Letters to a Persian Cat

   Distribution of men and woman among artists and curators of 210 randomly selected exhbitions in Germany (2018)

I know that what I am going to tell you now could fundamentally damage the picture that you have of me. I hope you will forgive me this unrequested confession. But I have to tell this to someone, who might view it from some distance, and who knows me only as a pen friend using e-mails. And I also think that because you don’t live an ordinary life, rather a life full of ups and downs, you might have a better understanding of me. I hope you will forgive me this uninvited confession.

Nine years ago I had a master student in my lab. She came to Munich from Stockholm/Sweden, because we are members of an international graduate school. Although being born in Stockholm, she was Iranian. Her name was Ghazal, and her parents were political emigrants from the 70s. I found her very attractive, physically and also because of a certain secret magic that emanated from her. If a young woman arrives as a stranger to a new place, she naturally inspires a man to offer her assistance and company. And for some reason, despite being about 20 years my junior, Ghazal soon agreed to go out with me not only once, but on a more and more regular base. We spend many afternoons and evenings together, visitting the galeries, the parks, many beautiful places, or just go out walking in the green or sitting on the river-side. I began to badly fall in love, and I seriously wanted to change my entire life, and asked her to marry me. If she would have not repeatedly denied, if she would have say only one time “maybe, lets wait for a while”, my life would have taken a completely different direction. In this year, 2010, I probably was really crazy. I was willing to sacrifice everything for the prospect to spend the rest of our life together. Nothing else seemed of any relevance any more: my family, our house, my friends, my job as scientist, even politics and the whole world suddenly became secondary, as compared to my love for this girl with her blue eyes, her dense eyebrows, her dark curled hair and her guttural voice.

But for Ghazal the relationship with her parents in Sweden was much more important, and she always felt homesick. For her it was simply unthinkable to start a new life far away from home. She was, in a certain sense, provincial and too much focused on continuing a life with a high level of security. And Sweden is of course the prototype of a super-secure society. At the end, when Ghazal finished her master project, she packed her suit-case, and after we said good-bye and exchanged kisses and hugs at the airport, I literally cried a river driving home alone.

In the following 3 years, we occasionally met aside of scientific meetings. We talked, and for me it was always painful to know that it is only for a few hours. Once in 2012, we spend a night walking through the empty Pompeij, what was most magical. But I still don’t know if she felt the same. I am quite sure that in Ghazals whole life, our visit to Pompeij was an experience of the the highest cultural and intellectual level. Probably at this night, she was not aware of this, but I am sure one day she will understand. I had hoped that instead of living together physically, we could at least stay in contact with words. But writing mails was not her biggest strength. She was very secretive regarding her feelings, and neither did she liked to tell lengthy episodes of her life. In fact, too often it was me who told her stories of her life, stories which I invented expromptu starting from just a few keywords that she told me. When she wrote something, it was usually restricted to a few sentences, and only touched superficial things. I always knew that in case I could have seduced her up to point to live together, I would have to educate her a lot in terms of culture and intellectual depth. I knew it would have been a “Eliza Dolittle and Professor Higgins” affair.

It took me about 5 years to get over the sadness that this loss has inflicted. And then suddenly the story seemed to start its 2nd series: I met an Iranian-Armenian girl who did her PhD project in another institute on our University campus. She was married in Germany, but lived virtually separate from a boring German husband. She was extremely lonely, and had some problems also with her colleagues and with her family ( who occasionaly came from Isfahan, but caused stress to each other).

We began to meet more and more often, and we both had our reasons to let things go freely. It did not took very long, when we started to take a hotel room only to sleep together. It became a very regular thing, that we had love at any occasion: in her appartment, in the appartment of her relatives, in the car, in hotel rooms. It was very exciting, and I always recognized that at the moments of ecstasy, Lidas face changed so much, that all the stessful tension went away and I could feel how her eyes were seeing something magical.

For me it was all nice as it was: We would meet once or twice a week for physical pleasure, but outside of the bedrooms we continued our own life.

But for Lida this was not enough. She required more and more that I make a decision in favour of het. I understoud her somehow, she was early thirty, with the science career lagging a bit behind, and a broken mariage behind. She was hoping that me, an 18 year old senior of her with an established position, could give her stabilit, probably by living with het and marrying her.

But what I was desperately wishing just 5 years before with Ghazal did not bear any attraction any more now with Lida. I don’t know, if I had changed so much within 5 years, or if it is a general phenomenon that men lose their interest in sharing their life with girl when they have already consumed love often enough. Maybe my years long heartache after Ghazal left was only, because we never consumed love, but had only a 1 year platonic romance.

So my advice to every girl or young woman from this story would be: dont give a man to quickly what he wants. Let him fight for your love hard. When a man had to fight a long battle to conquer you, he will always value you much higher. You will be like a rare jewel, which will always reminds him of the energy he had to spend on you. Like a miner who had to work a long and hard time to find a precious gem.

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Well, Prague, this beautiful bohemian capital that stretches along the river Vlatva (Moldau), was perhaps always a place were time had a less defined and mechanical meaning, but was always a subject of being easily to manipulate. In the novels of Gustav Meyerink, Franz Kafka, Karol Capek or E.E.Kish time was more like a veil being blown around by the wind of history, rather than the irreversible counter of seconds or years as we see it in the industrial society with its Just-in-Time manufactures.

What I want to justify with this reasoning is the fact that our recent visit to Prague already was in October last year, but for some reason I only recovered the few pictures of this jurney today. But the city is so full of pleasure and lovely events that the memories on the few days we spend there are still very present.

I am also very pleased that now, 12 years after our last short visit to the city, the bad memories of having our car stolen including a lot of personal belongings, are completely eradicted and overwritten by nice impressions of the extremely rich cultural heritage, the relaxing atmosphere and the friendly people there.

Just one tiny detail: We went to Prague for a 5 days short visit accompanied by our lovely dog Ivo. And it was an absolute surprise to see how the Czech people are simple in love with dogs. So often people stopped buy, smiled to Ivo, told her some nice words of love or even asked us to carres her. Finally, all the stories in Jaroslav Hašeks “The Good Soldier Švejk” about stealing dogs on the street makes much more sense to me. The people their are ready to steal another owners dog not because they cannot afford to buy one, but because they might haven fallen so much in love with one, that they cannot sleep anymore but have to have right this one. So they “order the theft” of a defined dog at Svejk. In this sense, the Czech people carry some typical Eastern habits, considering that further in the Orient (like in Georgia, Azerbaidshan, or middle Asia) it is common by young men to “highjack and steal” the girl they are fallen in love with.

Here are the pictures of marvellous Prague.

When everyone else has left you, it is loneliness that you feel. But when you have left everyone, it will be solitude that you feel.
(by Alfred Polgar).

People who self-identify as sapiosexuals, or those who say intelligence is the most important sexual trait, are having a moment. Critics of the movement say it’s at best pretentious and at worst discriminatory.[from Steven Blum, Broadly]

This reminds me of the TV serie “Masters of Sex” , where Dr. William Master, a medical researcher of rather unspectecular physical features, unwillingly attracts the attention of his enchanting lab technician Virginia Johnson. Despite working in a hospital environment with plenty of handsom, well-build and self-confident men, Ms. Johnson becomes hopelessly devoted to Dr. Masters, who lives mainly in his world of diagrams, statistics and weired instruments that shall kick out all mystics from human love.
But it is not the very subject of Bill Masters work, that made him so irresistable for Mrs. Johnson, but it is his very character. He could probably study the morphology of cactus thorns or the frequency of thunderstorms with the same devotion as he did his sex-studies, and still would attract some girl as Ms. Johnson. Sapiosexuality, as represented by her in this TV Serie, is perhaps a rather new classifier in the field of reseach because it is a non-exclusive term. This means that one can be highly attracted by an intelligent person, and at the same time be gay, hetero, lesbian, SM etc. But others aren’t so convinced and argue that being attracted to intelligence doesn’t qualifiy as a sexual orientation, and that by self-labeling as sapiosexual one is simply discriminating other person based on their class, educational record or their abilities.
Steven Blum writes in Broadly: Put simply, a sapiosexual is someone who finds intelligence to be the most important sexual trait— the kind of person who quotes Sylvia Plath in bed or, on the other end of the spectrum, argues about microeconomics on a first date. The term was allegedly coined by a top-hatted LiveJournal user named wolfieboy, “while on too little sleep driving up from SF in the summer of ’98.” But since its inclusion by OkCupid, the identity has gone mainstream: This past month, Merriam Webster announced it was debating whether or not to include it in the next edition of their dictionary. Meanwhile, a new dating app called Sapio would like to help you shoo away potential suitors who can’t quote Sartre on command.

It’s beautiful when you find someone that wants to undress your conscience and make love to your thoughts

Whatever the intention, though, the label has certainly stuck. On OKCupid, 9,000 users identify as sapiosexual. The sexual “identity” also boasts a Facebook page and numerous photos on Tumblr that seem to link sexual and intellectual pleasure — one image hashtagged “sapiosexual” shows a brain being fingerbanged; another depicts a man reading a book while doing it doggy style. Other users post quotes like, “It’s beautiful when you find someone that wants to undress your conscience and make love to your thoughts.”

Expanding the spectrum of sexual orientations to include sapiosexuality might make those who cream their pants while reading dissenting opinions from Ruth Bader Ginsberg or the latest N+1 feel affirmed, but desiring smart partners isn’t a unique or non-normative preference. According to Lora Adair, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Lyon College, men and women have always craved intelligence in mates, whether they go out of their way to identify as a sapiosexual or not.

“When it comes to identifying traits we perceive as ‘necessities’ when searching for long-term mates, men and women of varying sexual orientations tend to put intelligence and kindness above other sexually attractive attributes, such as physical attractiveness,” Adair said.

This is true across species, although in non-human animals, “intelligence,” or cognitive ability, is “measured morphologically,” she said.

“Take the male bowerbird, which constructs elaborate ‘homes’ adorned with brightly colored, scarce objects from their environments to attract ‘choosy’ females,” Adair said. “The ability to find these scarce objects, and protect against the theft or sabotage of other males may serve as indicators of cognitive ability, and overall genetic fitness.”

Adair believes the rise of sapiosexuality can at least partially be explained by the blurring of lines between “nerd culture” and the mainstream. “What were once fringe interests reserved for the stereotypically introverted, intellectual, ‘nerds’ of the world— comic books, characters, and comic-inspired films and TV shows, Sci-Fi and fantasy like The Star Trek reboots and Game of Thrones—are now essential features of 21st century American culture,” she says.

You’re not attracted to intelligence, you’re repulsed by disability !

But the identity has also provoked a backlash among those who see it as a way to discriminate against potential suitors based on ability and class. As one Tumblr user put it,“Sapiosexuality/romanticism is a bunch of ableist bullshit[.] You’re not attracted to intelligence[,] you’re repulsed by disability.”
Others see the label as limiting the conversation around intelligence. In a Buzzfeed quiz titled “Are You Actually A Sapiosexual,” one of the questions literally asks readers whether they’re “repulsed by the idea of having sex with someone who had never gone to college, or had no interest in higher education,” seemingly normalizing the idea that it’s okay to discriminate against those who don’t have college degrees or explicitly academic aspirations.
This is reductive for obvious classist reasons but also because intelligence comes in various forms; furthermore, discriminating against suitors because they didn’t spend four years accumulating debt isn’t an identity or a sexual orientation, it’s a limiting preference deserving of scrutiny.

The bias also doesn’t need to be codified because it is innate. At one point, intelligence was a quality that “helped our ancestors in their forging of social bonds and alliances, their abilities to forage for food, shelter and safety, as well as their abilities to use tools or solve problems in ancestral environments,” according to Adair, and it is something we still read as incurring short term benefits, like higher earning potential, and long term benefits, including more genetically “fit” offspring.

Taking this natural bias and making it your dating identity is superfluous. And, of course, it arguably makes you look like a pretentious asshat.

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On our way from the railway station in Lakatnik to our cottage on the feet of the Balkan mountains we always pass two premisses that stand side on side to each other, but are seperated by a barbwired fence. To the family on the left side, Iwan and Koprinka and their daughters we are frequently invited. Iwan worked most of his life in a nearby Uranium mine, and now suffers from Parkinson disease. The most exciting event in his life was in 1968, when he was recruited to the Bulgarian Peoples Army to help defend the socialist case in Prague against the democratic freedom movement.

Koprinka, his wife, is always makes jokes on him each time Ivan invents a new story about his braveness. She had a good education, but rarely found a way out of the hardships of the village life. Now all the duties lay on her, the work with the garden, the big house, farmland around, and supporting her two daughters. Only when she goes to pastures the goat in the hills, she finds some quiet moments. She usually takes with her a paperback book or a newspaper and dreams away, while her animals pick to most aromatic herbs.

The house to the right looks almost like a mirror image of Iwan and Koprinkas place, except that the garden is a bit more planned and kept clean, and the attached garage and shed for the equipment looks simply more civilized. This house belongs to Iwans brother Kyrill (“Kirtscho”) and his family. The sad thing is that the two families are bound by a long lasting hostiliy, the neighbors say that the brothers had a legal issue on the land that they inherited from their parents. Property in Bulgaria is traditionally the most important asset of everyone, be it farmland, houses in the countryside, a weekend cottage or an apartment in the city. I have rarely met people somewhere else who are so obsessed with keeping or increasing the real estate property as in Bulgaria. It is quite common that children get their first apartment as a gift when they pass the higher education. And when a boy marries a girl, their biggest concern is not so much the dress or the party or the wedding cake. The biggest issue is how to merge the properties of the two in the best and most profitable manner.

One can easily imagine how complicate things become after a divorce or when property is inherited to several children. Something in the regard must have caused a big dispute between the two brothers, an issue so dramatic and irresolvable that neither of their two families talks to the others. At least this is how it looked untill recently. But now the generation of Iwan and Kirtscho’s grandchildren already grow up. There is Ivailo, the 8 year old son of Iwans daughter Monika, and on the other side of the fence is Nevena, the granddaughter of Kirtscho. These two cousins seem to be pretty resistant to the hostiliy between the parents and grandparents of both family branches. Instead, because on this spot of the village there are not many other kids to play with, so the two seem to use every moment to meet at the two sides of the fence. They don’t look up, so they can’t see the awful barbwire (“botliva tela”), but they only have eyes and ears for each other. They can sit their for hours and entertain each other. They have not heared about the issue of real estate property, and perhaps they think that the high fences between their places are only there to keep away Koprinkas goats from the neighbours cabage plantation, and protect Koprinkas chicken from the neighbors young dogs.