Thomas Murphy by Roger Rosenblatt Read Free Book Online Page A

the dry cleaner. The one on Eighty-seventh and Columbus is reliable, and the people are pleasant. Dry-cleaning is opposed to wet cleaning, which you can do yourself in a washing machine, followed by a dryer. (You can distinguish the washer from the dryer by the large cylinder in the center of the former.) After Oona, when I had to do all the washing myself, I found I was pretty able with a washing machine. Once in a while, I toss in too much liquid Tide, which adds a stickiness to the clothing, and occasionally I forget the Bounce, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In the beginning, I had a little trouble doing the sheets and towels because I didn’t know how long it took to dry them. But I’m okay now, especially with pj’s, skivvies, T-shirts, and socks. I make a mistake from time to time and include a dress shirt with the wash, giving the shirt that wrinkled look the Gap creates deliberately. No biggie, as the kids say. I’ve had only one real mishap, but I learned from experience. Last summer I bought a suit that said Wash ’n’ Dry on the label. I figured that meant it did not need dry-cleaning, and I further surmised that I could save a step in the washing process by wearing thesuit in the shower, and soaping myself up and rinsing off. I used Oona’s hair dryer after that, but the suit was still damp when I wore it out on the street. I won’t do that again. Live and learn.
    THOMAS MURPHY ON DREAMING FOR ONESELF AND OTHERS
    Dream up, not down. Up. Tyrants dream down, businessmen dream laterally, poets dream up. That’s how you can remember it. Dream up.
    DREAM WAY UP, especially on a day when Moses comes walking and talking on Seventy-ninth Street. When something like this happens, I don’t know about you, but I listen. Prophets like Moses don’t come along every day, after all, and they don’t grow on trees, though that would be fun to picture. The old guy shows up every five thousand years or so, that’s about it, and he doesn’t dawdle or hang around forever, either. Which is to say it would be pigheaded, plain foolish, not to take advantage of the moment to hear whatever he has to tell us.
    He appears to wear a raggy bathrobe and old mules on his feet. I imagine he knows that, and realizes he might be taken for just one more of the hundreds of New York nutcases—the Broadway Viking and countless biblical shouters who tour the city spouting doomsday predictions. But one close look at our man, and it is clear that his robe is of the finest ancient silk, a dazzle of blues and greens, and his sandals are the desert itself.
    I have much to ask him. Everyone does, for he already has drawn quite a crowd. We move in a scrum on Seventy-ninth, west from Amsterdam, peppering him with questions. Will the world go on? Do we have a future? What was Pharaoh really like? Did you see the face of God? He smiles and nods but does not break his stride. On God’s face, he says it was pleasant but severe, the face of a circuit judge. A turned-up nose, he says. And Pharaoh? Just a dumb prick. Smooth talker. And the future of the world? I ask (it was I who asked that question in the first place). Will we survive? Ah, says Moses. You must be an artist. Only artists ask dumbass questions like that. Well, says the prophet, the world will continue on for many centuries. You might have asked how it will continue, in what state of being. That’s a different matter.
    At this point, a cop with a red face and tapping a billy club on his open palm approaches our group. What’s all this? he asks. Various people pipe up. He’s Moses, they say. Well, Mr. Moses, he says, you are disturbing the peace. That’s what I do best, officer, says Moses. Be that as it may, says the cop, you have to move along.
    So our entourage continues west along Seventy-ninthStreet, past Broadway and heading for West End Avenue. I was afraid the prophet might have forgotten my question. But after a