The Mafia Virgin

I threw out my boots yesterday, dragged them out of the shed, tossed them into the bin, watched a couple of stoned out garbage men from Amstelveen municipality fire them into the shredder, and then they were gone, recycled somewhere into the great stockpile of renewable energies. Those shoes went from Paris to Chartres three times and took me 800 km from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago. The hard toe served me well on my last foray to Chartres, when two sauvageons emerged from the Meudon forest at four in the morning, who had never heard of Charles Péguy, or Villon or Céline, who lurked up in that same forest with a couple of mean dogs to keep the world at bay. Like in every other profession in France, the chavs in France wear a uniform. This one had a Mohawk haircut, and at the nape, three tresses of rasta beads, and his face had the hard tanned leather texture of someone who slept outside. He looked hard enough, and my lucky day, no dog, he had no knife, just a small chain he was swinging a little too casually.

“What, you some kind of a pédé?”

Sure, I responded, and that got him close enough to put the boots to him, pilgrimage or not, he went down.

By the next day, I was already out on the plains of the Beauce, one foot in front of the other, seventeen hours through the Meudon forest, past Versailles, and well into the Vallée de la Chevreuse. But, when the legs hurt like that, and a burning wind is cutting your face, all the useless thoughts, about reputation and the job you quit, and where’s the money….it’s still there, you’re still caught up in it for the time being, but it's losing its grip on you.

Anybody can get fired, all you have to do is show up at your job for a while, don’t worry about it, people will get sick of your attitude, or your expectations, or even your ability or your youth or your good looks, or none of the above. But, to walk away from it, it’s like sitting in the stands at the horse track, and not placing any bets, then walking away, no richer, but no poorer, but knowing you belong to nobody.

Anybody figured out how rich it feels to say no? You can be a millionaire and still a slave in today’s world. But, you can also be the happiest man alive if you refuse everything that comes your way that goes under the label of “career advancement” and hit the open road. If that road takes you to Chartres, don't ever make the mistake of thinking it's a Christian site. It's pre-Christian, hellenic, pagan.

The Chartres labryinth.

Tell you what you think about during these walks, you think about your feet. Pilgrims don’t believe in listening about God, they’re putting God to the test, not the reverse.

So, when your friends have deserted you, and your dreams have been shattered, step out onto the Beauce plain, where the wind is hard, and at least nobody’s pretending to care about you, and remember Jacob Boehme’s words, that a man who is ruined before his time is a lucky man indeed, and if you make it through a couple more days of that, you’ll arrive at the labyrinth, and see the mafia virgin.

Notre Dame de sous-Terre, our Lady of the Underworld, one of the dark madonnas, or mafia virgins, one of the few that escaped the puritanical wrath of the French revolution.

These dark madonnas are hidden away in crypts, partly to protect them, partly because they are occult, and evoke sorcery and the black arts.