"Sun is Shining!"

“Sun is shining!” As I heard Her Happygoodmorning Voice, I could still feel the resonance of a strange, in some way very clear dream. It’s that electrifying effect of a heavy dream after the unrest of sleeplesness, a painful stiffness in the neck, a moist forehead.

I felt relief, saved out of that nightmarish entrapment within an obsessive “reality”. Afterwards it could be told as a personal annecdote. Typical for that highly ambitious student of philosophy I once was. A deadly-funny parable about a lifelong passion for searching the true self which was never published.

The dream story went about a thrilling reunion of all scolars, teachers and students of the Interuniversity Institute in Dubrovnik. A reunion unconsciously desired by me to take place sometime. I have studied there in the Seventies before the Balkan Wars destroyed many hopes and illusions. I did learn there from life, praxis and philosophers there: Markovic, Vajda, Habermas, Taylor, Ricoeur, Axelos, Dastur, Dallmayr. They were all present as I had a horrifying meeting with an old friend R.

She turned into a big mystery bird on my shoulder, just as we were reuniting with our friend Waldenfels. Who asked me “if I had finally broken out through the closed door…” Then at dinner I swallowed a glas of intoxicating potion and overhastily bit a cracker with anchovis. What was going to happen to this vegan philosopher?

But before my happy reunion could turn into stupefaction and death, I was saved. No impossible reunions any more. A new day announced with enthousiasm by your loved and loving companion is inifinitely better than any old dream of reuniting with your past. Especially when “Sun is shining”!