WHY DID THE TIERGARTEN SQUIRREL LEAVE THE DARKROOM? IT COULDN’T HANDLE ALL THE CHESTNUTS.
18:39
Me: mm no can do, got my newsletter due tomorrow
18:40
A.: what’s this one about?
18:42
Me: not sure yet… the rapture, maybe? thoughts??
18:44
A.: you should write about how now’s the perfect time to clean your windows, so you don’t sit all winter with filthy ass windows
18:45
A.: september as the new april
18:45
A.: gotta rustle along in life, you know
19:02
Me: ok but like only metaphorically…
19:05
A.: well literally also, but that’s not your vibe, clearly
19:06
Me: not bad tbh
19:08
A.: ugh I’m so good at giving out advice, tragic I don’t take any of it myself
Winter. Spring. Summer. Each got its name early and held onto it. The one we’re in right now never quite managed.
At first, the Anglo-Saxons just called it “harvest,” which is so embarrassingly utilitarian it slipped out of use the moment people stopped threshing their own wheat.
Later, the linguistic outlier split itself in two: “fall,” blunt and Germanic, and “autumn,” borrowed from Latin by way of French, meant to sound continental and marble-pedestal serious.
The dual identity stuck. Appropriate for the season that doesn’t exactly know what it is.
Overheard at Lois:
“What do you expect, babe? He’s French. Of course he doesn’t wash his hands.”
If I had to pin it down with just one label, I’d go for “fall.” You don’t descend gracefully into autumn; you free-fall, headfirst.
Like sentences fall off the rails at the International Literature Festival, authors still mid-epiphany.
Like Art Week curators fall into Ubers at 1:46 a.m., half-floating on prosecco slushies, carrying tote bags that could knock out a five-year-old.
Like plastic cups fall across Rosenthaler Platz after the Berlin Marathon, turning Mitte into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, if only for a few hours (I blame Harry Styles Sted Sarandos).
(Kidding, nothing warms my heart like spotting you on Torstraße, Harry. Will you stick around once the leaves fall? That’s the question.)
Overheard at Soho House:
“Did you know that once your pubic hair goes gray, you can’t laser it anymore? My waxer told me that. I have two gray hairs on my pussy already, she said. I better hurry.”
The cold sun hits harder. The grime on the glass becomes undeniable.
At the recent presentation of this fall’s American Academy fellows, in a manicured estate with windows spilling onto Wannsee, former U.S. ambassador to Germany, Emily Haber, did not sugarcoat: “I don’t think any of us at this point know where we are headed,” she said.
Following Haber—and channeling, perhaps, Curtis Mayfield—the Academy’s president, Daniel Benjamin, offered the necessary counter-sentiment: “We’ll keep on keeping on.” That’s it. The season in miniature.
In Turkish, there isn’t a word for fall as separate from spring. They’re both bahar—ilkbahar for “first spring” and sonbahar for “last spring.”
Two sides of the same coin. Death rehearses life, life rehearses death. The yin demands its yang.
Overheard at Arbeitsagentur Berlin-Mitte:
“I might be, at some point… eventually. Not yet, though.”
And yes, you can complain about winter in advance, stockpiling vitamin D and pre-mourning the lost daylight. But you’ll miss what’s right in front of you.
Rogue beginnings aren’t January’s monopoly, nor spring’s. They might as well flare up right now, while your sunglasses still make sense, but that coat you panic-bought at the Highsnobiety archive sale back in June finally does too.
Definitive endings are a hoax. Decline is ignition. The whole universe is falling, perpetually—into itself, into us—and that’s the only reason we’re here at all.
Fall is the new spring. Clean your windows. Pass it on.
★ TBD Excitement
MUBI FEST dropping into Berlin (Wim Wenders in conversation! Twin Peaks on a big screen!). Berlin Food Week taking over (Cookies Cream serving up liquid fine dining! Lilli Fehring stirring the pot at Crackers!). Not Festival of Lights, bitte… Tag der Clubkultur, maybe? Simply Red at the Uber Arena. 3hd Festival at Haus der Visionäre. Christelle Oyiri’s Dead God Flow exhibit at LAS. Saul Zaritt’s talk on Yiddish Trash at the American Academy. Soho’s Halloween party, 60s-themed.
★ IRL of the Month
Textiles with tenure, Babie Lato
Schönhauser Allee 182a, 10119 Berlin
No neon, no synthetics, and no card payments. Just rolls of linen, wool, and lace stacked like an old-world archive. Babie Lato (Polish for “Indian summer”) has been around since the late ’90s, run by Halina Kowalska-Kottenhoff and her husband Kaspar, with a rotating cast of Eastern European grandmas who’ll cut you a meter with the precision of a German tax officer.
Pro tip: at times, straight-up fabric works better than half the “home goods” you’ll find online. Rug? Curtain? Tablecloth? Sorted. That yellow picnic blanket from Mitte Daily’s Pétanque Picnics? Just a giant swath of Babie Lato’s cotton. Amazon could never.
Are you team “autumn” or team “fall”? Genuine question. Let me know. Also, subscribe if you haven’t already. Share this with a friend if you feel like it. Stay seasonal.