The Holy Order of the Stainless Peg

The best journeys are known to be a time of spiritual discovery, when we cover great tracts in mind and miles. And into the inner zone I went last year, with the flashing white lines taking me beyond the bland reality of daily existence. We pondered the Deep things, David and I, and I was forced to face the sad fact of my failed enlightenment in the Way of the Peg.

No matter how hard I tried: oh how I’ve tried, and now I wear the shame of a clueless novice. I woke early each morning. Barefoot, I walked across ice-crusted grass carrying heavy loads for Anne, my Zen Peg Master. I would see how effortlessly she would snap the pegs in that certain way. The great harmony of the universe would rhythmically align with the clothes. The socks nestling neatly in a niche of energy lines.

She’d beat me, and visibly despair at my ham-pegged jamming of jocks in a way that jarred. I knew it was wrong, but somehow, it seemed always just beyond my grasp. The mediation and the daily ritual brought me no closer.

Until my Journey, that is. As is often the way with these things, it happened suddenly, when I wasn’t even trying. It was a moment of desperate necessity brought on by a pair of wet jeans when no peg was handy.

And thus was founded the Holy Order of the Stainless Peg. One day, historians may look back on this as a seminal moment in the Zen of Peg.