Wednesday, December 18th, 2002

​Ten years to the day after William Bond obtained the first photograph of Moon through a telescope in 1849, Francis Thompson was born in England. He first studied to be a priest - he was sent back home - and then to be a doctor - he gave up after six years of study, during which he became addicted to opium. Most often anthologized with but a single poem, "The Hound of Heaven." 

Thompson didn't live to celebrate his forty-eighth birthday - he died about a month before in 1907 (November 13). He wanted to be a poet - not a priest or a doctor. He did have a period of remarkable productivity and even freedom from his addiction when he was taken in by Wilfrid Meynell, the editor of a minor Catholic literary magazine called Merry England. One of his short ​poems is sported on T-shirts and often quoted - often without giving Thompson credit:

"Mistress of Vision"
All things by immortal power,
Near or far, Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.

That the seemingly most insignificant act has consequences for the universe is generally accepted science - it is, of course, a matter of how great the impact can possibly be. The genius of Thompson's poem is, of course, endowing the universe with consciousness and emotion -- the star is "troubled" when the flower is stirred. No few folk will have trouble with this - and dismiss Thompson's effort as the meandering of an opium head. I like the image. In fact, I think I'll make myself a t-shirt with the poem on it - giving Thompson credit, of course.

'Tis a glorious day in Dakota today, kola - the ground is white with virgin snow this early morning on the banks of the Missouri. That snow cover brings me and many of my fellow Dakotans a great deal of comfort - there's supposed to be snow on December 18th, and if there weren't it doesn't bode well for the health of Dakota's citizens. Fact is, yesterday, when there was no snow, I felt absolutely miserable - I had the chills and was shaking so badly that I couldn't type - were that condition to have persisted, I would be in dire straights, indeed, because I think with my fingers more than I could possibly express myself by speaking. I awoke early this morning feeling far better - it's the snow, friends, it's the snow. Naturally, I was concerned that my fever and chills were some sort of indication of my final hours, but it was probably only a touch of the flu - whatever, the snow has cured me!

I leave you today, my friends, with Thompson's "To a Snowflake" - with the admission that his word choice may be a bit pretentious at times - but, still and all, not a bad poem, at all:

WHAT heart could have thought you? --
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapor? --
"God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapor,
To lust of His mind --
Thou could'st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost."

Well, perhaps Francis had been nipping on the laudanum when he wrote the poem. And if any of you, my friends, understand the line "to lust of His mind" in reference to God shaping the snowflake, please let me know. Be well, kola. Take care of each other. If you languish somewhere that doesn't have the glorious snow cover Dakota enjoys this morning, take special care - it just ain't healthy not to have snow on December 18th.

Ev Albers

Tuesday, December 17th, 2002

Dear kola --

I’m beginning with a request. I’m thinking of calling the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Would any of you who know someone who has be treated by them Web site here please drop me an email. They apparently have done good things for some people turned down by Mayo for operations.

Fifteen years ago on this date in 1987, the French novelist, essayist, and short story writer Marguerite Yourcenar died in Northeast Harbor, Maine. The first woman elected to the Academie Française (1980), the exclusive French academy limited to 40 members, Yourcenar was granted special dual citizenship by the president of France because she had become an American citizen. Born in 1903, she lost her mother shortly after her birth. She began writing as a teenager. Independently wealthy by her 30s because of an inheritance from her father, Mechel de Crayencour, Marguerite moved to the United States at the outbreak of World War II and lived with her partner, Grace Frick, who translated her most famous work, the monumental Hadrian’s Memories (1951), a fictional reconstruction of the life of the second-century Roman Emperor offered as an autobiography written by Hadrian to his grandson, Marcus Aurelius. What Marguerite Yourcenar called a “psychological novel and meditation on history” has not been out of print since its publication in translation fifty years ago.

Hadrian is sixty, and he knows that he is dying. Early on, Hadrian explains what he is trying to do in his autobiography:

Begin Yourcenar Quote, Hadrian’s Memoirs

Little by little this letter, begun in order to tell you of the progress of my illness, has become the diversion of a man who no longer has the energy necessary for continued application to affairs of state; it has become, in fact, the written meditation of a sick man who holds audience with his memories. I propose now to do more than this: I have formed a project for telling you about my life. To be sure, last year I composed an official summary of my career, to which my secretary Phlegon gave his name. I told as few lies therein as possible; regard for public interest and decency nevertheless forced me to modify certain facts. The truth which I intend to set forth here is not particularly scandalous, or is so only to the degree that any truth creates a scandal. I do not expect your seventeen years to understand anything of it. I desire, all the same, to instruct you and to shock you as well. Your tutors, whom I have chosen myself, have given you this severe education, well supervised and too much protected, perhaps; from it I hope that eventually great benefit will accrue both to you and to the State. I offer you here, in guise of corrective, a recital stripped of preconceived ideas and of mere abstract principles; it is drawn wholly from the experience of one man, who is myself. I am trusting to this examination of facts to give me some definition of myself, and to judge myself, perhaps, or at the very least to know myself better before I die. Like everyone else I have at my disposal only three means of evaluating human existence: the study of self, which is the most difficult and most dangerous method, but also the most fruitful; the observation of our fellowmen, who usually arrange to hide their secrets from us, or to make us believe that they have secrets; and books, with the particular errors of perspective to which they inevitably give rise. I have read nearly everything that our historians and poets have written, and even our story-tellers, although the latter are considered frivolous; and to such reading I owe perhaps more instruction than I have gathered in the somewhat varied situations of my own life. The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.

But books lie, even those that are most sincere. The less adroit, for lack of words and phrases wherein they can en-close life, retain of it but a flat and feeble likeness. Some, like Lucan, make it heavy, and encumber it with a solemnity which it does not possess; others, on the contrary, like Petronius, make life lighter than it is, like a hollow, bouncing ball, easy to toss to and fro in a universe without weight. The poets transport us into a world which is vaster and more beautiful than our own, with more ardor and sweetness, different therefore, and in practice almost uninhabitable. The philosophers, in order to study reality pure, subject it to about the same transformations as fire or pestle make substance undergo: nothing that we have known of a person or of a fact seems to subsist in those ashes or those crystals to which they are reduced. Historians propose to us systems too perfect for explaining the past, with sequence of cause and effect much too exact and clear to have been ever entirely true; they rearrange that dead, unresisting material, but I know that even Plutarch will never recapture Alexander. The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up for sale morsels of meat attractive to flies. I should take little comfort in a world without books, but reality is not to be found in them because it is not there whole.

Direct observation of man is a method still less satisfactory, limited as it frequently is to the cheap reflections which human malice enjoys. Rank, position, all such hazards tend to re-strict the field of vision for the student of mankind: my slave has totally different facilities for observing me from what I possess for observing him, but his means to do so are as limited as my own. Every morning for twenty years, old Euphorion has handed me my flask of oil and my sponge, but my knowledge of him ends with his acts of service, and his knowledge of me ends with my bath; any effort on the part of either emperor or slave to learn more straightway produces the effect of an indiscretion. Almost everything that we know about anyone else is at second hand. If by chance a man does confess, he pleads his own cause and his apology is made in advance. If we are observing him, then he is not alone. They have reproached me for liking to read the police reports of Rome, but I learn from them, all the time, matter for amaze-ment; whether friends or suspects, familiars or persons un-known, these people astound me; and their follies serve as excuse for mine. Nor do I tire of comparing the clothed and the unclothed man. But these reports, so artlessly detailed, add to my store of documents without aiding me in the least to render a final verdict. That this magistrate of austere appearance may have committed a crime in no way permits me to know him better. I am henceforth in the presence of two phenomena instead of one, the outer aspect of the magistrate and his crime.

As to self-observation, I make a rule of that, if only W come to terms with that individual with whom I must five up to my last day, but an intimacy of nearly sixty years' standing leaves still many chances for error. When I seek deep within me for knowledge of myself what I find is obscure, internal, unformulated, and as secret as any complicity. A more impersonal approach yields informations as cool and detached as the theories which I could develop on the science of numbers: I employ what intelligence I have to look from above and afar upon my life, which accordingly becomes the life of another. But these two procedures for gaining knowledge are difficult, and require, the one, a descent into oneself, the other, a departure from self. Out of inertia I tend, like everyone else, to substitute for such methods those of mere habit, thus conceiving of my life partly as the public sees it, with judgments ready-made, that is to say poorly made, like a set pat-tern to which an unskillful tailor laboriously fits the cloth which we bring him. All this is equipment of unequal value; the tools are more or less dulled; but I have no others: it is with them that I must fashion for myself as well as may be some conception of my destiny as man.

When I consider my life, I am appalled to find it a shapeless mass. A hero's existence, such as is described to us, is simple; it goes straight to the mark, like an arrow. Most men like to reduce their lives to a formula, whether in boast or lament, but almost always in recrimination; their memories obligingly construct for them a clear and comprehensible past. My life has contours less firm. As is often the case with other men, it is what I have not been which defines me, perhaps, most aptly: a good soldier, but not a great warrior; a lover of art, but not the artist which Nero thought himself to be at his death; capable of crime, but not laden with it. I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives. They are our poles, or our antipodes. I have occupied each of the extremes in turn, but have not kept to any one of them; life has always made me move away. And nevertheless neither can I boast, like some plowman or worthy carter, of a middle-of-the-road existence.

The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance. I strive to retrace my life to find in it some plan, following a vein of lead, or of gold, or the course of some subterranean stream, but such devices are only tricks of perspective in the memory. From time to time, in an encounter or an omen, or in a particular series of happenings, I think that I recognize the working of fate, but too many paths lead nowhere at all, and too many sums add up to nothing. To be sure, I perceive in this diversity and disorder the presence of a person; but his form seems nearly always to be shaped by the pressure of circumstances; his features are blurred, like a figure reflected in water. I am not of those who say that their actions bear no resemblance to them. Indeed, actions must do so, since they alone give my measure, and are the sole means of engraving me upon the memory of men, or even upon my own memory (and since perhaps the very possibility of continuing to express and modify oneself by action may constitute the real difference between the state of the living and of the dead). But there is between me and these acts which compose me an indefinable hiatus, and the proof of this separation is that I feel constantly the necessity of weighing and explaining what I do, and of giving account of it to myself. In such an evaluation certain works of short duration are surely negligible; yet occupations which have extended over a whole lifetime signify just as little. For example, it seems to me as I write this hardly important to have been emperor.

Besides, a good three-quarters of my life escapes this definition by acts: the mass of my wishes, my desires, and even my projects remains nebulous and fleeting as a phantom; the remainder, the palpable part, more or less authenticated by facts, is barely more distinct, and the sequence of events is as confused as that of dreams. I have a chronology of my own which is wholly unrelated to anything based on the founding of Rome, or on the era of the Olympiads. Fifteen years with the armies have lasted less long than a single morning at Athens; there are peoples whom I have seen much of throughout my life whom I shall not recognize in Hades. Planes in space overlap likewise: Egypt and the Vale of Tempe are near, indeed, and I am not always in Tibur when I am here. Some-times my life seems to me so commonplace as to be unworthy even of careful contemplation, let alone writing about it, and is not at all more important, even in my own eyes, than the life of any other person. Sometimes it seems to me unique, and for that very reason of no value, and useless, because it cannot be reduced to the common experience of men. No one thing explains me: neither my vices nor my virtues serve for answer; my good fortune tells more, but only at intervals, with-out continuity, and above all, without logical reason. But the mind of man is reluctant to consider itself as the product of chance, or the passing result of destinies over which no god presides, least of all himself. A part of every life, even a life meriting very little regard, is spent in searching out the reason for its existence, its starting point, and its source. My own failure to discover these things has sometimes inclined me toward magical explanations, and has led me to seek in the frenzies of the occult for what common sense has not taught me. When all the involved calculations prove false, and the philosophers themselves have nothing more to tell us, it is excusable to turn to the random twitter of birds, or toward the distant mechanism of the stars.

End Hadrian’s Memoirs Early Quote

Begin Hadrian’s Memoirs, Quote from Last Chapter

. . . .

I have done all that is supposed to be done. I have waited, and sometimes I have prayed. Audivi voces divinas. . . . The light-headed Julia Balbilla believed that she heard the mysterious voice of Memnon at dawn; I have listened for the night's faintest sounds. I have used the unctions of oil and essence of roses which attract the shades; I have set out the bowl of milk, the handful of salt, the drop of blood, supports of their former existence. I have lain down on the marble pavement of the small sanctuary, where the light of the stars made its way through the openings of the wall, producing reflections here and there, strange, pale gleams. I have recalled to myself the orders whispered by the priests in the ear of the dead, and the itinerary written on the tomb: And he will recognize the way. . . . And the guardians of the threshold will let him pass.... And he will come and go around those who love him for millions of days....Sometimes, after long intervals, I have thought to feel the slight stir of an approach, a touch as light as the contact of eyelashes and warm as the hollow of a hand. And the shade of Patroclus appears at Achilles' side. . . . I shall never know if that warmth, that sweetness, did not emanate simply from deep within me, like the last efforts of a man struggling against solitude and the cold of night. But the question, which arises also in the presence of our living loves, has ceased to interest me now: it matters little to me whether the phantoms whom I evoke come from the limbo of my memory or from that of another world. My soul, if I possess one, is made of the same substance as are the specters; this body with swollen hands and livid nails, this sorry mass almost half-dissolved, this sack of ills, of desires and dreams, is hardly more solid or consistent than a shade. I differ from the dead only in my faculty to suffocate some mo-ments longer; in one sense their existence seems to me more assured than my own. Antinous and Plotina are at least as real as myself.

Meditation upon death does not teach one how to die; it does not make the departure more easy, but ease is no longer what I seek. Little face, so willful and brooding, your sacrifice will have enriched not my life but my death. Death's approach re-establishes between us a kind of close complicity: the living beings who surround me, my devoted if sometimes importunate servitors, will never know how little the world interests the two of us now. I think with disgust of the doleful symbols of the Egyptian tombs: the hard scarab, the rigid mummy, the frog which signifies eternal parturition. To believe the priests, I have left you at the place where the separate elements of a being tear apart like a worn garment under strain, at that sinister crossroads between what was and what will be, and what exists eternally. It is conceivable, after all, that those notions are right, and that death is made up of the same confused, shifting matter as life. But none of these theories of immortality inspire me with confidence; the system of retributions and punishments makes little impression upon a judge well aware of the difficulties of judging. On the other hand, the opposite solution seems to me also too simple, the neat reduction to nothingness, the hollow void where Epicurus' disdainful laughter resounds.

I try now to observe my own ending: this series of experiments conducted upon myself continues the long study begun in Satyrus' clinic. So far the modifications are as external as those to which time and inclement weather subject any edifice, leaving its architecture and basic material unaltered; I sometimes think that through the crevices I see and touch upon the indestructible foundation, the rock eternal. I am what I always was; I am dying without essential change. At first view the robust child of the gardens in Spain and the ambitious officer once more in his tent, shaking the snow-flakes from his shoulders, seem as thoroughly obliterated as I shall be when I shall have gone through the funeral fire; but they are still there; I am inseparable from those parts of myself. The man who howled his grief upon a dead body has not ceased to wail in some corner of my being, in spite of the superhuman, or perhaps subhuman calm into which I am entering already; the voyager immured within the ever sedentary invalid is curious about death because it spells departure. That force which once was I seems still capable of actuating several more lives, or of raising up whole worlds. If by miracle some centuries were suddenly to be added to the few days now left to me I would do the same things over again, even to committing the same errors; I would frequent the same Olympian heights and even the same Infernos. Such a conclusion is an excellent argument in favor of the utility of death, but at the same time it inspires certain doubts as to death's total efficacity.

In certain periods of my life I have noted down my dreams; I have discussed their significance with priests and philosophers, and with astrologers. That faculty for dreaming, though deadened for many years, has been restored to me in the course of these months of agony; the incidents of my waking hours seem less real, and sometimes less irksome, than those of dream. If this larval and spectral world, where the platitudinous and the absurd swarm in even greater abund-ance than on earth, affords us some notion of the state of the soul when separated from the body, then I shall doubtless pass my eternity in regretting the exquisite control which our senses now provide, and the adjusted perspectives offered by human reason.

And nevertheless I sink back with a certain relief into those insubstantial regions of dream; there I possess for a moment some secrets which soon escape me again; there I drink at the sacred springs. The other day I was in the oasis of Ammon, on the afternoon of the lion hunt. I was in high spirits; everything went as in the time of my former vigor: the wounded lion collapsed to the ground, then rose again; I pressed forward to strike the final blow. But this time my rearing horse threw me; the horrible, bleeding mass of the beast rolled over me, and claws tore at my chest; I came to myself in my room in Tibur, crying out for aid. More recently still I have seen my father, though I think of him rather seldom. He was lying on his sick bed in a room of our house in Italica, where I ceased to dwell soon after his death. On his table he had a phial full of a sedative potion which I begged him to give me. I awoke before he had time to reply. It sur-prises me that most men are so fearful of ghosts when they are so ready to speak to the dead in their dreams.

Presages are also increasing: from now on everything seems like an intimation and a sign. I have just dropped and broken a precious stone set in a `ring; my profile had been carved thereon by a Greek artist. The augurs shake their heads gravely, but my regret is for that pure masterpiece. I have come to speak of myself, at times, in the past tense: in the Senate, while discussing certain events which had taken place after the death of Lucius, I have caught myself more than once mentioning those circumstances, by a slip of the tongue, as if they had occurred after my own death. A few months ago, on my birthday, as I was mounting the steps of the Capitol by litter, I found myself face to face with a man in mourning; furthermore, he was weeping, and I saw my good Chabrias turn pale. At that period I still went about and was able to continue performing in person my duties as high pontiff and as Arval Brother, and to celebrate myself the ancient rites of this Roman religion which, in the end, I prefer to most of the foreign cults. I was standing one day before the altar, ready to light the flame; I was offering the gods a sacri-fice for Antoninus. Suddenly the fold of my toga covering my brow slipped and fell to my shoulder, leaving me bare-headed; thus I passed from the rank of sacrificer to that of victim. Verily, it is indeed my turn.

My patience is bearing fruit; I suffer less, and life has become almost sweet again. I have ceased to quarrel with physicians; their foolish remedies have killed me, but their presumption and hypocritical pedantry are work of our making: if we were not so afraid of pain they would tell fewer lies. Strength fails me now for the angers of old; I know from a reliable source that Platorius Nepos, for whom I have had great affection, has taken advantage of my confidence; I have not tried to confound him with the evidence, nor have I ordered a punishment. The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods of war; the words humanity, liberty, and justice will here and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and other pediments will arise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality.

If ever the barbarians gain possession of the world they will be forced to adopt some of our methods; they will end by resembling us. Chabrias fears that the pastophor of Mithra or the bishop of Christ may implant himself one day in Rome, replacing the high pontiff. If by ill fate that day should come, my successor officiating in the vatical fields along the Tiber will already have ceased to be merely the chief of a gang, or of a band of sectarians, and will have become in his turn one of the universal figures of authority. He will inherit our palaces and our archives, and will differ from rulers like us less than one might suppose. I accept with calm these vicissitudes of Rome eternal.

The medicaments have no effect on me now; my limbs are more swollen than ever, and I sleep sitting up instead of reclining. One advantage of death will be to he down again on a bed. It is now my turn to console Antoninus. I remind him that death has long seemed to me the most fitting solution of my own problem; as always, my wishes are finally being fulfilled, but in a slower and more indirect way than I had expected. I can be glad that illness has left me lucid to the end, and I rejoice to have escaped the trials of old age, with its hardening and stiffening, its aridity and cruel absence of desire. If my calculations are exact, my mother died at about the age which I am today; my life has already been half again as long as that of my father, who died at forty. Everything is prepared: the eagle entrusted with bearing the emperor's soul to the gods is held in reserve for the funeral ceremony. My mausoleum, on top of which they are just now planting the cypresses, designed to form a black pyramid high in the sky, will be completed about in time to receive the ashes while yet still warm. I have requested Antoninus to see that Sabina is transported there later on; at her death I did not have divine honors conferred upon her, as was after all her due; it would not be bad to have that neglect repaired. And I would like the remains of Aelius Caesar to be placed at my side. They have taken me to Baiae; in this July heat the journey has been an ordeal, but I breathe better near the sea. On the shore the waves make their murmur of rustling silk and whispered caress. I can still enjoy the pale rose light of the long evenings. But I hold these tablets now only to occupy my hands, which in spite of me agitate. I have sent for An-toninus; a courier dispatched at full speed has left for Rome. Sound of the hoofs of Borysthenes, gallop of the Thracian Rider...

The little group of intimates presses round my bed. Chabrias moves me to pity: tears ill become the wrinkles of age. Celer's handsome face is, as always, strangely calm; he ap-plies himself steadily to nursing me without letting anything be seen of what might add to a patient's anxiety or fatigue. But Diotimus is sobbing, his head buried in the cushions. I have assured his future; he does not like Italy; he will be able to realize his dream, which is to return to Gadara and open a school of eloquence there with a friend; he has nothing to lose by my death. And nevertheless the slight shoulder moves convulsively under the folds of his tunic; on my fingers I feel those tender tears. To the last, Hadrian will have been loved in human wise.

Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again. . . . Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes. . . .

Begin Hadrian’s Memoirs, Quote from Last Chapter

End Hadrian’s Memoirs, Quote from Last Chapter

Absolutely extraordinary. Pat Sanborn, who taught courses in general humanities at the University of North Dakota and who heard high praise for Yourcenar’s book from my friend Clay Jenkinson, who, as a consultant to the UND humanities department, highly recommended that they read her incredible book.Click below to read more about the book.

Be well, kola. Take care of each other

Ev Albers

Monday, December 16th, 2002

A couple of guys who knew something about music were born on December 16th - well, more than a couple, most likely, but the two I refer to are Ludwig von Beethoven (1770, dead at age fifty-seven and a few months) and Turk Murphy, Melvin Edward Alton Murphy (born in California in 1915, lived until 1987 and played with his band in San Francisco a couple of days before he died of cancer).

My friends know of my love for Beethoven's Ninth, but today I want to honor Turk Murphy, whom I saw live in one of his permanent places in San Francisco in the late 1970s with my friends Jean Waldera, one of the first members of the Humanities Council from Dickinson State where she taught theater, and Don McCaffrey, who taught film at the University of North Dakota. We were there to give advice and consent on a film project, Northern Lights, one of three films made by filmmakers John Hanson and Robert Nilsson, both of whom have strong Dakota ties. The feature film went on to win the "Golden Camera Award" for "Best First Feature" at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979. It's the story of the North Dakota Nonpartisan League, that successful political revolt beginning in 1915 that resulted in institutions that are still around -- a state-owned bank and wheat-milling elevator and other vestiges of an attempt by Dakota farmers to take control of their economic destiny. Anyway, there we were in San Francisco - 'twas Jean Waldera, bless her heart, who knew about Turk Murphy and suggested we go see him.

Ah, kola, 'twas grand - even though some guy had a heart attack and died during the gig. Today is a Turk instead of a Ludwig day - for whatever reason.

I particularly remember that night at Turk's place not so much because someone died during one of the sets - and I have to say that there are probably a lot worse places to be when it happens than listening to New Orleans jazz played by the likes of Turk Murphy and his boys - but because my dear friends looked out for me so carefully. At one point, a reasonably attractive woman came over and asked me to dance (well, it was pretty dark in Turk's place). Both Jean and Don arched their eyebrows considerably - and questioned me closely when I got back. They wanted to know if she was a "professional."

"I don't know," I said, "but she sure could dance." Guess you can take the boy from Hannover Township in Oliver County, North Dakota, out of the country, but you can't take the country out of him. Might have had something to do with the weest little drinks consumed that night as well - but I had no idea what they were talking about. I prefer to think, of course, that the woman I danced with was simply attracted to me because of my general good looks and exuberance for the music. At any rate, she gave no indication that she was interested in anything other than dancing to a Turk tune.

Come to think on it - I beginning to be of the mind that Turk's music may be more consoling than Beethoven's this third day of the Halcyon Days, 2002.

Hope it's a good for you . . . and hope you hear some music you like and have a dance or two if you've a mind to . . .

Ev Albers

Sunday, December 15th, 2002

Today is the birthday of Maxwell Anderson, the playwright born in 1888 in Pennsylvania. North Dakota claims Anderson because he graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1911 and lived to see his seventieth birthday and then some before dying in Connecticut in 1959. Anderson wrote many plays in verse - including a couple of historical dramas about English queens. He teamed up with the German composer Kurt Weill to do the musical Knickerbocker Holiday. Anderson was a most-earnest quester for social justice and a critic of the poverty of our materialistic society - he wouldn't much like the getting-and-spending Christmas season of the turn of the twenty-first century - not that it's anything new, but we do seem to be going at it with a special vengeance, as though every American were personally responsible for saving the American economy by buying as much stuff our friends and loved ones don't need in the next week or so - these halcyon days of December.

Yes, 'tis truly another glorious beauuuuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota - once more the temperatures will soar - but there'll be a bit of wind and maybe the weest bit of snow tonight if we're lucky.

'Twas not a great day for the Hunkpapa Lakota at Standing Rock this day, December 15th, one hundred and twelve years ago, 1890. This is the day that the greatest spiritual leader ever born with the borders of what is now Dakota died at the hands of Indian police sent out to arrest him. No one is sure when Sitting Bull was born - 1831, 1832, 1834, or 1837 - but it likely was the earliest date at village on the Missouri River just south of the present-day North Dakota/South Dakota border. Sitting Bull was eventually unceremoniously wrapped in canvas and dumped into a box and buried - not in consecrated ground, of course, because he was not Christian. The Indian police killed in the scuffle with Sitting Bull's band would have objected under any circumstance. Sitting Bull's remains lay in Fort Yates until 1953 when a group led by the son of Sitting Bull's brother-in-law robbed the Fort Yates grave and took what they thought were Sitting Bull's remains to South Dakota - we're not sure whether the thieves got all or even part of Sitting Bull's remains - so he could still be at Fort Yates, or he could be in Mobridge, or maybe part of his remains are in both places.

In his own time, Sitting Bull was not mourned by many - although when a Canadian Mountie, James M. Walsh, heard about his death later in December, he wrote about the leader who had lived among the Canadians in "Grandmother's Land" for many years after the Battle of the Little Big Horn":

Begin Walsh Quote
I am glad to learn that Bull is relieved of his miseries even if it took the bullet to do it. A man who wields such power as Bull once did, that of a King, over a wild spirited people cannot endure abject poverty slavery and beggery without suffering great mental pain and death is a relief . . . Bull's confidence and belief in the Great Spirit was stronger than I ever saw in any other man. He trusted to him implicitly . . . History does not tell us that a greater Indian than Bull ever lived, he was the Mohommar of his people the law and king maker of the Sioux.
End Walsh Quote

Sitting Bull traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody in 1885 as part of his Wild West Show - and he made a lot of money - considering the time - for doing so -- $50 a week, a bonus of $125, and the exclusive right to sell his photographs and autographs. Sitting Bull couldn't understand how a society as rich as ours had so many people that were poor - while on tour, he often gave money to the hungry and homeless, especially the children.

Sitting Bull - for all of his eloquent statements about the poverty of white society and his preference for the older way of life - understood that the old way would never return - he did not discourage his band from dancing the Ghost Dance, but he really didn't believe that the whites would disappear and the buffalo would return. Upon his return from Canada and his surrender to United States forces, Sitting Bull said,

Begin Sitting Bull Quote
White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion.
End Sitting Bull Quote

Even then, years before his death -- he knew it was not to be - but Sitting Bull was always one to hold out hope that things could be the way they were, the way they were supposed to be.

We remember him today - this second halcyon day of 2002 - and I remember you, kola - take care of each other and enjoy this glorious day wherever you are - for your spirit can be free even if you are imprisoned on a farm or in a town, and Mountie Walsh was wrong - up until his last moment of life, Sitting Bull was testimony to the notion that where there's life, there's hope.

Ev Albers

Saturday, December 14th, 2002

Today is the beginning of Halcyon Days - well, maybe it's tomorrow - I have problems keeping it straight. I do know that the winter solstice is on December 21 at 7:14 P.M., central time, God's own time, of course, cause that's the time 'tis in Dakota. Halcyon Days are the seven days before and after the winter solstice, named for the goddess Alcyon, daughter of Aeolus, the wind king. You will remember that she married Ceyx, son of the Morning Star. The two were so happy that they compared themselves to Hera and Zeus - and the chief goddess and god were less than amused. So, when Ceyx went off to see an oracle, Zeus and Hera had the gods cook up a storm. Ceyx was washed off his ship and drowned. Alcyon in her grief threw herself into the sea to join her husband in death. But, a quiet do-gooding god (he or she remains anonymous) took pity on the two and changed them into kingfishers. The female carries her dead mate out to sea, the winds become calm, and she builds a nest and lays her eggs in it. There's fourteen days of calm.

There's more about the story from Aristotle himself, who says that the kingfishers, always eager for the weest challenge, deliberately chose the dead of winter to bring their young. They are aided by the Dove-goddess Alcyone, the leader of the seven sisters of the Pleaides, who calms the wintry seas for seven days so the kingfisher can built her nest and for a another seven so she can lay and hatch five eggs.

We now use the phrase "halcyon days" to mean most any old good times over a sustained period - or in nostalgic reflection of a selectively remembered better past, the "golden years." Or we look forward to those better days ahead. For me, kola, the halcyon days are now - that anonymous god who took pity on Alcyone and Ceyx has managed to make the weather perfect - even here in Minnesota (better yet in Dakota) this 14th day of December 2002. Coffee tastes great this morning, my body feels comfortably tranquil around my soul, and my mind is at ease. It's all because of friends like you, kola, who sustain me in a way greater than the anonymous do-gooding god - thank you, kola for your words and concern and the spirit-healing energy you send my way. I am learning the nature of grace itself - you extend to me that which I've done nothing to deserve.

Be well, kola. Thank you for these halcyon days
Ev Albers

Friday, December 13th, 2002

​Friday, the 13th of December - 'tis the weest frosty in Rochester, Minnesota, this morn, but 'twill be a glorious day - not, of course, as grand as 'twill be in Dakota, but this is Minnesota, after all. Naturally, I have no reason why I awoke this morning humming Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" - but I was totally amazed when I learned by a bit of surfing this morning that Arlo released his gem on this very day in 1969! He wrote it a couple of years earlier, but he released it thirty-three years ago. It's grand, simply grand, as the Irish say. If you haven't taken a look or had a listen lately, here's the text:

Alice's Restaurant
By Arlo This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant.
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage. We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our's down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage."

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the police officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?" Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court. We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604." And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin' up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin' up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?" And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!" And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sergeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.

"Kids,this- piece- of- paper's- got- 47- words- 37- sentences- 58- words- we- wanna- know- details- of- the- crime- time- of- the- crime- and- any- other- kind- of- thing- you- gotta- say- pertaining- to- and- about- the- crime- I- want- to- know- arresting- officer's- name- and- any- other- kind- of- thing- you- gotta- say", and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"

I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud. I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired. So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

All right now.
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant

The point (well, one of them, at least) of Guthrie's great story is that one never knows when what seems a misfortune could be one of the best things that ever happened to us. And Friday the 13ths are not necessarily unlucky.

Arlo and his friends driving around with Alice's garbage reminds me of how lucky my spouse, Leslie is - every time we visited our son Albert for the six years he was a student at Moorhead State in eastern Minnesota, she gathered his accumulated trash - considerable, at times, because we sometimes didn't get to see him for a month or two, and my son was not one to remove his trash on his own - so his mother would gather his trash and go in search of a dumpster. Not once was she caught - in spite of the huge signs at the dumpsters behind hospitals and gas stations cautioning against dumping one's private garbage in quantity.

Well you may ask, what does my son's garbage and his mother's disposal of it have to do with anything? Well, for one thing, my son's wife, Bobbi, tells me that he actually takes out the garbage - so when we go visit them in Madison, Wisconsin, it won't be necessary for Leslie to go in search of public dumpsters. Fact is, I think that she probably misses the exciting challenge.

Beyond that, not much. 'Tis a great day to consider such small matters - and thinking about small matters is a great alternative to spending too much time on such big questions as "Just when am I going to die?" It's a lucky day, even if it's Friday the 13th, when one can let that matter take care of itself and be able to greet a great day with one's family --

ah, kola, this a great day to be aive. Be well and take care of each other. Don't worry about the garbage unless you're really of a mind to.

Ev Albers

Thursday, December 12th, 2002

​Well, kola, modern medicine has done what it can for me. The tenacious invader of my pancreas neither shrank nor detached - so there's no chance that the tumor can be removed. I received most aggressive chemo/radiation therapy available - resulting in checking spread to other organs, at least for the time being. So I am through at Mayo - any future treatment can be done in my home state of glorious Dakota - more chemo only when the cancer spreads.

For the time being, it's life as another precious day - so I'm going to have a cup of fresh coffee and a Christmas cookie and enjoy it.

It takes a long time to get not-so-good news at Mayo - hour upon hour of sitting in a small examination room - fortunately, I had with me Richard Russo's novel, Empire Falls, and, fortuitously, I had the last fifty pages for the beginning of the second hour of waiting. After that, I waded into Wittgenstein's Poker that in-depth account of the famous ten-minute argument between philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper in 1946 - a fascinating foray into biographical highlights of twentieth-century philosophers, including Bertrand Russell. Where else could I learn that Wittgenstein once said, "Don't try and shit higher than your arse"? It's there is the book by David Edmonds and John Eidnow.

Speaking of human excrement, it was Gustave Flaubert, born on this day, December 12th in 1821, who said, "I feel very old sometimes. . . . I carry on and would not like to die before having emptied a few more buckets of shit on the heads of my fellow men." Flaubert did not live to see sixty - he was fifty-eight when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The author of Madame Bovary lived with his mother and niece until he was fifty. He wrote, he said, not to teach or instruct, but to show life as it was - he believed that the novelist should be neutral. A melancholic man with many financial problems, Flaubert was less than a happy human most of the time.

Perhaps that's why he wanted to "empty a few more buckets" on his fellow humans - by which, he meant, of course, that he wanted to give his fellow humans a dose of reality instead of romantic nonsense.

I don't know how "romantic" the CNN special on White House Christmas decorations was - it aired this morning as we were waiting to go sit in the examination room and wait this morning - the Bush's dog Barney was wired with a mini-cam so we got a dog's eye view of the President's House in holiday splendor. I think that the First Lady said it would be posted on the White House site - yes, indeedy. 

Ah, kola, there's something delightfully out of joint in images of Barney Bush (that's what the dog is called at the official White House site) running through the White House still in mind when a kind and gentle surgeon tells me directly that there's nothing more the great Mayo can do for me.

What can be done you've already been doing, my kola - it's the prayers and concern of my family and friends like you that will keep around - who knows, I may be there to see what Barney Bush is up to next Christmas.

In the meantime, take care of each other, kola. Thank you all for your warm wishes and concern - because of friends like you, it's a great day to be alive. In fact, I feel so good that, unlike Flaubert, I have no desire whatsoever to dump anything on my fellow humans but good will.
​
Ev Albers

Tuesday, December 10th, 2002

​​I'm over in our poor sister state of Minnesota, where it's not quite as balmy as 'tis in Dakota, but it is indeed unseasonably warm - not as tropically torrid as 'tis on the Missouri River back home, but plenty warm - no need for an overcoat here in Rochester, where I do some tests at Mayo tomorrow and find out Thursday, the 12th, whether or not I'll be staying around to have at least part of my pancreas removed. It's been a long wait.

Driving here earlier today, my wife Leslie and I listened to former President Jimmy Carter give his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Kola, he was magnificent! Sometime soon, I expect that it will be on the Internet somewhere. If you find it before I do, please let me know.

In the meantime, take care, good friends - I will let you know what's happening here in Minnesota as soon as I find out.

Ev Albers

Sunday, December 8th, 2002

​Siddhartha Gautama had been traveling and studying with different spiritual teachers for six years before this day, December 8th, sometime in the 5th or 6th century B.C.E. - for six years since he began his quest to understand the meaning of life - especially life's hardships. The privileged prince had begun his study when he was twenty-nine. At age thirty-five, he still didn't have the answers. Then, on December 8th, he sat down beneath a pipal tree after breaking his fast and going off by himself from the group he was traveling with. He sat there for seven days and seven nights before awakening on the eighth day with answers. On that day, he became "The Enlightened One" - the Buddha. Might not be a bad idea, kola, to take a look at what Siddhartha Gautama discovered on this day 2500 or 2600 hundred years or so ago:

Four Noble Truths
1. All beings are subject to suffering. No one escapes . . . suffering is universal.
2. The cause of suffering is Ignorance. And Ignorance of oneself is the greatest Ignorance.
3. Ignorance, the cause of suffering, can be overcome, and
4. The way to overcome Ignorance is the Eightfold Path.

You well may be asking, what is the "Eightfold Path"?

You can find literally hundreds of version on the Internet. Of the eight "right" ways of understanding, thoughts, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and meditation, nothing is more difficult to us materialists 2500-2600 years later than the "right stuff," the "effort" needed to attain happiness and "nirvana" - it involves
(a) the endeavor to discard evil that has already arisen.
(b) the endeavor to prevent the arising of unrisen evil.
(c) the endeavour to develop that good which has already arisen.
(d) the endeavour to promote that good which has not already arisen.

In short, good intentions don't count for much. Buddhism is not an easy religion — it's to attaining spiritual truth what dry-land farming was in the 1930s in Dakota to making a living.

I’ve been thinking about life and death matters the weest bit of late – and about the remarkable way that Buddhist spirituals leaders and many followers of Buddhist traditions face the last days of their lives. I have no intention, by the way, of exiting anytime soon – or a moment before I absolutely have to – but I am interested in the graceful style of those who have done so with great dignity. In fact, one of my colleagues told me about a book on the subject:

Collected and edited by Sushila Blackman, the book is subtitled How Great Beings Die: Death Stories of Tibetan, Hindu, and Zen Masters. Among my favorite in the short entries is the description of the last day of Zen Master Taji of Japan. One of his disciples spent a half a day finding a special cake that his dying master liked. He brought it to him, and the master was chewing on a bit of it as he grew weaker. Asked if he had any last words, the master said, “My, but this cake is delicious!” Writes Blackman in the final sentence: “And with that he slipped away.”

There is a whole genre of poetry – Japanese death poetry, often in haiku – that centers on the final moments of life. Blackman includes the story of the great Basho who was asked for a death poem. He told his followers that he had been writing them all of his life, especially in the ten years before his final illness. But he had a dream the evening that he was asked for a specific poem – and he awoke with the words to the now-famous:

Sick, on a journey,
Yet over withered fields
Dreams wander on.

There are literally thousands of poems by dozens of different Japanese poets – here are two I particularly like:

by Zaishiki
Frost on grass:
a fleeting form
that is, and is not.

from Renseki
I cleansed the mirror
of my heart . . . now it reflects
the moon.

from Senseki
At last I am leaving:
in rainless skies, a cool moon . . .
pure is my heart

Ah, dear kola, ‘tis another glorious day in Dakota – once more, unseasonably warm. It will be a day of frantic getting and spending – Christmas and all that – for many North Dakotans. I’m going to start this fine Sunday morning by listening to three Tibetan monks – deep-voiced chanters who entered their monastery when they were five years old. I'm reminded of a short poem from that last collection by North Dakota’s gift to the millennia, Thomas Matthew McGrath:

“Cold Winter Night” from Death Song
We cannot see them
But even behind the mountain
The moon has friends.

Be well, kola – take care of each other – may the moon sit on your shoulder and the shoulders of your friends.

Ev Albers

Saturday, December 7th, 2002

Yes, I know it's the anniversary of the "day that will live in infamy" - Pearl Harbor. But I awoke early this morning thinking about a bad day much earlier than 1941 -at least for Cicero, who had his head and hands cut off today, December 7th, back in 43 B.C.E. The triumvirate of Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus displayed the parts of Cicero they had chopped off at the speaker's platform at the Forum in Rome as a warning to others who might speak out against them. It was Cicero who said, "I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war." Cicero said a lot of things - that's what orators do, and he was a good one. He also was not always particularly concerned about what he said about whom - that's why he had his head and hands chopped off when he was in his early sixties. Among the things that he said that got him into trouble were such bold statements as "The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt." I particularly like what Cicero said about reading literature: "These studies are the food of youth, and consolation of age; they adorn prosperity, and are the comfort and refuge of adversity; they are pleasant at home, and are no incumbrance abroad; they accompany us at night, in our travels, and in our rural retreats." But more than anything else, it was his outspoken opposition to war under any circumstance that brings Cicero to mind, even on the anniversary of the beginning of what many Americans agree was a war that absolutely had to be fought. But, as Barbara Bush, wife of one president and mother of another said, "War is not nice."

I'm also thinking today of the extraordinary poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye - because my friend Robbi Neal, an expatriate North Dakotan living in Florida, sent me her collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle.

Then, moments ago, my friend Jim Lund, who is down in San Antonio (Jim & his wife Shirley do the warmer months in Minnesota lake country), wrote a note saying that he went to a Nye reading and book signing - Nye lives in San Antonio. Nye wrote the collection of poems about the Middle East after September 11th - I suspect that Nye agrees wholeheartedly with Cicero's sentiments about war. Here is a great gem from the collection entitled "Jerusalem" - it's headed with a quote from the Swedish poet Tommy Olofsson: 
"Let's be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let's fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am your, you are mine."

Jerusalem

I'm not interested in
who suffered the most. 
I'm interested in
people getting over it. 

Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head. 
Hair would never grow there. 
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stand up. A bucket of pears
in his mother's doorway welcomes him home. 

The pears are not crying. 
Later his friend who threw the stone
ways he was aiming at a bird. 
And my father starts growing wings. 

Each carries a tender spot, 
something our lives forgot to give us. 
A man builds a house and says, 
"I am native now." 
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come. 
A child's poem says, 
"I don't like wars, 
they end up with monuments." 
He's painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once. 

Why are we so monumentally slow? 
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy: 
big guns, little pills. 

If you tilt your head just slightly
it's ridiculous. 

There's a place in this brain
where hate won't grow. 
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds. 
Something pokes us as we sleep. 

It's late but everything comes next. 

Her is a poet that asks all of the questions Cicero did - in an elegantly, unassuming, powerfully original poetic style that has one re-reading the poem immediately. Consider the one she calls "Fundamentalism":

Fundamentalism

Because the eye has a short shadow or
It is hard to see ovr heads in the crowd

If everyone else seems smarter
But you need your own secret? 

If mystery was never your friend? 

If one way could satisfy
The infinite heart of the heavens? 

If you liked the king on his golden throne
More than the villagers carrying
Baskets of lemons? 

If you wanted to be sure
His guards would admit you to the party? 

        The boy with the broken pencil
        scrapes his little knife against the lead
        turning and turning it as a point
        emerges from the wood again

        If he would believe his life is like that
        he would not follow his father into war

Give a little thought to Cicero today, kola. Do yourself a favor - go buy as many of Naomi Shihab Nye's books as you can afford. It's where I found out that Mark Antony's wife Fulvia drove pins through the tongue of Cicero after his head was put on display at the Forum.

Trust that you don't make the kind of enemies that Cicero did, kola. Be well. Take care of each other. Reread the poem entitled "Fundamentalism" By Nomi Nye before you go . . . 

Ev Albers