The Good Column: Time for bubble baths

Let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s face reality: summer is over. No more ice cream, outdoor swimming pools, crop tops. No more ice-cold wheat beer or Aperol Spritz after work, when you relaxed on your balcony at home or in the park and enjoyed the last warming rays of sunshine of the evening. No more heat-free, nudist and dolce vita. To some ignorant people this may seem like a loss.

Meanwhile, winter is on the horizon – even if it is still reserved and quiet at the moment – and is now cautiously sending its advance guard into the country: autumn. Many incorrigible whiners and do-nothings will now complain and find fault with all sorts of things: the expected constant rain, the cold, the storms, the darkness that sets in early in the day, the grumpy faces of the ill-tempered fellow human beings.

But keep your head up! I’m not sure whether in a better future autumn, the secret super-top checker among the seasons, won’t actually receive the recognition it has long deserved. Because it has enormous advantages that still need to be discovered. For example, it gets rid of the inconveniences and torments of summer quickly and reliably. By October at the latest, he clears away any annoying things, works as a diligent and thorough cleaner, makes a clean ship, so to speak, or gives short shrift to all sorts of unpleasant things: the mosquito has then played its part for the time being and the sunburn won’t come back any time soon. From one day to the next we are spared the sight of all the unwashed and nail fungus-eaten cheesecakes that boldly stick out of men’s sandals and are traditionally shown without shame in the summer. And you no longer have to swim at tropical temperatures in algae-infested, urine-warm waters that give off a strong smell and on which a viscous film made up of fish and bird feces, sunscreen residue and sweat has successfully formed over the course of days and weeks .

Autumn, our friend, ensures that the worst unsightliness is hidden under long trousers and wrapped in thick socks. The storms, the cold and the constant rain ensure that we stay at home and, after a depressing summer that mainly served as a harbinger of the coming apocalypse (terror, wars, climate catastrophe, neo-Nazis everywhere), we finally feel uplifted by stretching out on the sofa at home You can devote yourself to reading, such as Sylvia Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar”, Jerzy Kosinski’s “The Painted Bird”, Gisela Elsner’s “The Giant Dwarfs” or Thomas Hardy’s “Jude Fawley, the Unknown” (if you prefer the opulent storytelling of late 19th century literature). . century).

We can breathe a sigh of relief because most people’s miserable, feigned, permanent expression of friendliness disappears.

–

Meanwhile, our gaze out of the window falls (at least until it gets dark outside around 3:30 p.m.) on brightly colored foliage, red-cheeked ripening fruits, plump purple grapes and decoratively dying heather. It was not without reason that Albert Camus recognized autumn as a “second spring, where every leaf becomes a blossom,” and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe even went so far as to state in a letter to Friedrich Schiller: “Autumn is always our best time.”

The gray veil that covers everything by October at the latest mercifully covers up all the everyday horrors that people in this country have long since become accustomed to and which were still evident in the summer (homelessness, open-air concerts, Olaf Scholz) . Even the darkness that sets in in the afternoon actually has enormous advantages: you no longer have to see the ugly world that is gradually being swallowed up by an all-enveloping blackness. Now is the time for romantic candlelight, hot bubble baths and writing melancholic poems!

Even looking at the grumpy faces that we recognize in the constant semi-darkness that surrounds us is good for us: we can breathe a sigh of relief because most people’s miserable, feigned, permanent expression of friendliness disappears and they finally show their true face. We will now be spared for a little while from people’s lying grins and their steely cheerful fascism that the media and advertising world has trained them to have over decades. At least until the annual gingerbread, tinsel and Christmas terror arrives in November. In any case, one thing is certain: we can then unreservedly look forward to January again.