The Season Before the Invasion
The Season Before the Invasion
A praise of spring, when places are still places and not emotional parking lots for roaming boors.
Spring is the last moment when the world still seems to have a chance.
Places are quiet. Trails breathe. Small towns stretch slowly, without needing to prove anything to anyone. There is an almost indecent beauty in watching things exist without an audience: wisteria, an empty road, a table in the sun, the sea before it becomes a backdrop for motivational cocktails.
Then summer arrives.
And with summer, they arrive.
Not tourists. Urban evacuations in flip-flops. Caravans of noise. People who mistake every place for an extension of their own mental condominium. They bring the stink of the city even where the air had spent months trying to forget it. Not just smog: habits, hysteria, slogans, poses, parking anxiety, story-ready spirituality, eco-consciousness with the SUV running, inclusion yelled at a waiter, freedom understood as the divine right to take up space.
They arrive with ready-to-wear philosophies and shopping-mall manners. They have opinions about everything and respect for nothing. They talk about awareness while leaving behind bottles, cigarette butts, feral children, and speakerphone conversations. They are “authentic,” of course. All authentic. All unique. All identical.
Spring, on the other hand, does not sell itself.
It does not make noise. It does not photograph itself to death. It does not demand to be an experience. It does not need a playlist, a dress code, reviews, hashtags, performative inner minorities, or herd rituals disguised as personal freedom.
Spring is aristocratic because it walks on tiptoe.
Summer is democratic in the worst possible sense: it throws the doors open and lets everyone in, including the people who can stand in front of a sunset and say, “Wait, let’s take one with the flash.”
So yes, long live spring.
When places are still places, not sets.
When silence has not yet been privatized by a Bluetooth speaker.
When the sea does not have to endure the sociology of the idiot on vacation.
When beauty exists without having to be consumed by people who do not even know how to look.
Spring is a promise.
Summer is an invasion.
And like every invasion, it arrives smiling.
With a beach towel under its arm.
And its soul double-parked.