How it happened; an episode of the turning of the times.
A German City, Winter 2020, 8.39 a.m.
„Only a few days ago, the ash tree outside my bedroom window bore leaves.
True to autumn, its once lush green had given way to a brownish-yellow melange, like the scurvy-infested gums of the necks of the teeth of the unfortunate sailors of yore, but still in picturesque conspicuousness. And unconditional beauty.
Who can escape the earth-coloured sea of autumn unimpressed? Who doesn’t like to wade in the masses of chestnut leaves that have fallen to the ground? Who is not touched by the quiet song of the trees, so bittersweetly lamenting the coming winter?
But today my tree is bare. Stripped bare. Stripped of gold. Stripped of its clothes, dragged into the late-year light.
The crow on one of the branches seems lost. I wonder what’s going on inside it, I knock on the window and scare the clever animal away.
„Mask on!“ roars the colossal woman at me, who confronts my naked face I a storm flood of anger. Her habitus reminds me of that of a certain concentration camp guard from the film “Schindler’s List“ during the violent separation of Jewish children and their mothers.
Since I am standing in front of the bakery, and am about to enter it anyway, I resist the urge to punch her in the face, to at least fill her obviously empty head with a few swells, and instead obey the order of the shotgun woman, a particularly ugly specimen of the plebeian gene pool.
The queue of people behind me twitches. Twenty pairs of eyes of Tuareg intensity scrutinise me. A threatening spirit emanates from this snake.
The beauty of autumn comes to my mind, like the reminiscence of a better world, a bygone world.
How small and pathetic man is in general, I know, and I look forward to a good book, my sons‘ smiles and a better future again.“
Im Mahlstrom 