Letters to a Persian Cat » Energy | Letters to a Persian Cat

The Moon — one year later, but more than one year elder

admin — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 13:07:01 +0000

Ghazal my dear,

What is age, and what is aging, if everyone uses a different measure for this. This came to my mind when I did another picture of the moon tonight. Tonight it was once again the night of the Persides meteor shower. But since nothing could top the spectacular meteor that we saw together with you at the same night in 2010, I put more attention to the moon again (1). A year ago at the same night, we have been at the Bulgarian blacksea coast, and then the Persides night fell together with the full moon. This year, however, the same day in the year (11th to 12th of August), the moon looked completely different.

Its shape was already ascending to less than 25%, whereas full moon was already 10 days ago (exactly at August 2nd). So it is of some interest to understand why according to the solar calender exactly one year passed by (and even the Persides meteor showers declined to this (2), but the moon implies something different. As a proof, the picture on the left shows the shape of the moon as of tonight, and you can compare with the picture from a year ago.

The reason for this asynchrony is that the circular rotation of the moon around the earth and relative to the sun happens once every 29 days, 12h and ~4min. This means, that 12 month for the moon (or one year for it) take only 345 days, i.e. 11 days less than a normal year of 356 days. Therefore the full moon of August 2012 was visible 11 days earlier than the full moon of August 2011.

This means that for people who rely on the sun as their calender reference, a year has some 11 extra days, as compared to people who rely on the moon as a calender standard (like muslims). In the long term, after 33 solar years (which the western civilisation and the Persians use) an extra year has already accumulated for people in the islamic world. I have no clue if muslims indeed celebrate their birthdays according to the moons calender, and count one extra life year every 33 normal years. And it is not completely unlikely, that the processes of real biologically aging (or lets call it maturing) is influenced to some degree by the imagination of aging. Maybe somebody who really feels elder, if he or she suddenly discovers that instead of 33, he or she is already 34 years old. So therefore you might conclude (together with the early Beatles) that it is better to “….follow the sun”:

Sun is definitely good for a couple of physiological functions (vitamin D synthesis, production of serotonin which makes us happy and satisfied), but in higher doses it is doing the opposite: You know better than anybody else how UV-A and UV-B can accelerate the entire aging process, since you work on this issue and even got a scientific price for this. The Isar island, where some black ashes might still mark the site of our camp-fire, and which looked pretty uncosy and barely populated three weeks ago, today saw masses of locals who followed the sun and took advice from the 1960 Beatles song, rather than from your 2011 publication in Mutation Research.

I guess that now you’d like to know why I waited for an entire year, before sending you another photograph of the moon again. The reason was that after the Persides night in Bulgaria last year, my camera broke. I somehow smashed the display, and from then on it was totally black. But I did not want to throw it in the waste bin right away, since this camera was always a brave and reliable companion to us. So I left it untouched on my desk, before in a quiet moment three weeks ago I started to take it apart (like I did it with your wrist-watch two years ago). I soon realized that the broken display can be removed carefully and replaced with a new one. And soon I found through Ebay a possibility to get even seperate display units for virtually every single digital camera. I quickly located a provider with the funny name of GLOBAL-SHINING (3). Mr. or Mrs. Global Shining appeared to be a Mr. Ho, living with his GLOBAL STAR SHINING in Flat S30 1/F, Shopping Arcade, Tsuen Wan Centre, Tsuen Wan, Hongkong (4).

When I received Mr. Ho’s delivery, the small parcell contained not only the brand-new Samsung camery display, it also had as a little extra a special screw driver (not only fitting the microscopic steel screws that held together the camera back, but also of perfect size for chinese fingers) and a handwritten piece of paper saying “Thank you for considering GLOBAL SHINING as business partner”.

By help of the microscopic screw driver and some forceps from the lab I quickly managed to replace the camera display, and the pictures on todays post are the proof how well the whole camera is working again. Since I was so happy about revitalising the nice camera with the Mr. Ho’s help, I decided not only to give him excellent reference points on Ebay, but also send him some words of gratitude on a postcard showing Castle Neuschwanstein. It is nice to imagine how Mr. Ho mounts the colourful postcard to the wall of his Flat S30 1/F in the shopping arcade of Tsue Wan, Hongkong.

Is there a final take-home message from this post for you, Ghazal ? Maybe you will find one.

Take Care my Dear

Michael

Footnotes:

(1) Surely you know that the Moon symbolizes the pure, innocent beauty in Persian classicla poetry. This is independent of the exclusive role of the Sun in ancient, pre-islamic Persian culture, philosophy and science. But because poetry is very much influenced by arabic traditions, their spiritual preference for the moon as symbol in religion and arts got access into the poetry of Hafez, Rumi, Atta and Omar Khayyun.

(2) The Persides Meteor shower lives up to its name: same as the Persian people do, it follows precisely the sun’s calender. I guess that it follows in a precise and constant time after Persian Nouruz.

(3) Initially I could not figure out, if the name of the company GLOBAL-SHINING was referring to the moon or the sun. But now that I know that it is a Hongkong based company, I guess they even mean the Shining Stars.

(4) I guess Mr. Ho wont mind having his business address published here on my blog. But it might further promoted his excellent business. Just that Tsuen Wan does not have a postcode might discourage Hongkong tourists to drop into his store and buy camera displays.

If you can”t love him, shot him !

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:05:53 +0000

Ghazal my Dear,

Tonight I have something very unusual to tell you. It is so unusual, because it is something commercial, about shopping and beeing happy to have found something very useful.

I know you got excited now, don”t you ?
You can”t stop reading any more, right ?
You wan”t to know what it is, don”t you ?

(You are really sweet !!)

But be aware: it again has something to do with you and me !! (just a little material and technical aspekt in addition to all the happiness that you brought to me by your shear presence).

It is about the little Smartphone-Adapter-Plug that somehow broke
(Could be that it broke because you poked and bended and cut it, since you thought it is a piece of your fingernail ?) It is not so important, how it broke and why, it is just the adapter, its wasn”t the Smartphone”s heart that broke, I know you wouldn”t be able to do this, you are too much an angel to break hearts.

Well, I searched this special Hewlett Packard Smartphone shop today and guess what:
I found the adapter (same colour: black, as you prefer for men. No pink. If there would be a pink one, I would have bought both of them: one for me and a pink one for you in case you need the GPS again).

And what is so amazing (and for this I have to be grateful to you, since I would have never found this):
This little adapter thing comes together with a SOLAR ENERGY RECHARGER !!!!
This means, I can not only mount the Smartphone to the car again, but now I can recharge it in the sun !!!

It will always remind me of this summer 2010, which in my memories will always remain as the most sunniest summer ever.
Although the nights in the moon-light and under the meteor showers and the stars were amazing as well. Who knows, maybe the light of the stars and of the moon is sufficient to recharge the phone with this little crazy adaptor.

Ghazal, my dear, tell me what you need to recharge your life battery !
You are always so calm, sometimes I”d like to make you explode, to beat me in the face, to shout on me, to see you holding a gun on me (of course only with bullets that hurt, but don”t kill), only to see that you are full of energy.

But this probably would change everything, you would not be you anymore, and for me the illusion, that you are the grown up daughter of the persian family that I met 20 years ago in Berlin would fall down in pieces.

Are you o.k., happy (I know, its hard to tell. One always could imagine beeing a little bit happier).
I permanently feel guilty, sometimes feel as if I have taken you as hostage here in Munich, keeping you in this single room in the guesthouse like a nun in an eremitage.
I only feed you with words, but they can not get rid of your loneliness.
At least I should have given you a cat, such one as Holli Golightly had in “Breakfast at Tiffany”s”. It could lean on you in the evening, and purr if you crawl its fur. It would jump on you lap, when you watch a movie or listen to some music.

Wish you a pleasant night, funny dreams, sleep well

Michael
……………………………………………………………………………………

michael,

im glad you found a better adapter for your phone! didnt know that such thing exsist, an adapter that charges the phone with sun. interesting.

haha i dont want to hold a gun against you and shoot, i will stay calm.think it is better. dont think my mum thinks im calm at home.

dont worry about me. i enjoy unterschleissheim. the guesthouse. i feel so relaxed and calm when i am here. and i am so happy with everything.
cats are cute, but only when they are babies.

see you tomorrow

/ghazal

…………………………………………………………………………………..

See you tomorrow, my Dear.
Thanks to confirm that you enjoy and relax. Even if you would have told me this already a million times: I”d like to hear it once again !

Sleep well, dream something happy.

Michael

PS: Ghazal, my Dear, Can you imagine the head-lines in the newspaper:
“MSc student shoots down its supervisor”. This would make us sooooo famous.

Anyway, have a sweet night, but this time I think I have to take care :-}