Letters to a Persian Cat

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

How is your evening ? What do you do against the Blues. Yesterday during the Paolo Nutini concert we spoke about the meaning of “getting the blues”. Today it seemed to me that you are also not completely free from getting melancholic without any obvious reason. Maybe it only happens if I am around, or maybe it is because you haven”t seen your family for such a long time.

I would so much like to be a secret observer when you are alone at home and feel free and relaxed and do what you like to do, like cook something or do the laundry or watch a movie. I”d like to see how your face changes then. I assume you will have this expression of complete absence in your eyes that I remember when you were sitting in the first row during the lecture.

I am probably right assuming that your are very introvert, trying to solve all problems by taking them home with you. You rarely ask somebody for help, I mean not help when a PCR evaporates, but help if you are not sure any more where to go and what to choose from the thousands of possible options every day. I would like to help you, but the only think I am quite sure about is that it is good for you to show you some nice places and events. With a few exceptions, it always seemes we like that same moments and places, and these are days you will never regret.

With the more longterm decision I much more hesitate to suggest something. If I say “Take a challenging PhD project in a high-class institution somewhere in Europe”, maybe you will not be happy at the end. Difficult to predict in advance. The only thing I know, Ghazal, is that you have all prerequisites to become a successful and therefore happy woman. You have an excellent profession, a specialisation that will have absolute priority in the future, because people will realize more and more how important physical and mental health is and that all luxury goods and all money means nothing if you are ill. Therefore, much more ressources and money will go into this research in the future, and many intelligent scientists will be needed. And you will be one of them, thats for sure.
Just don”t panic, don”t fall into despair if it does not always goes fast and straight. There will always be people to help you, at least I will always be there if you need help or advice.

I went to a DVD-rental today and rent the Al-Pacino “Insomnia”. I now do a copy for you, my dear.

Enjoy the evening, sleep well, recover, have fun during the REM phases (but send me a few words before, please)

Michael

……………………………………………………………………………………

hi michael,

melancholic is when you are sad right? im not sad..why do you think im melancholic..

not much to see haha, i just kind of sit/lay on the sofa, and put the computer in front of me. i was eating indian food and some of the “salad” i bought with you, it is nice. but couldnt eat all even if i wanted to, it was too much.anyways, i fell so tired during the movie so i slept and just woke up again.

actually, i ask my mum for help a lot. i tell her everything of what i do and what i think and ask her for advise and so on. we are very close, like friends. and i always trust her. i know that she would never want anything bad for me. im kind of dependent on her.

for the phd that you showed me, i did not feel that it was something for me. a lot of physics, with protons and so on i felt.
thank you for having so much believe in me. but i could be anyone, there is nothing special with me when it comes to science. i just try to do my job like anyone else would.

thank you for making a copy of the insomnia (even if i dont think its legal). did you find gladiator movie? if not,, maybe i can ask my brother to bring one from home so u can borrow. or maybe he can make a copy. (if he is in a “helping-sister-out” mode).

take care and good night.

/ghazal

……………………………………………………………………………………

Ghazal,my Dear,

Maybe melancholia is not the right word, maybe it is rather an expression of absolute quiescence coming from deep inside of your soul. I don”t mean I”m worried, I”m just fascinated and try to understand.
And therefore,if you say “nothing special to see”, it is because you cannot see the changes in your eyes I might see.

It must be wunderful to have such a close relation with mum or dad as you have. In my situation its very different, I always have to try and solve the probems of my parents, they always expect that I listen to their problems and advise them or help.

I guess you already adapted your freefall position meanwhile. Just one last thing I”d like to know: Do you wait in the evening to receive a message from me, or is the more a burden for you to read it ?

Take Care, my dear

Michael

…………………………………………………………………………………..

hi michael

a very late answer.

yes it is nice to be close to your parents. but im not that close to my dad. i meet him and have fun with him. but i dont share my thinkings and everything with him. but its fine. but it is good as well to not be close to your parents and to be independent.

yes its nice to recieve emails from you. its not a burden.

hope that u have a nice starfish position tonight.

good night!

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

I hope so much that all the stress you had during the last weeks vanished now, and that you can just recover and sleep. I could feel with you how it is to have in one week two talks to give on a new subject in a new environment. You were hard fighting, Ghazal, I have to admit. I imagine myself in this situation, I would have lost my voice already after the first minute.
I think it was somehow not fair, that the Post-Docs and Senior Scientist were all just sitting there laid back and wanted to become entertained by the students. Thats not right, I have to admit. They should have also some tasks to fullfill, just for the purpose of justice and for the students to have something to laugh as well. I think I tried my best, same as you did.

Btw, my wife just called and threatened that she will set our house on fire if I don”t appeare there tonight. So what shall I do ? I don”t want to, but I have to go home. I will pass along the lake I have shown you from up the Olympic-Tower to swim a bid.

I think of you, Ghazal. Write me some sentences (if you are not sleeping yet).

Take Care, my Dear

Michael
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

hi michael,

yes i feel so good now that it is over. im so happy. it was a bit stressfull. no you would manage things perfectly fine if you were in my situation.i think you talk was good! yes a bit unfair but its okay, they will maybe do it next time.

okay, that is good, that you are going back home tonight. maybe you can solve things at home. its important.
hope that you had a good time at the lake.

good night!!
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Ghazal , my Dear,

Did you arrived well in U-Schleissheim ? What are you doing now ? Poor Ghazal, no Pecha-Kucha Talk any more fill your evening hours, no Seminar any more to worry about. So how do you fill your evening hours ? O.k. yesterday I could imagine and accept that you had a big sleep deficiency to compensate. Did you had good or bad dreams last night ? Poor Ghazal, I remember the days when I had an important exam to pass or a talk to give or the like. You got nervous many weeks before, you think you sacrifice all your free time and your life energy for this. And then ? Then its done, than its over, and the idiots give the award to Mary (o.k. it was an act of diligence, but it was virtually just a report about a single book she red). How can they compare it to what you did ? You prepared a talk about a new subject, a subject for which you had to learn new theories and read a lot.
Ghazal, you have been my favorite yesterday (independent off all other feelings I have for you). Olena, I would say was also very ambigious. She had her own very original idea. She had something new to say, something she developed herself.
So for me, the proper ranking would be :

place 1 -3 : Ghazal, Olena, Michael

long, long, long gap:

Sissi (I talk about my hobby)
Lucia (I talk about my country)
Avinash (I talk about my job)
Ilaria (I talk about my religion)
Dominik (I talk about my project)
Mary (I talk about the book I red)

Don”t you think I”m right ? Maybe I”m to strict, but I very often think that the world around myself is doing stupid decisions and rankings. I was very proud of you when I realized you had the courage not to talk a second time about iranian new years eve. Ghazal, we are scientist, we should show that we take a challenge. We are pioneers, we should leave that established road.

It”s too bad that I cannot convince you to stay in Munich, either to do an ambigious PhD project or to live with me, or both, but independent from each other.
I think in general it would be much easer to separate the function of a friend and a supervisor. Now I have to separate it by the clock (9 – 5: supervisor, 5pm – 12 pm friend). Its is not that easy.

If you think I cause trouble to your live, please tell me. You know I always try to be open. I understand it is perhaps easy for me. You said last week at my post-midnight visit to you that you only see me, cause you cannot risk your project. This was very shocking for me, I have to admit, but it was o.k. that you have been so honest. I”m constantly trying to understand what you feel and what is your motivation and what you dream of.

Maybe you don”t believe me, but I really find it exciting to talk to you and to hear your points and your ideas which are sometimes funny and very often surprising. In particular I”m excited how easily you can challenge my established ideas. Thats the reason I talk too much, I always hope that you interrupt me and say “Stop here, what a freaky theory you are just trying to tell me!”. Thats why I wrote this blog, it is not intended for the entire world to read, but in the first instance for you. If you insist, I can protect it with a password for you.

As every night I think of you and wish you a relaxing end-of-the-day and an angel who takes care of you.

Michael
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

hi michael,

yes i arrived well. i am fiiiinee michael. im so happy that the pecha kucha is over and i do everything that i did not have time with before. went to the supermarket, i did my laundry for example. i talk to my mum more. i just have fun. dont worry. i have been looking at hotels and so on. there is a lot to do.

everyone did a good job michael, i did not talk about midsummer las time. i talked about persian new years. but u are right, swedish midsummer would have been much easier to do than what i did, sleep. well i learnt alot about sleep. thats the point. i wasnt looking for a price seriously.

im sorry you are having a hard time separating supervisor and being friends. so it is a good thing that i will leave munich. u will have less problems. i am happy that i am going back home. to sweden. but i really enjoy munich at the moment. i like unterschleissheim.. all the places ive seen in munich have been nice.. the lab i like, the people are so nice.. so im having a good time. a nice summer. a lot thanks to you i think, u showed me munich and you help me in the lab.

michael, once again. i see you as my kind supervisor and a friend. i hope u see it this way too and nothing more. otherwise we cant be friends.

have a good night and nice dreams.

/ghazal

While the man was in coma for six weeks, the girl used to visit him regularily. She never forgot to look first through the glas window, through which every patient of the intensice care station could be seen already from the corridor. Only when there were no signs of other visitors did she quickly slipped in and kissed him on his forehead. His respiratory mask kept her away from trying to kiss other parts of his face. He look a bit wild, it was obvious that the clinic nurses did not had enough time to shave the patients every day or comb their hair. She used to carry some refreshing towels with her and at least could wipe away the grit from his eyes and the sweat, that despite the air-conditioned atmosphere always collected on his forhead. Of the refreshing-towels she had a large stock, collected on a flight home to Stockholm, for which he had erroneously booked her a regular SAS-flight instead of the Ryan-Air she used to buy. Because he then refused to accept money from her for this overprized flight, she decided to steal as many items from the SAS-company as possible, among them were hundreds of refreshing towels. Now, more than 2 month after this flight, they could finally serve for a good purpose, although their smell was cheap and she always had to splash a fair amount of an aftershave on it, that she had bought for him the day right after the accident.
Having finished this bit of cosmetics, she took his hands and talked to him about the progress of her project. She had refused to accept any other supervisor after his accident, and told everybody in the university that she discussed with him all issues of gene mapping in outcrossed mice and of the thyroid-hormon regulation long before the accident and that the thesis were in principle ready. In reality, however, she still had many questions to ask him, and this she did while visiting him in the clinic. The personel of the intensive-care unit was happy about any visitor seeing a patient. They had modified the strickt german rule for visiting-times in hospitals a long time ago, when a young neurologist had explained them that without exposure to the diurnal cycle, as it is clearly the case in coma-patients, a person adopts its own circadian rhythm that runs out-of-phase relative to the normal day-and-night cycle. It lags per day about 11 min relative to the normal day-and-night cycle, and this would cause the patient after several weeks to run its internal sleep-and-wake-rhythm completely asynchronous to the external time. The doctors were initially sceptical about this apparently very theoretical assumption. But they agreed to give it a trial and allowed visitors to see the coma-patients round the clock. Only when they recognised that the patients clearly benefitted from visitors coming day and night, they decided to drop the old law.
Therefore, the girl used to come to the clinic whenever she had a problem during her scientific work. While she sat next to him, grabbing his hand and explaining what she wanted to know, she frequently observed that behind his closed eye-lids a rapid movement started. She once had prepared for her MSc course a scientific talk about this so called REM-sleep, during which sleep goes through a shallow phase and vivid dreams happen. She remembered that neurological studies concluded that these short phases of REM-sleep were essential for processing the empirical memory into long-term fixed experience. It serves to build an integral image in our brain of the world around us.
And every night while we sleep, the observations and experiences from the last day are checked and evaluated and trimmed during the REM-phase to fit them into the already existing integral conception of the world. In one of the review articles the author used as an allegory for what is happening during REM-phase sleep the computer-game thetris, in which single bricks of various irregular shape fall down onto a pre-existing odly shaped wall, and where the player has quickly to decide how to turn around and shift the falling bricks to the left or to the right in order to find a matching place for each of them on the wall. Once the new brick has been fixed on top of the wall, it is now part of the entire building and itself determines how the next falling bricks have to be twisted and shifted to integrate them, too. What she did not know, it was merely the sound of her dark voice that caused the intense mental activity in his brain, the sound of her voice activated a much stronger and complex neuronal processes than the simple scientific questions. In his integral concept of life and world, incorporating 49 years of personal experience, the dark sound of the girl voice together with her full curly hair and her blue-eyes were a rather new experience, in terms of the tetris game they came very late on an almost finished wall of thousands of earlier memories. Albeit the late occurrence of the impression she made on him, which started just 5 month before the accident, they shook up his entire pre-existing system of judgements, values, and goals. And this struggle of the fresh and vivid pictures of her – his memory recalled them immediately after hearing her voice – with the very established system of fixed intellectual values resulting from more than 4 decades of experience, was clearly visible by very intense REM-activity.
The girl, however, thought that in his mind he was arguing about issues of her scientific project, and that he might have severe objections about her interpretation of the genetic experiments. The more she was relieved when she came home after the visit and found on her e-mail account a message from an unknown sender, called “radius@persian-cat.de”, who in every detail discussed to her the questions she had asked the man in the coma-station an hour ago. These letters by e-mail arrived now almost daily. They always started with “Dear Mrs. F.” and finished “Take Care, yours radius of the persian cat”. Who was the person writing them remains unclear till now. Was somebody from the clinic personel listening to her talking to him, and now made a joke to her ? But where from should this person got her mail-address ? How could it be that the messages always arrived in her mail-box not later than one hour after she left the hospital, does not matter whether it was 9 o”clock in the morning when she visited him before work or 11 o”clock at night, when she could not sleep and felt the desire to talk to him. Although the emergency-station was always open for her, the nurses and doctors seemed to change a lot. There was hardly anybody among the personel whom she saw more than two or three times, let alone anybody who was there every day and night over a period of 6 weeks. Some details of the messages let her assume, that a person with a minimal knowledge of their relationship must have been the sender.
Her persian family name F. was known at least in the institute, and he once threatened her for fun to call her always Mrs.F, unless she ceases to call him Dr. R. He mentioned that although it would be against the rules in the institute to call each other by last name, he liked the idea to refer to highly adored person as Mrs. F. The second detail of the messages were the strange senders identity, radius of the persian-cat. Persian cat would clearly refer to her background, but there were not many people knowing this. He asked her already very soon after they met the first time on the glacier of the Zugspitze, where he gave lectures to her course during a four-days retreat in the Schneeferner-Haus. There he said that she does not look very swedisch and asked if she would accept three guesses. After the first two guesses were wrong (later he agreed that she had neither the sharp face contoures of greek woman nore the full lips of the jewish), he was finally right in trying “Persia”. It was also up there on the glacier where she recognised a scarf along his left wrist, and was told that this stems from a skying-accident two years ago, during which he broke his the radius bone. Of course, “radius of the persian cat” could have a lot of alternative meanings, could be that a cat draws a circle around her belly using her tail as a brush, or it could have a zoological meaning refering to the territory that a single persian cat occupies. Or it could describe the distance, over which a person nick-named Persian Cat attracts men.
Who ever was the sender of these e-mails, the parts refering to her science project were always so clearly written that some of them she just copy-and-pasted into her thesis. To satisfy the rules of scientifc honesty, she mentioned help from “radius of the persian cat” on the top of the acknowledgements. The thesis were given a grade of distinction by the board of reviewers.

Hi Ghazal,

Thank you for the very condensed e-mail from yesterday. One could see, you have been very bussy or in a hurry. I hope it was it worth.

I think the weekend wont be as hot any more, therefore you probably wont miss the electric vent a lot.

The Summertheater was very nice, I like this open-air atmosphere under a the sky at night a lot. In particular, since there was lightning from a far thunderstorm the whole three hours through, and this gave the Shakespeare comedy “As you like it” a bit of an infernal taste. You might not know the play, and I”m not sure if you would like it, although it has a clearly defined happy end. But before, it shows and dissects the stereotypic human characters of desire, cheating and vain, and how it ends in devotion and surrender. It is amazing, how Shakespeare could described this 400 years ago in a manner, that stills appeares quite up-to-date.

During waiting two hours for the play to start (one has to go there hours in advance to get a good seat) I met two friends who run a music club in Munich. They told me they had just been to the 3rd serie of the Stieg Larsson movie. They also had seen the two earlier parts, and I asked them about the plot. To be honest, I decided not to see it and I also wont read the books. I hate the idea to make a thrilling story out of something cruel. For me, such kind of violence against kids, girls or woman is sick, absolutely sick, and is just a case for psychatric research, not for a mass-audience in the cinema or book-shop. I mean I like crime-stories a lot, but only if they are based on a “healthy crime”, like stealing a million of dollars, mafia-type crime to gain power over a country or a city of gold, or men-killing-men because they love the same woman: these all would be crimes I can understand, therefore I can identify myself with the characters of the movie.
But if the whole plot starts with killing or turturing a young woman for nothing or for fun, I”ll be frustrated and would feel ill the whole film through. So it is definitly not my film. I had the same frustration when I once saw “The silence of the Lambs”, with Anthony Hopkins and Judy Forster (whom I both like very much in other movies). But in this particular film, it was just violence of a psychatric monster, who like to bite others in the face and eat peoples flesh. I was terrified and left the cinema after 15 minutes. Since I don”t need this to happen again, nobody (not even you) will convince me to go to a Stieg Larsson movie.

If I want to see a thrilling crime movie, I better wait for the next serie of “Bourne Identity” or “Oceans 14″ or “Godfather” or “A history of violence” featuring Vicco Mortensen or “Gangs of New York” or the like. Those movies, I can perfectly follow and understand, cause they show sort of sympathic criminals which only commit crime because they live in a sick society (in which money means everything and where one has to rule over others and where there are never enough nice and lovely woman for every man). You know under other circumstances, these criminals would be very nice and lovely persons and could work as teacher or doctor or waiter in a restaurant. They are not mentally sick, they are healthy and strong and don”t have to commit crime for fun, they only turned into criminals to fight against the circumstances.

Sorry again for this long epistle, I”m sure you wont agree and perhaps did not even read it to the end. Does not matter.

Anyhow, enjoy the weekend

Take Care Michael

PS: The form you have to ask for in Unterschleissheim Rathaus is called “Freizügigkeitsbescheinigung”. It is supposed to be a yellow paper. Just bring it to the lab, I can fill it out for you. The Rathaus (I think englisch would be called Town-Hall or Registry-Office) will open at 8 a.m.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….

hi michael,

im happy you had fun at the theater and that you met some friends.
okay then you shouldnt read or watch stieg larsson. cause yes it has one scene where a man rapes her or something, but then she will hurt him back later. but this is nothing for you then.

i was planning to give a talk about sleep , but if you wanr you can talk a bit more about rem phase? the slides you gave me maybe you want to give a talk about them?

take care

/ghazal

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
Hi Ghazal,

Hope you are well up and progress with your talk. It is o.k. if you talk just about sleep and I take the part about dreams and REM.
I took the Brittanica to the Institute today, and put the copies of the sleep-article on your desk.
I”ll probably live in my office the next few days, because we have decided with my wife it is better to separate. 20 years together were definitely a few years to much.

I will go later to the center, to hear a concert. In case you want to meet, I”ll be at 8 p.m. at Karlsplatz near the McDonalds..

Don”t worry, everything is fine (it only can get better).

Michael
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
hi michael!

i am so chocked .. why do you want to separate? is it not good between you? it is so sad, after so many years. dont you want to try and work it out? what about your son..

thank you for the papers.. i will have a look at them on monday. so i will talk about sleep and the phases, and shortly just mention REM. and then you can talk more abour REM? i think you will do a great presentation about it.

about the concert, i think i stay home.. have fun michael.. and enjoy.

/ghazal

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Hi Ghazal,

I was very reliefed when I read that you were chocked. This means that you firmly believe in love, in good human values and in the possibility of a final happy end. I so much hope that you will never ever lose this thrust. To be honest, I also believe in these values (deep inside and on the long run), but in this special situation the values were already damaged over years and it is better in everybodys interest to make a clear stop now.
Only this summer I understoud how easy and wunderful and enlightening life can be, if you are together with someone with whom you share similar thoughts even without many words.
O.k. I have to accept that this is not possible with you, Ghazal, but it will be possible with someone else (even it is just my dog or my guitar). But continue to live with someone only to fight every day makes me completely sick and dull.

Don”t worry, my Dear. I have to be very grateful to you.

Michael
……………………………………………………………………………………………..

hi michael,

i do not know if love with happy ending exists, but i want it to exist. i havent been in a good relationship so far. but hopefully maybe i will. but i can understand that life is much better alone than with someone you fight with all the time. ive been through it and feel much much happier alone. you are not acctually alone, you fill life with other nice things, in your case;family (ur son is important), guitar, dog, your family in berlin, your friends, your work. all these can make you happy. and then someday maybe true love will come, but nothing that one should think about and feel sad about all the time.

i know that its hard, but if there is someway to fix it between u and ur wife i would recommend it. but if there is not then i hope u will be fine.. the hardest part is in the beginning.

take care michael, u deserve only good things in life. hope you are enjoying the concert.

/ghazal
…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Ghazal, my Dear,

I was so happy reading your encouraging letter after I came back from the concert. I feel a bit guilty that, because of me, you now have to worry about these sad things. You should not spoil your young life with such problems, better hear nice music, watch a funny movie and enjoy life. And one day somebody will come, I”m sure, and will carry you on his hands.
On the other hand, I think, love might come easy in the beginning, but later it always requires some effort from both sides, otherwise it might got lost again.
Thanks for your warm words, they are really very important for me. It is strange, I almost forget that they come from a girl that is 24 years younger than me, I rather feel that we have changed sides and you are currently supervising me (who appears to be very very naiv).

Sleep well, my dear

Michael

PS: I just had dinner. Your chocolate was delicious.

Hi Ghazal, my Dear,

I am sure you understand, that I don”t write you another long story tonight. Perhaps right from the beginning you had the suspicion that all these
hundreds of words I wrote you evening by evening were only there to cover up what I really felt for you. And of course my strange suggestions that you are an angel, coming from another world – well, that was probably the easiest way to avoid any firm statement on this. Sorry, I have to admit, I don”t have such a clear idea jet. When we are together, I”m always cought by dreams and I just wish these moments could last forever. I could stay with you on the plattform of the olympia-tower and see the world go round and round for the next hundred of years.
I”m happy that at least you, Ghazal, are much more realistic. I always admire your clear statements about things you like and others you don”t like.
In contrast to you, I always try some complex analysis, trying to consider if it is appropriate to like something or somebody. Thats why it took me a while before I found out that it is not only this phantasy of having met you and your parents 20 years ago in Berlin. This was perhaps just another secondary imagination, same as the Angel, the Traveler from outer space or the blue-eyed persian cat. What is behind all this phantasies is you, Ghazal, to whom I more and more fall in love. I don”t see anything bad in this, and whoever wants to condemn me for this is free to do so. And of course if you will ever say “leave me alone, don”t interfere with my life”, I can”t and won”t do anything that is against your will.

Excuse me, I once again exceeded the size-limit of a short evening message.

I hope I don”t cause you insomnia (sleepless nights).

Relax, my dear, wish you a very intense REM-sleep and very long and relaxing non-REM sleep

Michael