Anything Can Happen Read online

  Anything Can Happen

  Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours

  Roger Rosenblatt

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Take Two

  My Bear

  Lecture to One Suffering Yet Another Identity Crisis

  On Aristocracy

  What Bothers Me

  Advice to Those About to Acquire a Rembrandt

  Tyranny for Beginners

  Don't Take Your Soul to New England

  Stopping by Words on a Snowy Evening

  On Your Conduct at the Dinner Party

  My Stump Speech

  On Class Distinctions

  Shorter Than Bacon's

  A Song for Jessica

  New Year's at Luchow's

  Yo, Weatherman

  The Men's Room Wall: A Fantasy

  Beautiful Houses

  Lines Written Nowhere Near Tintern Abbey

  Twenty Things One Would Like to See in Movies

  Odes for a Rainy Afternoon

  The Albatross That Brought Everyone Good Luck

  Bring a Wildebeest Home to Mother

  Jaws's Side of Things

  Dogstoevsky

  Love Song

  Go Where You Are Loved

  Essays. I, Too, Dislike Them

  If in My Sleep

  Instructions to the Housekeeper

  "Neglect"

  With Narcissus in the Aquarium

  Kilroy Was Here

  The Puppet Theater of Your Irrational Fears

  Teach the Free Man How to Praise

  The Day I Turned into the Westin

  Cliff's Other Notes

  Environmentalists

  Hearing Test

  Everywhere a Hit Person

  Lessons for Grades 1 to 6

  If You Had Given It a Moment's Thought

  The Bathroom for You

  13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard

  Something's Wrong

  Shorter than Bacon's (More)

  The Giant Rat of Sumatra

  In the Madhouse in Beirut

  Should Your Name Appear

  Things I Can Take, Things I Can't

  Relax

  Cliff's Other Notes (More)

  The Inventor of Time

  Explanation to an Unprincipled Employer

  Signs of Accomplishment as Depicted in the Rear Window of a Volvo

  A Valediction for All Occasions

  A Brief History of Idiocy

  The Intervention of Facts

  You Think I'm Kidding

  Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos

  How to Live in the World

  Aubade

  Instructions to the Pallbearers

  On the Other Hand

  The Grateful Living

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  HARCOURT, INC.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

  Copyright © 2003 by Roger Rosenblatt

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of

  the work should be mailed to the following address:

  Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rosenblatt, Roger.

  Anything can happen: notes on my inadequate life and yours/

  Roger Rosenblatt.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-15-100866-3

  1. American wit and humor. I. Title.

  PN6165.R67 2003

  818'.5402—dc21 2002153234

  Text set in Bembo

  Display set in Schneidler

  Designed by Cathy Riggs

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition

  A C E G I K J H F D B

  for Carl, Amy, John, Wendy, and Harris

  exceptionally adequate children

  Contents

  Take Two [>]

  My Bear [>]

  Lecture to One Suffering Yet Another Identity Crisis [>]

  On Aristocracy [>]

  What Bothers Me [>]

  Advice to Those About to Acquire a Rembrandt [>]

  Tyranny for Beginners [>]

  Don't Take Your Soul to New England [>]

  Stopping by Words on a Snowy Evening [>]

  On Your Conduct at the Dinner Party [>]

  My Stump Speech [>]

  On Class Distinctions [>]

  Shorter Than Bacon's [>]

  A Song for Jessica [>]

  New Year's at Luchow's [>]

  Yo, Weatherman [>]

  The Men's Room Wall: A Fantasy [>]

  Beautiful Houses [>]

  Lines Written Nowhere Near Tintern Abbey [>]

  Twenty Things One Would Like to See in Movies [>]

  Odes for a Rainy Afternoon [>]

  The Albatross That Brought Everyone Good Luck [>]

  Bring a Wildebeest Home to Mother [>]

  Jaws's Side of Things [>]

  Dogstoevsky [>]

  Love Song [>]

  Go Where You Are Loved [>]

  Essays. I, Too, Dislike Them [>]

  If in My Sleep [>]

  Instructions to the Housekeeper [>]

  "Neglect" [>]

  With Narcissus in the Aquarium [>]

  Kilroy Was Here [>]

  The Puppet Theater of Your Irrational Fears [>]

  Teach the Free Man How to Praise [>]

  The Day I Turned into the Westin [>]

  Cliff's Other Notes [>]

  Environmentalists [>]

  Hearing Test [>]

  Everywhere a Hit Person [>]

  Lessons for Grades 1 to 6 [>]

  If You Had Given It a Moment's Thought [>]

  The Bathroom for You [>]

  13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard [>]

  Something's Wrong [>]

  Shorter than Bacon's (More) [>]

  The Giant Rat of Sumatra [>]

  In the Madhouse in Beirut [>]

  Should Your Name Appear [>]

  Things I Can Take, Things I Can't [>]

  Relax [>]

  Cliff's Other Notes (More) [>]

  The Inventor of Time [>]

  Explanation to an Unprincipled Employer [>]

  Signs of Accomplishment as Depicted in the Rear Window of a Volvo [>]

  A Valediction for All Occasions [>]

  A Brief History of Idiocy [>]

  The Intervention of Facts [>]

  You Think I'm Kidding [>]

  Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos [>]

  How to Live in the World [>]

  Aubade [>]

  Instructions to the Pallbearers [>]

  On the Other Hand [>]

  The Grateful Living [>]

  The girls were so frightened. You know how children are? "Suppose we're taken into the air?" And Doctor Paynter laughed and laughed. "That can't happen." And on the way home, I thought about Dan dying. We walked through the red rain. And I thought about you killing. And we stepped into great red puddles. And I said to the girls, "I will now give you a great lesson." Because the girls must be taught. "Anything can happen." That is the most horrid fact about living. Anything can happen. And we
were home. And I looked at the house. And I looked at the red ocean. And it had all happened here. What we had been. What we had become. What we were.

  —LYDIE BREEZE by John Guare

  Don't blame me. I didn't make the world. I barely live in it.

  —Oscar Levant to John Garfield in HUMORESQUE

  Take Two

  I'd like to do that again, if I could, Mr. DeMille.

  We haven't got all day.

  I know, I'm sorry. But I think I could make it work so much better this time. One more take?

  The first was fine. Time is money.

  Yes, yes. Time is money. But there is so much more I could bring to the lines with a second try. I've been thinking about the part a lot. Me as a child, for instance. I was much happier than I played it. You know? And the cruelty of my folks? Their blunders? Their neglect? That wasn't exactly right, either. They were just people, you know? I probably haven't done much better as a parent.

  Or worse.

  Or worse! Exactly! That's what I mean, Mr. DeMille. If I could just do it over, I would make a few corrections. The marriage scenes, the scenes at work. And I wouldn't thrash around as if I regretted every move I'd ever made, either. You know? That's just acting. I didn't come close to regretting much in my life. I really liked my life. I was just wallowing in a mood.

  Like the rest of us.

  You said it, Mr. DeMille. Like the rest of us. And as for the lonely times—the times I dwelt on?—well, they were also the most useful. You know? Like those Sunday afternoons in winter when I wandered the city like a ghost. I played those scenes as if I'd been abandoned forever when the truth was that the time by myself made me self-confident, kind of brave. So, you see, if I could...

  Do you realize what you're talking about? You're talking about reshooting the whole picture! You must be nuts!

  I just don't want to leave the wrong impression.

  Everybody leaves the wrong impression, kiddo. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. Oh, wow. The story was better than you played it. Happier, kinder, sweeter. Big deal.

  That's it, Mr. DeMille. That's what I mean.

  And if we rolled again, you'd play it happier, kinder, sweeter.

  I would! I would!

  And get it right this time.

  Absolutely!

  Know what your trouble is, kid?

  What, Mr. DeMille? What's my trouble?

  You don't know bupkis about movies.

  My Bear

  My bear is of the polar variety. He squats at the other end of my kitchen table every morning, and he stares at me with his black, black eyes. He does not move, but I hear his even snorting. Gnnn, gnnn, gnnn. Like that, in a low guttural snort that is neither threatening nor amiable. If my kitchen window is open, the breeze will flutter the tips of his white fur. He is seven or eight feet tall (I haven't measured). There is nothing immediately alarming about him; yet, once I sit down, I am afraid to move.

  He has something to do with my innermost fears—anyone can see that. Or with my mood swings. Once I suggested to him that he might be a bipolar bear, but he showed no amusement. I offered him Frosted Flakes one morning, too. I do not think that bears have a sense of humor.

  I cannot recall when he first appeared—some years ago, certainly. It was not in the morning that I first saw him but rather one midnight, when, for lack of sleep, I came downstairs for a snack of Jell-O and there he was, glowing white in the light of a full moon. I sat and stared at him as he stared at me. Eventually, I got sleepy and retired.

  Lately, he has stirred from the kitchen, where he spends his days, and has moved up to the bedroom at night, where he squats at the foot of my bed. He seems to wish to be with me night and day. I do not know what it is about me that attracts him. If he wanted to kill me, he could have done that long ago. Bears may look cute, but they are ferocious. One swipe of the paw and I would be scattered around the room like so many pieces of paper.

  One night I decided to flatter him, but it made no impression. One night I presented a philosophical monologue to him—something that yoked the fates of bears and men together in harmony. He did not so much as blink. One night I cursed him out. I don't know where I got the courage, but I even raised my hand to him. I hardly need tell you that there was no reaction.

  Here's my problem: If he establishes his influence in my household, as he has pretty much done already, how long will it be before he follows me outside? How long before he accompanies me to the newsstand or the grocer's? Think of the awkwardness, the embarrassment. He is not Harvey, after all; he's not invisible. And he is certainly not sweet-natured or wise. Soon, no one will come near me out of fright.

  I am thinking of calling the ASPCA. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after that. My bear is an unwanted animal, is he not? It is the business of the ASPCA, their duty, to take unwanted animals and treat them humanely. I would not want him hurt. Yes, I will definitely call the ASPCA by the end of the week, or early next at the latest, and tell them to please rid me of my bear, my beautiful big white polar bear.

  Lecture to One Suffering Yet Another Identity Crisis

  You strive to know yourself, and you are convinced that such knowledge derives from certain anticipa-tions, from knowing how you will react if she does this, if he does that, or if this reward comes your way, or that calamity. You believe that self-knowledge comes from practice: You know how you will behave if you are rejected or if you have a surfeit of success because it has all happened before. You repeat yourself. That's who you are.

  Or, if you know your limitations, you will say: "I know how much I can drink or how far I will go." And you'll call that knowing yourself—as if you were a car with so much gasoline inside you or a bottle with a definite capacity.

  Or you'll focus on your taste or appetites. "That simply isn't me," you'll say, while trying on a hat. "Not me. I'm a different sort of hat." And that's true. You are a different hat, of a certain size and material, to be worn in one kind of weather and not another.

  Or you believe that you are several selves—a torch singer, a bruiser, a lewd woman, a mouse of a man. You're not everybody, of course. No one is everybody. But you're several people. You know that. So you love your several selves. That's who you are. Or you hate your several selves and see yourself as the enemy. That's who you are.

  There is another way of looking at this question of identity. Find a point outside yourself—less idiosyncratic, less self-referential, more connected to people you have never met. It isn't hard, really.

  In a hotel recently, I saw a cardboard sign posted on an easel in the lobby announcing a meeting that day of a group involved with the economics of veterinary medicine. The event was titled "Practice and Progress." In the upper right-hand corner of the sign was a yellow Post-it note that read PUT THIS UP IMMEDIATELY!

  And I pictured the person to whom that Post-it was directed—he or she who waited for orders from hotel management to put up cardboard signs for hotel meetings. And having received the orders, that person acted on them promptly, lest he or she lose the job and paycheck to someone who followed orders faster and better. So this person, whoever he or she was, would, upon receipt of the daily orders, position the poster on the easel in the center of the hotel lobby where all could see it, especially those involved with the organization on the economics of veterinary medicine.

  And he or she, consciously or unconsciously, would also leave the yellow Post-it in the upper right-hand corner as a sign, however small, that he or she existed at all.

  Once I had pictured this person, I knew who I was.

  On Aristocracy

  In 1993, on assignment for Vanity Fair, I went to Sudan with Sabastiao Salgado, the great photographer of human suffering, to write about the "lost boys"—those who had fled their villages in the north to escape the Khartoum government soldiers. Over 100,000 of these boys had made a biblical trek through the relentless heat, the semi-desert cold, the swollen rivers. They had eluded the animals that hunted them, and they
had survived disease and famine. Salgado and I came to a spot near Nattinga where about four hundred boys were beginning to set up camp. They were searching for water and building their tukuls, or huts, when we arrived—two white men who might have dropped in from Mars. But when they saw us, they stopped whatever else they were doing and made two beds for us out of kam, a very hard wood that the Nuer use for spears. They made us beds, and they made us a table, and they made sure that we, their guests, were taken care of. At night they played music on a handmade lyre, a rabala, and they gathered round us to tell folktales, by flashlight, in the cold darkness.

  When anyone asks me if I have ever met a true aristocrat, I tell them this story.

  What Bothers Me

  Why, in "This Little Piggy Went to Market," which is a mere five lines long, do two lines end in "home."

  Why do priests, ministers, and rabbis only get together in jokes?

  Where exactly is Magnesia?

  Are members of the Hammond family organ donors?

  Who was Absorbine Sr.?

  Is there an illegal pad? Tell me there's an illegal pad.

  E I E I O?

  Advice to Those About to Acquire a Rembrandt

  Always look at it as it might appear in its average moments—not as it might glow in the light-dance of the fireplace or burn from within on a fall Sunday morning when the amalgamation of the sun's rays blasts red upon those fat Dutch cheeks or as you would make it glow when you return home flushed with one victory or another, or with wine. None of that.

  Rather think: What will this Rembrandt look like at 2:45 on a February afternoon when you have run out of toilet paper and the roof leaks and a horse has just kicked in your kitchen door for the fun of it. And when there's a dead squirrel stuck high in the chimney. Consider moments such as these, when you are about to acquire your Rembrandt.