The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (111 page)

     I am having a glimmering of understanding two, one a man and one a woman and they are very different from each other and with them are very many and a considerable number of them have been silly ones almost without any meaning in being almost not being themselves inside them to my feeling, being such very silly ones as to me almost not to be existing, being like funny things in dreaming and now they are to me connected with some who I am really understanding then having flavor of something as being a complete thing to them. How can there be existing a flavor when there is nothing to have the flavor, that is foolishness in talking, there are many who are often all their living thinking they are being this thing. These are a kind of them, I will tell about them. Now I am thinking of some who are not to themselves existing in a flavor they are not to themselves existing in a way as something they are realising, they have been to me very often so disconcerting, they were silly ones to my feeling, they are not silly ones to most every one knowing them, I am seeing a little now perhaps that they are existing.
     These then I am describing, I will keep only those just now in my feeling those having in them one kind of being not a mixture in them. I was describing the being in Alfred Hersland that made of him to me to very many knowing him a part of a being. He has in him only one kind of being but as I was telling pieces of it get separated off from other pieces of it by not being completely acting, flavors, reactions, by-products get disconnected and keeping on going in him and things get all disarranged in him so that this one is a part of a one in living, the bottom in him resisting and engulfing is not rich or thick or solid or ample or active enough in acting to make a complete being in my feeling in him, and always then that is there as being in him. These that to me in their living were silly ones not having any existing not from doing silly things but from there not being any connection between what they were seeing and doing and feeling and saying and always it all went on at once and kept on being all the being in them; these then are like this to me now, they are in a way of the flavor group which group as I was saying have it in them to be believing that flavor is existing without anything to be making a flavor without anything being a flavored thing. These then that I am now describing who were vague and silly ones often to my feeling pleasant ones often to my feeling, astonishing often to my feeling, disconcerting often to my feeling, these then live but they do not make themselves important to themselves in it. Those ones I have been understanding were to themselves important in the flavor living they were feeling in them and these then I came to understand by realising the bottom being in each one of them and sometime I will be giving a very interesting description of many kinds of these kinds of them who are to themselves living a flavor life in living, are to themselves only a flavor in their being, I have an interesting collection of these kinds of them and the being in them and passion and affection in them and the kind of flavor they are to themselves in themselves and the kind of flavor they are to every one to some one knowing them but all that very interesting collection I know in my living I will not be just now describing, very likely I will not describe them for some time yet as I am liking to think of describing them. These then these others I have commenced now describing are in a way connected with these these I have commenced now describing who are so vague and disconnected and puzzling and are saying and feeling and doing and seeing all at once and there is not any connection any one can be seeing and it is not in them as it is in some that bottom being in them is so slow in acting that other things in them are making confusion and bottom being never arrives in them to be doing anything, no these are different from these, everything in these is going at the same rate in them only the action is so vaguely in them that things in them do not keep in connection and these then are not to themselves inside them in the way of making themselves to themselves inside them to be themselves in them. These then live in a life but they do not make themselves important to themselves in it. One is at bottom a fairly dull not too stupid, fairly solemn, unthinking, believing, lethargic, not completely non-poignant resisting person, and this one is actively living doing all little things stubbornly because it is pleasant tasting and lively doing pleasant living in a vigorous interesting fairly delicately sensitive constant state of appreciation. The other one the woman is a practical, anarchistic, attacking, servant girl person not feeling any difference between being a dirty one or a clean one having ugly things or nice ones in anything near this one, having a need for seizing everything to use in a servant girl fashion and always this one is living a life of independently loving beauty in living having justness in appreciation and needing a delicate flavor in loving and not keep anything that does not want to be kept by this one. These two then to themselves are not really important inside them from either being in them, they are really actively living what I am calling the flavor living and passively living the other living. Olga who was Ida whom Alfred Hersland and Arragon knew once as I was saying is in a way like these only living in her is a very much more exciting occupation to herself and to a good many a little knowing her in her living. She was a stupid resisting, stagnant, dull fairly sensible one in bottom being and this being was so stagnant in her it is very hard ever to be really certain whether she was of the resisting or attacking kind of them but really she was of the resisting kind of them. This being as I am saying was stagnant being in her and as vapor there was in her a nervous almost crazy kind of asking every one to be a lover to her and this was in her and she was a substantially pretty good-hearted honest round one and so not any one can understand that there is never any history in any man ever knowing her when she is always so constantly asking every one to them to be a lover and to keep on making love to her and she was always then going on with them. This was living in her, this was being in her. To herself she was not living really in either way of her living, she was really living both of them and to herself inside her she was never certain that she was living in either one of them, in the two of them. The one she is actively living the nervous sexual asking to be object of all loving, the other one she is passively living. This then is the being and the living in Ida and so then there was not any history in the knowing of her in Mr. Arragon, in Alfred Hersland. A good many who were young laughed a good deal about her, many did not believe that any one could ever think they could want to have her and really there was never any history in any one's knowing her really, and she was a little confusing to herself sometimes then and very much a puzzle to very many others then. This is all I know now about her.
     This then is certain that not any one really was very important in the living of Alfred Hersland in his young living. As I was saying he knew a good many then, he was doing with them what he was doing then in his living, he knew a good many then and he was doing in his living with them what they were doing in their living then. I have described some of them. As I was saying the family of Madeleine Wyman were sometimes trying to be pleasant with him. The mother Mrs. Wyman could flatter him but she did not really flatter him and that was not an unpleasant thing to his feeling but he did not for that want to see her again. Sometimes he was quite a little with Madeleine Wyman's brother and her younger sister but not enough to be different really in him from knowing any other one in his living. The older Wyman daughter could be pleasant to him by taking an interest in him but that was only in him as making a little less flattering what her mother had left on him. Really there is not any use now remembering more about them for him. This was all young living in Alfred Hersland this I have been describing. There was more young living, of course there was a good deal more young living in him. There was young living in him, there was his being inside him, he lived the living of those he was then knowing and soon then he went to Bridgepoint to begin his middle living. He went there and then he came to making a living and to marrying Julia Dehning and to knowing a fair number of men and women.
     The Hissen relatives were glad to see him, it was very pleasant for them to see one of their sister's children, and to know really that the Gossols living was existing, really existing. They were pleasant cheerful quickly curious and always a little doubting and it was pleasant for them to see Alfred and to feel him and to ask him how his mother was and to hear him and to see that though he was a fairly tall one he looked a little like them and was very pleasant in liking them. The Hersland relatives too saw him and for a while he lived with his aunt and she was interested in him but it was not such a pleasant thing in her and at first he was very much with the Hissen men and women and he was a little tender with them. He liked being in Bridgepoint and he began studying and he played the violin a good deal then and he was with his relatives a good deal then and he began to know then some who knew them and others then and he was very nice then and he had a pleasant feeling of living in him then.
     It was very pleasant being in this Bridgepoint living, it was very pleasant to him to be seeing, as it is to Gossols' children, many relatives who knew him and had seen him when he was a baby and were thinking then in seeing him of his father and his mother and he was in them the only one, and it was very pleasant for him as it is for Gossols' children to hear the thunder cracking and the lightning shooting and the leaves piling up and then snow coming looking white and then dirty when he was looking up to see it falling and then it was pleasant for him to see skating and then to see a green spring beginning, it was a pleasant thing like it is to some to hear a cuckoo sounding and to be slowly convinced by some one that it is not a clock but a live bird calling. It is a pleasant thing to come somewhere and be having such a thing happen a very pleasant thing. Alfred had a pleasant feeling and with the Hissen men and women quite a pleasant tender feeling in him in his living and to them all then he was a pleasant one quite a very pleasant one and to himself inside him then he was pleasantly being with every one. He had in him then the feeling Hissen people naturally have in them and he was to them too then a tall one and coming from Gossols and being of them and it was pleasant and they were curious and they stayed around him and were touching him then to really feel him and he was of them and he was pleasant inside him and he was a little tall for them and he and they liked him and he was living with a Hersland aunt then and this was the beginning of Bridgepoint living in him.
     This was pleasant feeling in living that Alfred had then. This can come to those living in Gossols and knowing some and being happy enough in living and enjoying doing things and then such a one coming to many with a pleasant feeling of every one knowing every one and every one knowing that one and every one a little curious and remembering and touching that one to be interested in remembering and at the same time feeling that that one is a tall one, this is very pleasant to some who have been all their living living in Gossols, not at all pleasant to some who have not been living in Gossols, not at all pleasant to some who have been living all their living in Gossols, it was very pleasant feeling in Alfred as I have been saying.
     This is a comforting thing in being a great author inside one that always even with much lonely feeling and much sighing in one and even with not pleasantness inside any one just then when it is a very sombre burden then that one is beginning having coming saying that pleasant living is a pleasant thing and to be explaining how some are liking pleasant living. Not every one is liking pleasant living. Alfred as I was saying when he first came to Bridgepoint living was liking it very much that he was then in pleasant living and then he was a little being in love and that was then almost still pleasant living even though the Hersland aunt with whom he was living was trying to be interfering and was just a little breaking into for him the pleasantness of pleasant living he was having then. The Hissens were a little interfering then, were sometimes having hurt or angry feeling, but that was for him then not a part of not pleasant living. Certainly for quite some time Bridgepoint living was for him pleasant living. He had some loving in him then, he had some tender feeling in him then, he was liking music very well then, he had pleasant living in him then, he had aspiring in him then but it was not yet then come to be in him as something that was to be an active thing in him to make living for him in him. It was quite sometime later then that he met. Julia Dehning.
     Alfred of course in his feeling loving was feeling it differently in him at Bridgepoint than he had felt loving when he was in Gossols. Mostly until he met Julia Dehning he was not very seriously feeling loving, that was really true though of him, in Bridgepoint before he met Julia Dehning, the second year that he was living in Bridgepoint and studying he was really feeling loving in him, he wanted then to quit studying and earn a living in a business so that he could then soon be marrying and this was very troublesome then to his Hersland aunt with whom he was then staying who was not willing that he should be loving then to marrying and then Alfred's mother came to see him and she was supposed to stop him from marrying but really she was ready to let him and was ready to give presents to all of them and then it was over in him because the girl then was gone to another city and was writing then to him. One of the Hissens aunts, one who was married to a gentle Hissen man made fun of the girl then to Alfred and did it very often and did it very well then and did it with letters he showed her that the girl wrote to him and then his mother who had been a princess to the rest of the Hissen men and women, so she must be to them being herself to herself inside her then and having been living in Gossols to them, went home then and all the Hissens then helped Alfred to not want then to be marrying although then he was not being so much with them, he was not any longer then feeling full up in him with the pleasant living they had in them, he had not then any longer in him tender feeling pleasantly in him. He always liked them well enough all his living but they were not then at all filling him full up with pleasant feeling. He went on studying then, he came then to know more and more men and more and more women and three years later and then already perhaps his father was beginning the losing his great fortune and his mother was beginning completely weakening and Martha was beginning to have her trouble seriously in living and David his brother was coming to Bridgepoint too to do more studying, these things in the living in Gossols were, not then really important in Alfred Hersland when he was coming then to know Julia Dehning, Gossols living was inside him then pretty completely not any more in him, Hissen living was not then any more in him, he always had his own being in him he had now pretty completely his own living in him in a way now a little he was not quite doing in his living what every one near him was doing, he was not doing then in his living, whatever he was doing with them. This then is really completely then beginning of middle living in Alfred Hersland and this is to be now more regular history of him. There will soon be ever so much description of being in Julia Dehning and in every Dehning and now a little I will be telling a little more of beginning middle living in Alfred Hersland in his first beginning Bridgepoint living.