Castle Neuschwanstein

 

Last night there was a clear sky and a full moon that hung low on the horizon.  It was the first time I’d ever seen moonlight on the water, and I don’t think there is anything in the world that is quite as beautiful.  The moon and the water are complementary symbols of a feminine mystique that undulates through the ocean and kisses the stars.  They are always working together, to cleanse the Earth with an emotional pendulum of madness and loving grace. 

Castle Neuschwanstein stands out there beyond the water- a darker shade of white than that of the moon’s reflection- scraping the night sky with its fingernails of turf.  King Ludwig retired there to get away from the world.  Some say his ghost still sleeps in the castle, usually when snow is falling and the moon is high.  Draped with curtains of ice, the spires of his castle seem to validate such myths.  On a clear day, their color is a creamy cobalt, and they rise in congruence to the mountain peaks surrounding them.  The origin of cobalt’s name, whose blue luster was prized in medieval times, is derived from ‘Kobold’, an evil spirit of the German mountains that is thought to have harassed miners searching for it.  One of its ores was laced with arsenic, which poisoned the miners and had them suspecting that a goblin had caused it.  The lore here (let alone the beauty) fascinates me enough to desire a tour through the castle, but I like being away from the crowds, especially in places as remote as this. 

When I went to sleep, I dreamt that I was on an island in the South Pacific, far away from the netherworld of Bavaria.  I’d been having a good time, but I was all alone.  Then I discovered that my companions, whoever they were, had left and forgotten their child, so I looked after him for them.  I let him run out on the beach, and the waves were good.  The sun was out, and the waves kissed the shore in loving wisps of water.  I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten to such a tranquil place. 

Then all the sudden the good Earth cracked and roared.  I looked outside and saw that the sun had disappeared, and the waves were angry.  The child was running back to the lodge, and I feared that the waves would swallow him.  I opened the door and held out my hands and saved him from the clutches of the sea just before it slapped itself against the door.  The house was flooding, and we had to get to higher ground, this child and I; this child that I loved, and oddly thought of as my own.  I carried him outside the lodge and up a hill that overlooked the whole of the island and set him down so I could look out to the sea again.  Everything was calm and I thought the storm might have passed, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw clouds that had grown darker than the muddy banks of the Everglades.  Inside the clouds were red pockets of lava that had burst from a volcano standing on an island on the other side of the strait.  It took my breath away to see that a volcano had violently erupted over my island in such an imposing fashion.  

I looked around and found that I was all alone again.  The child had disappeared.  He’d been replaced by a wild cat that I instantly loved, as if it were my own as well.  I had to protect it somehow, but the clouds had spread rapidly and had already reached my island.  I ran back to the lodge and told the cat to follow me.  Bombs of cindery ash dropped all about us as we ran down the hill, and the Earth groaned with pain.  I thought of picking up the cat, as I’d done with the child, to help it evade the falling ash, but it was coming down so frequently that I stopped and only thought of saving myself.  I ran through the smoke and into the safety of the lodge and the cat was right behind me.  I motioned it inside and shut the door and outside there was the sound of the Earth screaming.  Nearly panicking, I desperately began looking for a fire extinguisher, in case the raining ashes set fire to the place.  Fear gave me focus; adrenaline gave me courage.  

I looked around and found a fire extinguisher, but once I saw it, I woke up.  I was back in the mountains of Germany, in a haven away from the wrath of nature, bathed in the serenity of the moonlight.  I could have sworn that somewhere in the distance I’d heard the echoing laugh of Kobold fading away into the nightscape beyond. 

The dream bothered me for some time.  It was that threshold I’d reached when forgetting about the cat’s safety and caring only of my own that I kept thinking about.  How selfish I had been.  If the poor cat had been incinerated, how guilty would I have felt?  Dreams expose who we really are, and when it came to survival mode it had proven that I was just as selfish as the next barbarian.  At least I’d saved the child from the tsunami.  But what if it had been the child running for its life through the smoke, and not the cat?  Would I have stopped to help it?  Would you?