts always occur between parents and children and that everything will be all right. Please make life more pleasant for me at work and give Brooks an injury that forces him to stay home for several months. Please add a little spice to my marriageâsex, culture, etc. I'm concerned about the marketâplease improve. Cure cancer, end world hunger, terrorism, and so forth. Racism, ditto. Thank you.
P.S. Please do the shirts right this time. No starch.
"Neglect"
Naturally, you called it "neglect," and it was neglectâthe absence of attention, the omission of attentionâas when a town in which an industry once thrived (a steel mill or a shoe factory) is fallen from neglect, and the eaves of the roofs sag soaked with rain, the door of the bank vault lies open to houseflies, the grocer's shelves are thick with dust, the druggist's shelves the same. And nothing remains of the school yard except a jungle gym in a heap of pipes and a chain-link fence that has been yanked from its stanchions. Still, you were right. Technically, it was neglect. Don't give it a second thought.
With Narcissus in the Aquarium
"I can't see my reflection for the fish," he said. He was wearing a white silk shirt from Paris, a Zegna tie, and a suit custom made in heaven.
"That's the point," I told him. "Look at these beauties."
I showed him the larvaceans weaving their mucous nets, and the comb jellies and the barrel-shaped salps. I showed him a thirty-foot siphonophore and noted how these creatures did not have advanced nervous systems, or brains, or eyes, and were nonetheless able to defend themselves and hunt. I showed him the chambered nautilus and the octopus, and the cuttlefish that disappear in smoke of their own making.
"Look there," I said. And I showed him the shovelnose guitarfish and a grouper rowing by using its pectorals as oars. I tried to engage his interest in the synchronized swimming of the silver sardines and the schools of mackerel gleaming in the light. But I could see that he didn't care, didn't care for any of it.
Then suddenly he stopped. He stared at one of the glass cases. He lay down his briefcase containing his schedule of lectures and his schedule of TV appearances and a list of the phone calls he had to return from important people in Washington and New York.
What enthralled him was the
Vampyroteuthis infernalis,
the vampire squid from hell, with its salmon-colored body that can hide in the cloak of itself, its salmon-colored head, and its blue eyeâthat blue eye of the
Vampyroteuthis infernalis,
which is no ordinary blue, but the blue of the first blue ever, the blue that defines the color, the blue open eye of the sea itself.
"You know," he said at last. "That eye. That eye."
"What about it?" I asked.
"It's looking at me."
Kilroy Was Here
Every place in World War II, every foxhole, every tank, every available surface displayed the mystifying graffiti KILROY WAS HERE . A riddle. A joke. For decades, people asked, "Who's Kilroy?"âas if that were the question.
Tell me a story. Tell me a story about Kilroy and
why
he was here. Tell me about you being here and about me being here. Oh, yes. And about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of the French edition of
Elle,
who suffered so massive a stroke that the only part of his body he could move was his left
So please do not push or nudge or tap or make any effort to get me up, for I fear that I may wake into sleep and understand everything.
Instructions to the Housekeeper
Please wash the sheets and polish the silver. Please dust the piano, do the shopping, and cook dinner. Please fix the lamp in the hall and the sprinkler system. Please rebuild car engine (the Lexus). Please point up the bricks on the west wall of the house and relay the foundation (steel beams to replace locust posts). Please stop teenagers from getting tattoos. Please explain to said teens that rifts always occur between parents and children and that everything will be all right. Please make life more pleasant for me at work and give Brooks an injury that forces him to stay home for several months. Please add a little spice to my marriageâsex, culture, etc. I'm concerned about the marketâplease improve. Cure cancer, end world hunger, terrorism, and so forth. Racism, ditto. Thank you.
P.S. Please do the shirts right this time. No starch.
"Neglect"
Naturally, you called it "neglect," and it was neglectâthe absence of attention, the omission of attentionâas when a town in which an industry once thrived (a steel mill or a shoe factory) is fallen from neglect, and the eaves of the roofs sag soaked with rain, the door of the bank vault lies open to houseflies, the grocer's shelves are thick with dust, the druggist's shelves the same. And nothing remains of the school yard except a jungle gym in a heap of pipes and a chain-link fence that has been yanked from its stanchions. Still, you were right. Technically, it was neglect. Don't give it a second thought.
With Narcissus in the Aquarium
"I can't see my reflection for the fish," he said. He was wearing a white silk shirt from Paris, a Zegna tie, and a suit custom made in heaven.
"That's the point," I told him. "Look at these beauties."
I showed him the larvaceans weaving their mucous nets, and the comb jellies and the barrel-shaped salps. I showed him a thirty-foot siphonophore and noted how these creatures did not have advanced nervous systems, or brains, or eyes, and were nonetheless able to defend themselves and hunt. I showed him the chambered nautilus and the octopus, and the cuttlefish that disappear in smoke of their own making.
"Look there," I said. And I showed him the shovelnose guitarfish and a grouper rowing by using its pectorals as oars. I tried to engage his interest in the synchronized swimming of the silver sardines and the schools of mackerel gleaming in the light. But I could see that he didn't care, didn't care for any of it.
Then suddenly he stopped. He stared at one of the glass cases. He lay down his briefcase containing his schedule of lectures and his schedule of TV appearances and a list of the phone calls he had to return from important people in Washington and New York.
What enthralled him was the
Vampyroteuthis infernalis,
the vampire squid from hell, with its salmon-colored body that can hide in the cloak of itself, its salmon-colored head, and its blue eyeâthat blue eye of the
Vampyroteuthis infernalis,
which is no ordinary blue, but the blue of the first blue ever, the blue that defines the color, the blue open eye of the sea itself.
"You know," he said at last. "That eye. That eye."
"What about it?" I asked.
"It's looking at me."
Kilroy Was Here
Every place in World War II, every foxhole, every tank, every available surface displayed the mystifying graffiti KILROY WAS HERE . A riddle. A joke. For decades, people asked, "Who's Kilroy?"âas if that were the question.
Tell me a story. Tell me a story about Kilroy and
why
he was here. Tell me about you being here and about me being here. Oh, yes. And about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of the French edition of
Elle,
who suffered so massive a stroke that the only part of his body he could move was his left