Château Noir-et-Blanc

I woke up one afternoon to find myself somewhere within a certain cemetery on a certain hillside.

It was such a sunny afternoon time that I found myself even veiled wth bright and warm sunlight in a rather wide recess on the hillside the most part of which was covered with profusely-grown oaks and pine trees, cedars and other smaller trees.

I found furtherly golden-lit and dizzy the smaller recesses shining around myself; and a few butterflies puttering here and there over the flowers and grasses by the tombs as if I were dreaming a Rip van Winkle dream.

• • • • • • Yea, the butterflies were flying all of them facing towards me rendering the welcoming danse for me; to introduce me through the sun-lit golden entrance into the vast world behind, bright and beautiful, hidden, maybe, for ordinary asphalt-walkers.

To the wayfarer the world looked totally dark-----silva tenebrarum---- but the glittering dens here and there were inviting him to walk through it as if like a bright exit hole of a tunnel from witihin.
I see now no more butterflies to say nothing of flowers and trees, nor the tombs; I sensed myself utterly obsessed as if I were a jailor in a prison-abyss who had just found a strip of light way out.

I walked step by step, it was quite natural for me to do this therefore, into one of those entrance-glows; The circle of this glow was not so large but, as I put my first footstep on the doorway, the mist door spread wide, when I felt myself quite light to speed on following the inviting beam in the bright new space....

I walked, maybe ran, or rode on a horse, or might have flown like a bird for an interval of time enough for me to take one full nap to a Black-and-White Palace above the clouds. To this Château Noir-et-Blanc, which name I learned afterwards, was I introduced in this way by the butterflies and the glittering mist in a certain cemetery on a certain forest-hillside one tea-tima afternoon in 1955.