Saturday, January 3, 2015

Pipeline Blues

TransCanada can buy anything
I should write a song about the pipeline but I'm nursing two huge blisters on my fingers from absently playing the bass guitar so it will have to wait. I figured this AlJazeera article was about a Trappist Monastery.  In one of my desperate circumnavigations of America I saw a little arrow on a map of Iowa saying there was a monastery, and even in 1992 I was considering a total separation of Oggy and Society so I aimed for that arrow and during a snow storm that my little Datsun 200sx was totally unqualified to deal with I arrived at that Monastery around 10PM. I went to sleep in my car, as I always did, and a few minutes later I heard a knock on the window. For fuck's sake! Had the cops followed me miles into the corn pastures during a blizzard to force me to move on? No, it was a hooded monk, carrying a candle lantern, worried I would freeze to death and inviting me to stay in one of the novice rooms. It was like a scene from the 16th century as a faceless brown cloaked figure covered with snow and illuminated by a single candle was offering sanctuary with God. And so began my visit to the New Melleray Abbey, which is closely related to the Assumption Abbey in Missouri in the article. I really considered staying there forever, chanting at 3am, making jam and fruitcake, but I decided it wasn't yet time for that path.

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