Letters to a Persian Cat » Summer | Letters to a Persian Cat

Secret Life

radius — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 16:51:48 +0000

When we moved to England in 1992, we quickly realized that the British Islands are very distinct in terms of their nature. Nowhere else we have seen before trees full of blossoms in early January. At least till today I was convinced that this must have to do with the rather mild winter in the southern counties of the UK, like Kent, Sussex or Surrey, where we lived. Today I found the exact same tree on a cemetry in Munich, and became interested in its history and how it became so resistant to cold weather.

Bodnant viburnum, on Daglfing cementry, December 28th 2013

The name of this tree is Bodnant viburnum (Duft-Schneeball in German), and it is actually a product of man made plant breeding. The cross of Viburnum farreri (formerly V. fragrans) and V. grandiflorum was originally made by Charles Lamont, the Assistant Curator at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh in 1933, and I guess this is the reason why it became first popular in gardens and parks in Brittan, and only later was imported to other European countries.

So this tree is unique for showing its real beauty only in winter time, when (at least in Germany) most other plants lost their leaves and look pretty sad. I don’t really know why all around the world people warship so much the Christmas tree. I think they are pretty boring, and except for their wood have no use at all. Their needles are a pest once you have them on your carpet, and if you have them in your garden, they poison all other plants (by producing humic acid). Their roots destroy the foundations of buildings, inhibit the growth of grass and promote growth of moss. If you have some spruce or fir in your garden, you can be sure that after a while the garden looks like a dark forest. we have three of them in our garden, and I plan to cut them all this year to heat our oven with their wood. But even for heating, they are no good choice, since their resin causes a lot of soot which contaminates the chimney.

I would therefore opt to replace the fir (christmas tree) as symbol of life in hard winter times with Bodnant viburnum. It is an elegant and beautiful three, and it permits the few rays of winter sun to reach us, whereas pines and firs are like black spots which block the sun.

By the way, there are other plant species which resist the winter cold. I also like a lot the winter-hard cereals like rhy or barley, which look freshly green even at the strongest frost.

Winter rhy, near Munich-Daglfing, December 2013

When I saw these tiny young shouts now in December, I was happy to know that next year we will have again fields full of golden rhy with its tentalizing odor in summer.

Shopping and Raving in Munich – Burkas wellcome

admin — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:43:39 +0000

Ghazal Dear, I still regret that you have been so much occupied with shopping here in Munich, but we never used any of the fine occasions to go out to one of the music clubs in town (except for the Bayerischer Hof Nightclub). This year many of the Munich clubs announced their parties, and I think they might attract at least some of the tourists that come here every summer from Arab countries and – very much like you – usually associate Munich only with shopping.

Shopping and Raving in Munich – Burkas wellcome

Take Care, my Dear

Michael

First Thunderstorm

admin — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:35:36 +0000

Ghazal my Dear, there are different definitions of beginning of spring. Astronomically it is the 21st of March, when you celebrated Norouz. Meterologically, the 1st of March is defined as beginning of spring, and some use a botanical time-table that associates spring with the blossoming of the apple-trees. For me, spring started today afternoon, when the warmth of the last three days was interrupted by a sudden, powerful thunderstorm. Since I can remember, I always was fascinated by thunderstorms, its eruption of energy, the release it brings after too much warmth and the freshness of the air afterwards.
There is no use of taking photos of a thunderstorm; not even a video-film can give the slightest authentic impression of what a good thunderstorm feels like. It has something archaic, some natural power and I remember that I like to call or write people who I love during this thunderstorm and ask them, if they feel the same at this moment.
Take Care,
Michael

Mysterious Moon

admin — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:52:10 +0000

Dear Michael, I once went to Pompeij with somebody who was careless enough to fell in love with me. We got lost, after the Pompeij necropolis was closed and walked around through the darkness, expecting every second that a time leap might send us back to year 79 A.D., when the erupting Vesuv burried the town and all its people underneath. The red-orange background is from a photo we did there at sunset, the mysterious moon in the foreground is from tonight.
Take good care,
/ghazal

Black and Blue

admin — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 18:41:36 +0000

Coming from the north-east into Munich, perhaps one of the worst examples of 70th urban architecture awaits the traveler: The Arabella high-rising building, which harbours not only a large hotel of the same name, but office, medical practises and flats. What is less known: In the basement of this block once resided the most important music recording studio “Musicland”. It was of little domestic importance, because the innovative sound that sound-engineer Mack and pop-composer Giorgio Moroder produce there was more acknowledged by international stars like Freddy Mercury, ELO, Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones. They recorded a few of their best songs and entire records at Macks and Moroders Musicland Studios. For some of them, a special regulation in the british tax-law might have played a role in their decision to come here and live and work for at least a year in Germany, thus evading the astronomic income taxes of the labour government. But to large degree, it was the special Moroder sound and the savior-vive in the Bavarian capital that made Munich so attractive to them. Freddy Mercury liked to take the tram in the afternoon, to drive down across the Isar river to hang around at the beer-garden “Chinese Tower”.
The Rolling Stones produced the entire “Black and Blue” album at Musicland in 1975, but had enough time to meet Uschi Obermeier, the most enchanting of the Munich communards.
At the end of the eighties, Mack and Moroder came under growing pressure from the property owner Schoerghuber, who tried to rise the rent for the studio. At the same time, a new subway-line was build, only a few meters aside the studio rooms. From now on, subway trains running along caused too much noise to permit further music recordings. Giorgio Moroder left Musicland and went to the US, and Mack relocated the entire studio to the Munich suburbs.

About ten years later, rich Arabic families from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia discovered Munich as a save, convenient and pleasant place to spend the summer time, escaping the heat at home, spending large sums at daily shopping walks and visit high-class medical clinics for annual check-ups. It might be, that the Arabs were fascinated by the idea that the name “Arabella-Hotel” was a reference to their home.

I tried with little success to shoot a picture with one of them, and the record cover of the Stones “Black and Blue” in front of the former entrance to the Musicland studios. It took me several days to find out a trick, since none of the black veiled women or their husbands were very fond of appearing on a photograph, with reference to the Stones rock music.

Black and Blue - in front of the former Musicland Studios

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.

Island in the Stream

admin — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 23:07:04 +0000

Ghazal my Dear, do you recall this place ? It was dark at night two years ago, and we had a camp fire there, and the river had less water, so we could enter what now looks like an island. You tough me the arts of flipping flat pebbles over the water surface, and when we went home later at night there were hundreds of fireflies that made the nocturnal sky looks like your hair. This year it is still pretty chilly, fireflies are still waiting for warmer days. The lonely fisher-man has to wear a wet-suit. But surely, later at night there will be camp-fires again, and people who wade through the water to gather with their friends.

Pebble Island in Isar river, north of Oberföhring reservoir

Take Care,

Michael

Größere Kartenansicht

Jane Eyre’s nocturnal escape inspired Kate Bush

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:01:33 +0000

Ghazal, my Dear, do you remember the chapter 28 of Jane Eyre, where she runs away from the wedding and has to sleep outside in the forest in absolute loneliness and despair? A really horrible situation, right ?
I red recently that one of the great pop singers of the 80s/90s, Kate Bush, was very much influenced by this scene, and two of her most famous songs, “Wuthering Heights” and “Running up that hill” are about this .

The scale of relaxation

admin — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 18:02:30 +0000

Hi Ghazal my Dear,

Thanks a lot for writing and for keeping me up-to-date about your progress in relaxing. Do you have like a scale of relaxation ? Like starting at October 27 (after your exam) with 0%, and now already reaching 95% to finally come close to 100% at the end of the year (and then stay on this level for long time) ?
You would deserve this, Ghazal, thats for sure. You have been working hard enough the whole summer through.

For me its almost the other way around: For me summer was very relaxing, but also exciting and thrilling. And I still profit from these few month. And now its more business as usual, without the regular after-work visits with you, to restaurants, shops, funny places.

Next year we will have an important evaluation of our institute, therefore we have to publish as much as possible in short time. Its a very political thing, though. For me science was always something with a metaphysical value, something that other people (who are religious) would consider a dialogue with god. For me it is a dialogue with the nature, but for sure nothing that beaurocrats should get involved in.

I miss a lot the conversation with you, although you have never been very strong or undisputabel with what you said. Sometimes there were more statements visible in your eyes than outspoken in your words. Now this silent way of communication is not working any more, I have no clue about what you think when you read my mail. Since I can”t see your eyes, it could be that you got bored about my messages, maybe you think its rediculous or just stupid what I tell you.

On 30-10-2010 11:47, Ghazal F wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> Oh, 18 degrees in Munich is warm. here its cold.
> enjoy the warm days then.

Yes, but as expected: It was the last day yesterday with warm weather, last day to go out swimming. Today grey autumn has conquered southern germany.

> Yes I forgot to remove the data and photos from the computer,
> didnt know that I have to. So you can delete everything.
> I dont need it. I have all the important things. Thank you.

O.k., I deleted all data and files from the network drive,
after saving it locally. From the images, I only keep two.
hope you don”t mind.

> Yes I have been to movies, I saw “the other guys”, “saw 3″
> and “social networking”. They were good.

I had a look at the trailer of “Saw 3D”. Was as shocked as before recognising that you enjoy such violent movies. “Social Networking” I”d like to see, from a psychological interest in people and what drive them. The movie “No one knows about persian cats” is still not on the screen in Munich. They obviously missed it, its a shame. One probably has to get it on DVD.

> take care

I”ll do my best.

> /ghazal

TAKE CARE, Ghazal
Michael

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 :-}