Eric Larsen

EXCERPT FROM THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY

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CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER FOUR

.......... (In the spring of 1949, besides operating our farm, my father took a job, part time, substituting for another English instructor at Old College.

..........I was eight years old, and because 1949 was still one year before the Epoch of Walking was to begin ending in earnest, time still existed all around me: For a brief period longer, it would remain as omnipresent and nurturing as the air, and impossible for a person not to absorb.

..........Through this continued existence of time, certain aspects of richness in the world, and certain aspects of depth, continued for the time being to exist and to be a part of the normal experience of life. This richness, and this depth, were evident through the concomitant and continued existence everywhere of color, texture, mood, scent, implication, and feeling-through an entire wealth of qualities still resident in experience, although all too soon this wealth, also, would begin the irreversible process of disappearing forever.

..........At the base of Old College Hill, Christiania Avenue abruptly lost its name and turned simply into a one-way road curving up the steep east slope of the hill. Often enough, I rode there with my father on errands up to Old College. As the ascent began, I could look out the left window and see a limestone retaining wall sliding by only feet from my eyes; or I could look out the right window at a sheer drop, where the road was held in place by another retaining wall, this one below road level. After we'd crested the hill and made a hundred-and-eighty degree turn, I could look out the back across a broad vista of prairie rolling westward. Then, a moment later, as the car moved under tall trees, I could look out from any window and see sidewalks, lawns, and buildings-some of red brick, some of limestone, one of wood-that made me think, as I always did, of the hilltop campus as being a small separate town in itself.

..........(Late spring, a cloudless day, warm and still. It was finals week in the spring semester of 1949—near the end of the week, so that there were few students on the walkways or on the lawns reading, most having finished their exams and gone home.

..........My father had another errand to run-turning in his grades, meeting a student for a make-up exam, I don't know-that took him to First Hall. My sisters hadn't come along.

..........My mother and I stayed in the car outside First Hall as my father went up the stairs and in through the front door. The car was parked up fairly close to the west façade of the old building. My mother and I sat there looking at it, with its tall windows and high floors. If I put my head out and looked up, I could almost see the pointed bell tower and flagpole on the roof.

..........The windows were all open wide because of the day's warmth, and inside on the second floor you could see heads bowed forward as students worked on their exams. One of them sat close enough to the window so that he could rest an arm on the sill with his hand out in the air. Between the fingers of that hand he held a lit cigarette.

..........My mother laughed quietly and clucked her tongue in a mock-stern way that told me that she and my father had done the same thing themselves when they had been students at Old College in the late 1920's and early 1930's. "Well, he's breaking the rules," my mother said, but in a school-yard way, making it into a song and holding the last word through two falling tones.

...............Perhaps the instructor looked up, or came back into the room just then, because the student dropped his cigarette, letting it fall from the second floor window. And in that moment, in the time it took for the cigarette to drop from window to the ground, I saw into the past. I may not have known it at the time, but I did see, through layer after layer after layer, down into the past itself.

..........Things fit together and didn't fit together. In that brief moment, as the cigarette dropped through the sunlight, all time was one.

..........I leaned forward with my elbows on the seat-back in front of me and looked at my mother. Her hair was still perfectly black, and she wore it pulled back tightly, almost severely, and shaped into a bun. She had on a flowered shirt with the sleeves rolled loosely, and over it a faded pair of farmer's denim overalls with straps over the shoulders. On her feet were ankle-high boots with garden mud caked on them.

..........When my father went up the stairs and into First Hall, he'd had on wing-tip shoes, flannel slacks, a tie, light-blue shirt, and tweed jacket. At home, later that afternoon, he would have on a khaki shirt with the sleeves also rolled up, and khaki pants. He would have on boots like my mother's, but they would be caked not only with dried mud but also with manure from the barn.

..........I was eight; my mother was forty-two. Seventeen years before, in this same month and season, she had graduated from Old College, a year after my father. And twenty-two years earlier than that, in 1910, my great-aunt Marie had come to West Tree to be a professor. Fifty-six years before that, in 1854, First Hall had been built-at a time when there were no buildings on the west side of town beyond a shanty or two, when Christiania Avenue was a wagon trail and the wading pool didn't exist, or the esplanade, or the hospital, or its solarium, or Marie and Lutie's house, or its upstairs bathroom, or its back yard, or its garden tools in the shed, or my grandmother's house with its skis and bicycle pump in the basement and the tennis rackets in the storage space upstairs and the telephone on its table in the hall.

..........And the same was true going in the other direction as well: things that were going to exist after 1949 hadn't come into being yet or been imagined. At that moment in May of 1949, in our car, with my mother, in front of First Hall, during the time it took the cigarette to fall from the second floor window to the ground, I hadn't yet come upon my father sitting naked on the front lawn, hadn't yet visited Marie and Lutie's upstairs bathroom, hadn't yet begun to fear death or fire, hadn't yet begun hiding in the linen closet to escape my fear of death raining down from the skies, hadn't yet seen Professor Kampfer's cloud chamber, hadn't walked in a straight line from the hospital to my grandmother's house, hadn't discovered unexpectedly the unifying function of my penis, hadn't fallen in love with Marietta Streetfield, hadn't taken her up the Nordic ski jump, hadn't begun to receive even the very first of my perceptions that the world around me was diminishing inescapably into a phenomenon of absences rather than a phenomenon of presences, the first of my perceptions that history was coming to an end, that West Tree was beginning to disappear, that not even the forces of space and time, those forces that governed all things while remaining themselves impenetrable and ungovernable, would be sufficient to keep this last, terrible, and catastrophic thing-the annihilation from the face of the earth of life as I knew with absolute and fervid and uncompromising certainty it once had been-from occurring, from taking place, from happening.

>>READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY>>>

>>READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER TWO OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY>>>

>>READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER FOUR OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY>>>

>>(READ OR PRINT THE 19TH CENTURY EXCERPTS IN PDF FORMAT)>>>



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	EXCERPT FROM THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY *>>(READ OR PRINT THE 19TH CENTURY* EXCERPTS IN PDF FORMAT)>>> CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER FOUR** .......... (In the spring of 1949, besides operating our farm, my father took a job, part time, substituting for another English instructor at Old College. ..........I was eight years old, and because 1949 was still one year before the Epoch of Walking was to begin ending in earnest, time still existed all around me: For a brief period longer, it would remain as omnipresent and nurturing as the air, and impossible for a person not to absorb. ..........Through this continued existence of time, certain aspects of richness in the world, and certain aspects of depth, continued for the time being to exist and to be a part of the normal experience of life. This richness, and this depth, were evident through the concomitant and continued existence everywhere of color, texture, mood, scent, implication, and feeling-through an entire wealth of qualities still resident in experience, although all too soon this wealth, also, would begin the irreversible process of disappearing forever. . ..........At the base of Old College Hill, Christiania Avenue abruptly lost its name and turned simply into a one-way road curving up the steep east slope of the hill. Often enough, I rode there with my father on errands up to Old College. As the ascent began, I could look out the left window and see a limestone retaining wall sliding by only feet from my eyes; or I could look out the right window at a sheer drop, where the road was held in place by another retaining wall, this one below road level. After we'd crested the hill and made a hundred-and-eighty degree turn, I could look out the back across a broad vista of prairie rolling westward. Then, a moment later, as the car moved under tall trees, I could look out from any window and see sidewalks, lawns, and buildings-some of red brick, some of limestone, one of wood-that made me think, as I always did, of the hilltop campus as being a small separate town in itself. . ..........(Late spring, a cloudless day, warm and still. It was finals week in the spring semester of 1949—near the end of the week, so that there were few students on the walkways or on the lawns reading, most having finished their exams and gone home. ..........My father had another errand to run-turning in his grades, meeting a student for a make-up exam, I don't know-that took him to First Hall. My sisters hadn't come along. ..........My mother and I stayed in the car outside First Hall as my father went up the stairs and in through the front door. The car was parked up fairly close to the west façade of the old building. My mother and I sat there looking at it, with its tall windows and high floors. If I put my head out and looked up, I could almost see the pointed bell tower and flagpole on the roof. ..........The windows were all open wide because of the day's warmth, and inside on the second floor you could see heads bowed forward as students worked on their exams. One of them sat close enough to the window so that he could rest an arm on the sill with his hand out in the air. Between the fingers of that hand he held a lit cigarette. ..........My mother laughed quietly and clucked her tongue in a mock-stern way that told me that she and my father had done the same thing themselves when they had been students at Old College in the late 1920's and early 1930's. "Well, he's breaking the rules," my mother said, but in a school-yard way, making it into a song and holding the last word through two falling tones. ...............Perhaps the instructor looked up, or came back into the room just then, because the student dropped his cigarette, letting it fall from the second floor window. And in that moment, in the time it took for the cigarette to drop from window to the ground, I saw into the past. I may not have known it at the time, but I did see, through layer after layer after layer, down into the past itself. . ..........Things fit together and didn't fit together. In that brief moment, as the cigarette dropped through the sunlight, all time was one. . ..........I leaned forward with my elbows on the seat-back in front of me and looked at my mother. Her hair was still perfectly black, and she wore it pulled back tightly, almost severely, and shaped into a bun. She had on a flowered shirt with the sleeves rolled loosely, and over it a faded pair of farmer's denim overalls with straps over the shoulders. On her feet were ankle-high boots with garden mud caked on them. . ..........When my father went up the stairs and into First Hall, he'd had on wing-tip shoes, flannel slacks, a tie, light-blue shirt, and tweed jacket. At home, later that afternoon, he would have on a khaki shirt with the sleeves also rolled up, and khaki pants. He would have on boots like my mother's, but they would be caked not only with dried mud but also with manure from the barn. . ..........I was eight; my mother was forty-two. Seventeen years before, in this same month and season, she had graduated from Old College, a year after my father. And twenty-two years earlier than that, in 1910, my great-aunt Marie had come to West Tree to be a professor. Fifty-six years before that, in 1854, First Hall had been built-at a time when there were no buildings on the west side of town beyond a shanty or two, when Christiania Avenue was a wagon trail and the wading pool didn't exist, or the esplanade, or the hospital, or its solarium, or Marie and Lutie's house, or its upstairs bathroom, or its back yard, or its garden tools in the shed, or my grandmother's house with its skis and bicycle pump in the basement and the tennis rackets in the storage space upstairs and the telephone on its table in the hall. ..........And the same was true going in the other direction as well: things that were going to exist after 1949 hadn't come into being yet or been imagined. At that moment in May of 1949, in our car, with my mother, in front of First Hall, during the time it took the cigarette to fall from the second floor window to the ground, I hadn't yet come upon my father sitting naked on the front lawn, hadn't yet visited Marie and Lutie's upstairs bathroom, hadn't yet begun to fear death or fire, hadn't yet begun hiding in the linen closet to escape my fear of death raining down from the skies, hadn't yet seen Professor Kampfer's cloud chamber, hadn't walked in a straight line from the hospital to my grandmother's house, hadn't discovered unexpectedly the unifying function of my penis, hadn't fallen in love with Marietta Streetfield, hadn't taken her up the Nordic ski jump, hadn't begun to receive even the very first of my perceptions that the world around me was diminishing inescapably into a phenomenon of absences rather than a phenomenon of presences, the first of my perceptions that history was coming to an end, that West Tree was beginning to disappear, that not even the forces of space and time, those forces that governed all things while remaining themselves impenetrable and ungovernable, would be sufficient to keep this last, terrible, and catastrophic thing-the annihilation from the face of the earth of life as I knew with absolute and fervid and uncompromising certainty it once had been-from occurring, from taking place, from happening. >>READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY>>> >>READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER TWO OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY>>> >>READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER FOUR OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY>>> *>>(READ OR PRINT THE 19TH CENTURY* EXCERPTS IN PDF FORMAT)>>>**
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