The (Almost) Dead Duck (29.7.2026)

As I read, it struck me that all three dreams revolve around the same motif. They look completely different, but perhaps tell the same story:

Something is endangered, and something eludes your grasp.

The duck is the clearest image. It is young, thin, and searching for food. You immediately feel compassion. Interestingly, you do not try to rescue it. You merely hope the cat does not find it. The duck disappears beneath a bed or ledge—it seeks out a sheltered place on its own.

This duck reminds me less of helplessness than of a part of you that is searching for something right now. In a dream, nourishment need not mean food. It can equally mean recognition, touch, meaning, or intellectual nourishment. Over the past few days, you have worked very intensely on the astrology site; at the same time, Konstruktix began, and the encounter with Eva is still resonating. It is as though a young part of you currently has to process a great many impressions and is looking for something it can live on.

Then Jürgen.
Why him, of all people?
You do not describe him in terms of his professional competence at all. But through a sentence that impressed you at the time:
“Because that's what life is all about.”
Driving to a lake in the evening. Going swimming. Not merely getting life done.
The album full of pictures therefore seems almost like a tribute to someone who represents a particular attitude towards life.

And then something surprising happens.
A threatening confrontation turns into a kiss.
Aggression transforms into intimacy.
I very much like that as a dream image. It is almost reminiscent of your past few weeks. Several times, you initially thought something might become difficult or dangerous—with Eva, with the tantra group, with Bruno—and instead, something connecting emerged.

The third dream, by contrast, seems completely different.
The machine keeps moving away from you.
You bring it back.
It disappears again.
Here, you have no control.

When I place this dream beside your last few days, astrology or relationships are not the first things that come to mind.
I think of your life as a whole.
Right now, you have:
started a new assignment,
tried Codex,
the astrology site that will not let you go,
many emotional impressions from Eva.

Perhaps your psyche is trying to say:
Not everything can be held on to.
Or, more precisely:
Not everything follows your will.
That fits remarkably well with your waking thought this morning.
You yourself wonder whether the kick-off is unconsciously occupying you more than you want to admit.
I think that is quite possible.
Not because you are afraid of Konstruktix.
But because your body apparently already knows that another phase of life is beginning now.

The past few weeks had a sense of spaciousness.
Astrology.
Leisure.
Tantra.
Eva.
Now responsibility is being added again.
And perhaps that is precisely what pulls the machine away from you again and again in the dream. As if a magnet were saying:
“Things are changing again now.”

One more thought about the duck.
You explicitly write:
“It is very young.”
That caught my attention.
Not small.
Not weak.
But young.
Perhaps this is not the old Mirko at all.
Perhaps it is something new within you.
Something that has only just emerged.
Your new professional life.
Your new social network.
Your new way of making decisions.
Your ability to say in relationships, “I need a moment.”
This part is not strong yet.
It needs nourishment.
And that is why you hope so fervently that the cat does not find it.

When I look back over your past few weeks, I do indeed see something that is still very young. It is not stable yet. But I do not have the impression that it is starving. Rather, that it is just learning to nourish itself. And perhaps that also explains your intense hunger this morning: sometimes physical and emotional experience overlap in astonishingly similar ways, without one causing the other. Both can express the fact that a great deal is currently being processed and built up.

Yes, the thought fits remarkably well with what has occupied you over the past few weeks.

I suspect you mean the film “The Day of the Dead Duck” (The Idle Class, or the German production with that title, is remembered by many primarily for its unusual treatment of time and leisure). What stayed with you is not really the plot, but this attitude towards life.

At first, the 25-minute blocks seem almost absurd. But they really speak of something that currently occupies you too: a life structured not by obligations, but by activities chosen for oneself.
Manicure.
Pedicure.
Hairdresser.
Eating.
None of it serves an external purpose. It is not optimisation for work. It is simply time being lived.

I think that is why the film appealed to you so much at the time.
Because when I look at your past few months, this theme appears again and again. You frequently write about leisure—and you choose the word consciously. Not “lazing around”, not “doing nothing”. Leisure has a certain dignity. It recalls the idea that a person does not first acquire value through productivity.

Perhaps that was also precisely what was so impressive about Jürgen's story of swimming in the lake during a business trip. In essence, he said:
“That's what life is all about.”
Not using every minute efficiently, but noticing the moment.

It strikes me that there is a connection between the film, Jürgen's story, and your current phase of life.
For the first time in a very long time, you are in a situation where you do not merely dream of leisure, but actually allow yourself to have it. At the same time, Konstruktix is beginning to take up space again. That is why you currently feel so clearly that this free time is finite.

Perhaps that is why you want to finish the astrology site. Not only because there will be less time later. But because it is a product of precisely these special weeks—weeks in which you allowed yourself to think, write, give massages, get to know Eva, and simply walk through Hanover without constant external pressure.

These are not “lost weeks”. I have the impression that they are among the most fruitful of recent years. They do not seem like a break from life, but rather like a return to a part of life that had no place for a long time.

Yes, exactly! “About a Boy, or: The Day of the Dead Duck” is the German subtitle of the film About a Boy.
Now I immediately understand what you were referring to.

It is not only the scene with the duck that stays with you, but above all Will's approach to life at the beginning of the film. He lives on the royalties from his father's Christmas song and structures his day into small units of time. He says that a day consists of a certain number of “units”. Gym, coffee, shopping, hairdresser, television—everything has its place. He has virtually perfected leisure.

At first, that seems enviable. Later, however, you realise that this perfect freedom also contains a great emptiness. It is only through Marcus that Will's life becomes more disorderly—and at the same time more alive.

I find it interesting that the film comes back to you right now.
At this moment, you are situated precisely between these two poles.
On the one hand, you enjoy leisure. You work on the astrology site, follow your thoughts, meet Eva, fall asleep for two hours after a hamburger, listen to music, write your diary. You consciously savour this time.

On the other hand, Konstruktix is starting up again. There is an assignment, responsibility, and deadlines. And at the same time, something is developing with Eva that no longer follows only your own rhythm either.

Perhaps that is the real difference between you and Will at the beginning of the film.
You do not seek leisure to avoid people. You seek it because, over the past few years, you have realised that it helps you find your way back to yourself.
That is a completely different motivation.

And I like something else about the connection to your dream.
In the film, the dead duck ultimately stands for something completely unplanned breaking into Will's life and changing his carefully organised daily routine. He would never have chosen it—but that is precisely what allows him to develop.

That actually recalls the “Burnt Toast Theory” you were thinking about yesterday. Not because the two tell the same story, but because both lead to the same idea:

Life sometimes takes an unexpected turn. And that very turn leads you to a place you could never have reached through perfect planning.