In the big vacation there is always a kind of summer reversal coming up. On the one hand because it now has to be that great life and enjoyment, on the other because the derivation of deadlines, review work and the antidepressant of a full social life is not at my disposal. Or maybe it is the contrast effect of a radiant sun in a world that, if you think too much about it, only votes for tranquilizers.
When this season dip presents itself, the friends are already ready to handle advice: take a walk in the woods, write it off, put that finger in your ear to press your vagus nerve nerve (that seems to be the restart button of the human mood). All tried, but the best remedy turns out to be making soup time and time again.
Slowly the gloom is loosening from you and walks up the balcony, while you are left with cookers, flour and sieve
And so you are peeling garlic in the kitchen and you suddenly notice that the yellow-white color of the peeled toes looks like glow-in-the-dark paint. Carefully cook your onions, roast your almonds, the stock cube falls apart into water. Slowly the gloom is loosening from you and walks up the balcony while you are left with cookers, cutting boards, flour and sieve.
Somehow you know that it is symptom control, all that dedication to a dish. While you list how the ingredients can give your mind a boost, you also know that you are fooling yourself, because even if a layered, deep broth could help your serotonine level up, then you still live in a world that becomes more hopeless every day.
And yet. The fact that something is temporary does not make it unimportant. Conversion is still comforting, and so your kitchen will become a charging station. The vapor changes the gray hairs on your sleeping in curls, biology lessons come by, that the herbs you use thanks to photosynthesis are partly made of sunlight and suddenly stir in a pan full of sunlight.
A Flard Samuel Beckett comes by: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on“It leads you through the mine courses of the summer days. Just when you think you have taken a dead end, it turns out to be a side road. It does not immediately go to the exit but keeps you busy until you can at the table, where every bite you take seems to have the effect of a yes.
You don’t know exactly what exactly, but you continue. You have to continue.
Ellen Deckwitz writes a column every week at this place.