Anything Can Happen Read Online Free PDF

eyelid. So, with that left eyelid he signaled the alphabet—
a, b, c
—to others, and thus was able to write a whole book, a bestseller. He used his eyelid to write a book:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
He, too, was here.
Ici.
    Along with the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who, in their final days, after they had watched their mothers and cousins shoved off to the extermination camps in the dead of winter and were themselves at the edge of death from diphtheria and malnutrition, still they took little pieces of paper and rolled them up in scrolls and wrote things on them—poems, fragments of autobiography, political tracts—and slipped the scrolls into the crevices of the ghetto walls.
    Which acts would have been perfectly understood by Chekhov's horse, to whom the narrator of Chekhov's story told of his little boy's death because there was no one else to tell his story to. Neigh?
    Why did they bother, you know? You know.
    For the same reason the ancient mariner, crazy as a loon, grabbed the wedding guest by the lapels and would not let go until ... for the same reason that the messenger in Job says: "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." To
tell
thee. Which was Ishmael's reason, too, practically word for word.
    You know. You know. They had a story to tell. They had to tell a story, which is why you are here and I am here. Sing it: "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."
    And Kilroy, the very-short-story writer? Well, you certainly know why he was here.

The Puppet Theater of Your Irrational Fears
    has the twisted pleasure of presenting: "Your Friend Hasn't Called in Two Weeks." Plus: "You Discover a Dead Crow on Your Lawn." In Theater 2: "Someone Tells You That You're in for a Big Surprise." And: "Letters Received Written in Pencil with No Return Address." Coming soon: "R.S.V.P. We're Having an Intimate Dinner Party—Just Eight or Ten of Us." And: "Dawn."

Teach the Free Man How to Praise
    I never got that line until I'd lived a little. "Teach the free man how to praise." It comes from Auden's elegy to Yeats, and one has to slow down at "free" to understand the whole thought. The free man is free to do everything, which is the nature of his freedom. So he is free to moan, rail, and curse; and this is what he does most often. But he is also free to praise. He may use his freedom to give praise.
    These ducks, for example, that whet out in arrowhead formations over the Atlantic. And the Atlantic herself that gushes in the half-light after a hard rain. And the beach that contorts to shapes of angels on tombstones, awls, hunchbacks, lovers lying thigh to thigh. And the driftwood from a mackerel schooner that still bears the stench of the catch. And the slant of the sky. And the shingles of the sky. And a cloud like Tennessee. And the face of our dog—ill, old, uncomplaining dog.
    And you, with your Welsh courage and your girl's profile and your tireless sense of me. Did I mention you?
Ave.

The Day I Turned into the Westin
    Fortunately, on the day I turned into the Westin, it was still early enough to allow me to prepare for the onslaught of guests. My brain, which had become the lobby-level bar and grill, began to cook the home fries and open-face steak sandwiches, a favorite with the afterhours crowd; and the piano player, my left ear, though hungover from the previous night and slumped atop a D-seventh, had plenty of time to straighten up and fly right. My wrists, the bellhops, donned their red uniforms with the brass buttons and got the baggage carts ready. My knees, the swimming pool and spa, made certain that all was spic and span and that the towels, my eyelashes, were nice and hot.
    In the pit of my stomach, which was the terrace lounge for the higher-paying guests, I wondered if my nose, the housekeeping staff, could get up to speed in so short a time. I had, after all, just turned into the Westin that morning. I wondered the same thing about my right elbow,