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The Final Reflections of

 Everett Charles Albers 

"The unexamined life is not worth living" is a famous dictum uttered by Socrates in Plato's Apology.
​A lifelong student of the humanities, Ev Albers personified the examined life.

Sausages, Corn-on-Cob, But No Satori

3/23/2020

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Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004

Words for Today
"Give me liberty or give me death."

Twas in quite a different context that Patrick Henry delivered his famous oration back on this very day in 1775. He wanted to overthrow the British. All day this gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful one in Dakota I've been begging for liberty from a general funkiness - nausea, chills, and unseemly malaise for such a fine spring day - brought on by myself, methinks, because in mistaken belief that the general absence of major revolt from my digestive tract I could tackle a bit of sausage and corn on the cob. My lovin' spouse was gone, you see - visiting her dying mother over in Dickinson, where she, one of the great souls who have ever passed through this middle world - wrestles with the last stages of Alzheimer's - no longer able to eat. In a "What the hell moment" of temporary insanity, I downed a German wurst followed by a couple of ears of corn, which I lavishly buttered. 'Twas almost as though I was saying, well, you old battered pancreas with the collapsed bile ducts, see what you can do with this!"

Plenty - They said they would show me, and they did - most restless night I've had in a good long while - and one of a good while, as well. Mein Gott, I found myself dividing into different beings and coming back together again badly - and the there was this machinery at hand to help the process along. All the while, however, I carried this discomfort - coming close to pain - at the enter of my being - until I would awake and spend minutes reorienting to a glorious Dakota night and managing to allow escape of that which bloated and, probably, precluded my reintegration. I've decided, kola, to make the best of my mistake - all but the part of with dealing with the fact that he would never have happened had my lovin' spouse been there - she would have found a way to talk me out of it, even though I would have probably been less than kind for here kindness. The best is to lock myself here in my office until the thunder and lightning of what the sausage and corn created along with my gasps for twelve hours passes - I'll listen for a new melody, that's what I'll do.

Today, getting some things accomplished at my desk, I await satori, that moment when the omnipresence of my body and my consciousness of it allows me a hum a song in total immersion, entertain a phantom of delight in a daydream, or take a quick nap without insistent badgering spiritual creditors. In the meantime, no more sausage or corn on the cob for the weest.

No jewel of profundity lurks the consumption of sausage and corn on the cob - I know that now.

Ev Albers
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    Author

    Everett Charles Albers was the founding director of Humanities North Dakota (formerly known as North Dakota Humanities Council). Ev brought his love of the humanities to the greatest challenge of his life, his  diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in September 2002.
    Given three months to live, Everett lived and worked for another 18 months, while also writing daily, on-line journal entries in which he reflected on the people and experiences of his life, books and music, pie and the great humanities question of all time: "Where have we been, and where are we going?" 

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