The Last Castle

The castle from the valley.

If there's anything most people think they know about Schloss Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, it's that it was the inspiration for the Magic Castle of Walt Disney. If they know anything else, it's that Neuschwanstein ("new swan stone") is the brainchild of King Ludwig II, the so-called "Mad King" who was completely disinterested in statecraft, but spent huge sums on realizing his romantic fantasies. This castle is his crowning achievement: a mammoth tribute to his friend and inspiration, Richard Wagner, embodying in stone the great Ur-legends that became the glorious past of a newly unified Germany. Or at least Wagner's versions of them.

That's all I knew when I arrived there yesterday, at what is still the #1 or 2 top tourist destination in the country (1.3 million visitors a year). I picked up some notion somewhere that Neuschwanstein was little more than a garden folly on a grand scale--great for viewing at a distance, but with not much to see within. Tastemakers deplore it as kitsch. The masses of unwashed surging in the town below, Hohenschwangau, did nothing to dispel these impressions.

But I was pleasantly surprised by Neuschwanstein. It goes without saying that it is spectacular from afar: situated on a high perch above the valley, its profile in white stone beckons in any season. On the day we visited, it was shrouded by tendrils of cloud, as if emerging from--or spinning--the mists of prehistory. 

Actually, though the interior was never finished, there's plenty to see inside. The interior is replete in the way we never see anymore, with every square inch painted, gilded, or carved. The style is 19th century Romantic, like a Pre-Raphaelite painting come to life. Photo-taking is verboten, but pictures are easy to find on the web, and worth looking at. It is certainly the only palace I know with a grotto--an actual cavern, with stalactites-- located directly off the master bedroom. 

How Ludwig II tops a staircase.

Of course it's kitsch. And yet, the Disneyfication of its profile has the paradoxical effect of making Ludwig's pastiche "original" seem more authentic than it would otherwise. Instead of the prehistory of Germany, Neuschwanstein has become the ur-source of a far larger empire: the Wonderful World of Disney. 

Despite its transgressions against conventional good taste, there's something else that's real about the place. It stems directly from Ludwig himself, who did not play at nostalgia or the faux antique, but actually lived for and in the world he created. For him, modernity was nothing much to celebrate, and the past was not an attitude to strike, but a kind of utopia. Knowing the human costs of that modernity, who's to say he was wrong? 

© 2015 Nicholas Nicastro

The Terrible Angel

It's a feeling I've had most often in a good bookstore, when faced with the sheer number of books I'll never have time to read. Or my first time in Italy, when the sudden superabundance of antiquity and beauty pitched me into a strange kind of despair. After my first exposure to Kyoto, I finally feel I have travelled to a truly different place -- though I've been an ocean from home for more than a week. Imagine spending a day smelling nothing but essential oils, and then imagine that happening to all your other senses too.

There have been many moments today when the beauty has simply wrung something out of me involuntarily, a little mortal "oh". My first glimpse of Kinkaku-ji, the so-called "Golden Pavilion", shining in the morning sun, seated in glory over its own reflection and retinue of fading irises. Or dappled sunbeams piercing a still pond at Ryoan-ji. Or an astonishing wooden screen at Nijo-jo's palace, carved from a single piece of wood, that somehow depicts peacocks from one side and peonies from the other. Or the particular "clacking" sound tall bamboo makes in the wind -- something I discovered right outside the door of my room at Myoshin-ji temple.

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure," said Rainer Maria Rilke, "and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible." I am not destroyed today, and I am temporarily relieved to be back in the world of plywood and linoleum and internal combustion. But there's still time for me to disappear tomorrow. 

© 2015 Nicholas Nicastro

Tokyo Drift

When my friends learn I'm in Japan, their first reaction is "great!"-- followed usually by "um, why?" I know what they mean by this, as in "why now?" or "are you there on business?" Unfortunately, I have no such excuse. One of my books, Empire of Ashes, was translated and published in Japan a decade ago. Whether it sold or anybody read it is a mystery to me. But that's not the reason I'm here.

Interest in Japan-for-its-own-sake is harder to justify today than it was a generation ago. Back then, it was the Land of the Rising Sun that was the focus of American anxiety, as Japanese "export champions" like Toyota, Sony and Fugitsu stood poised to bury their American competitors. In the 1980's and early '90's, it was widely expected that the Japanese economy would leapfrog the U.S. both in size and clout, with America reduced to nothing more than a colony for natural resources like coal, lumber, grain, and penurious blondes for Japan's pleasure sector. (See the 1993 Sean Connery movie Rising Sun for more on that. Or on second thought, maybe don't...) On TV, we watched Richard Chamberlain in Shogun. If America had a future, it looked increasingly Asian in character, as famously depicted in Blade Runner. Smart parents prepared their children to serve their new overlords by teaching them Japanese. 

Obviously, stuff didn't work out as expected. As Japan sputtered, and dominant American tech companies "disrupted" the world economy, nipponophobia receded -- to be replaced in due course by anxiety over the rise of China. Time will tell if the latter is any more of a mirage. (Spoiler alert: it probably isn't, but the West will change China far more than China will change us.) Our political debates rarely hinge now on what we can learn from Japan, and those prep classes have long since been replaced by sleep-away immersion camps in Mandarin. Being interested in Japan therefore has the feel of arriving at a party that broke up twenty years ago.

I can't quit the place so easily. Part of this must lie in my own experience as a person-of-a-certain-age, with Japan looming larger my rear view mirror than it does through the our collective windshield. Men of my generation will always be a bit like Blade Runner's Rick Deckard, rumpily out of place and looking askance at his Asian future as he wrestles with his bowl of udon.

But in another sense, Japan is even more relevant now than it was as the locus of chatter over superpower rivalry. The Japanese economy stumbled, expectations had to be reduced--and there lies the real lesson. For in a future where efficiency will be as valuable much as consumption, where making the most out of a smaller footprint will bear the greater rewards, Japan will be more relevant than ever. If I am to be watched over in my old age by a domestic robot, my future will arrive first in Japan. If my daughter or granddaughter loses all interest in marriage or childrearing, she will be more like her Japanese sisters already are. America's Great West Coast tsunami of 2037, caused by an earthquake combined with sea-level rise, already happened in Japan back in 2011. If my great-grandchildren own a condo on Mars, that off-world pied-à-terre will likely include elements of compact, highly-refined Japanese design, not Chinese or American glitz.

Traveling to Japan, therefore, is a little like time-traveling to an era I'll barely see, if at all. Though this isn't a business trip, I can imagine no more important business.

© 2015 Nicholas Nicastro

Snapshot: Cape of Good Hope, September, 2001

Not exactly the southernmost point of the continent of Africa--but close enough. 

After many days of observing African Wild Cats at the Pretoria Zoo, I took a short trip to Cape Town. This is truly great city in a spectacular setting. The day-trip down to the Cape shouldn't be missed, as visitors are sure to see knockout scenery, abundant wildlife, and lots of oddly beautiful Cape flora.

I've been plotting how to get back ever since.

The meeting place of two oceans...sort of.

The obligatory trophy shot. In the rocks behind me were lots of "rock rabbits", a peculiar rodent-like creature that is actually more closely related to elephants than rabbits. They're everywhere in this area.

Jackass penguins at Fish Hoek.

View from Table Mount toward the Cape.

© 2015 Nicholas Nicastro