Strange Solace

A tall slim tower sits on the bank of the Rhine. 

No one knows how long it has been there or why it was built.

The tower is constructed of one solid square column with a smaller finer hexagonal column attached, it is made of bone white stone and the turrets are painted the rusted red of dried blood.

In front of the tower, the green blue Rhine River floats towards the sea. Behind the tower a maze of winding terraces climb the hill behind it, reaching up to a ridge covered with trees.

The terraces are lined with black alder trees. A miniature variety not seen anywhere else in Germany. Their slim black trunks standing sentinel, meticulously spaced along the terraces. They bring to mind a battalion of soldiers, standing watch over the tower.

There are two tales of the tower. One is true and one is less true.

The first is a story of legend. Known by most and passed down from mother to daughter. Embellished and elaborated. Told and retold.

The story goes something like this.

Long ago, there was a cruel ruler who exploited and oppressed his people. One year during a famine, the cruel ruler told his people to wait in an empty barn and he would give them food. When he arrived at the barn, He locked the peasants inside and burned them to death, laughing and crying out ‘hear the mice squeak!’ 

Upon returning to his castle, he was besieged by an army of mice. They chased the cruel ruler to the top of his tower and ate him alive.

The other version is less well known, but that does not make it any more or less likely to be true.

The other version is known by only a few scholars, ones who discovered the tale in a dusty section of a University Library. Buried within a nameless book with peeling gold letters and a burgundy leather spine.

This story goes that the tower is indeed populated by mice. But these mice are scholars of a lesser studied branch of theology called apophatic theology, otherwise known as negative theology.

This concerns itself with what cannot be said about the nature of the Divine. It is also lesser known that mice have an understanding of the Divine that humans do not. 

The mice took over the tower and became monks, dedicating their short lives to the study of things in the world that humans ignore or destroy. The monks focus on their spiritual enlightenment and study ancient texts.

And for each discovery they made they planted a tree. The trees stand there to remind humans of the limits of their understanding.

Copyright: image believed to be in the public domain and used for creative, non-commercial purposes. Vintage postcard of Mäuseturm and Ehrenfels Castle near Bingen am Rhein. Published by F. Wagner, postmarked 1960.