+++ OK, I'm there. I admit. http://pinterest.com/mlochmann/ +++

And now turn your poetry-mode on, please...

NIGHT. In a high-vaulted, narrow Gothic chamber FAUST (read: me), restless in his chair by his desk.

Faust. I've studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,
And even, alas! Theology
All through and through with ardour keen!
Here now I stand, poor fool, and see
I'm just as wise as formerly.
(to be continued...)

Goethe, Faust I

---

Hi, I'm Markus from Stuttgart, Germany. Hobbies: Literature, Writing, Blogging, my Greyhounds, Motorbiking.

I'm 78% nerd, 70% geek, 30% dork.
Although I feel like the latter most of the time. ;-))

Ethnically I am a German/Finnish mix with an American grandpa. As they say: Bastards live longer, are healthier and smarter...

I'm a progressive liberal and anti-socialist.

I observe, gather, process, evaluate and share. Ideas, texts, stories, theories and thinking models.

I'm currently a web developer at a liberal political party and in state parliament. The job hooked me somehow and so I've been there for over ten years now. (Why? Hmmm... out of convenience, I guess. And kids and dogs need food.) I love tech though - I've lectured database abstraction and programming at an University. But I'm not a born teacher. Besides that I'm writing, studying, reading, traveling, camping, hiking, raising my daughter, 15. I'm one of the rare species of single parent dads, been for ten years now. Not of necessity, but of free will. There's no point in making bad compromises, really.

I write poems, short stories and novels. I'm a professional blogger and political activist.

[poetry on]
Walking The Dog In a Stormy Summer Night

Stop! It said.
Stop wanting, now, it yelled.
I kept walking. The clouds were low.
STOP WANTING! It shouted.

Thunder rumbled, roaring as hell.
Lightning struck nearby.
So near, I could smell the burning.
Stop wanting! It cried, yet once again.

You had your share, it said.
Rain started to pour.
You've seen enough. It whispered.
Lightning struck. Booom.
You have lived your life, it yelled.

I was completely wet now, freezing.
Not afraid, but certain.
If I stop wanting, I said, with anger,
I will be dead.

Strike me, lighting of destiny.
Rip me apart.
End this existence,
if your plan is already fulfilled.

If I stop dreaming, and my soul stopped
longing for life, screaming, ah so loudly,
in the storm of this dreadful night
to find a cure to the burn in my heart.

This being should be over,
this body destroyed,
this mind annihilated,
this soul recombined.

No God and no voice
in that stormy cloud
could make me surrender
just because of – time gone by?

Maybe the dreams will return
once the storm passes by
and I will be happy again
completed, with you.

Yet, it shouts, that evil voice,
in this fierce thunder storm -
yet is the magical purpose of this life
to be revealed to the knowing.

You are getting closer, though, I admit.
Your rough winds are whipping my face.
Your splashing drops are the sharp cutting needles
of all those days lived and gone by.

Days of useless time,
spent with worthless waiting
of things not to come,
now washing away in beautiful rhythmical waves.

Just as thoughts come in waves,
made out of tears
of millions of souls
suffering.

Home again,
I lay aside my watery clothes,
wondering how nicely
tears and thunderstorms blend.

(July 2010)
[poetry off]

Faust. 'Tis written: "In the beginning was the Word!"
Here now I'm balked! Who'll put me in accord?
It is impossible, the Word so high to prize,
I must translate it otherwise
If I am rightly by the Spirit taught.
'Tis written: In the beginning was the Thought!
Consider well that line, the first you see,
That your pen may not write too hastily!
Is it then Thought that works, creative, hour by hour?
Thus should it stand: In the beginning was the Power!
---

Thinking.

Kids. I'm first of all a dad. Telling the truth on dating sites. Everything you read here is true. Writing. Poems, stories, books, essays, blogs. I wrote my first poems in English at age 14. I was always the best of my class. My essays were always read out aloud. And I hated it. So I quit school at 9th grade (just to finish it with best possible grades years later).

I think and write in three languages all the time; one of them being Finnish, the second most difficult language in the world. I also cook really well. Nerd-wise I'm brilliant with Photoshop, Indesign, Dreamweaver, QuarkXpress, layout, flash & php programming and databases. I've traveled well over 100,000 miles on my motorbikes all over Europe and still do long trips - e.g. last summer to Iceland. I'm what they call a "high potential".

[sarcasm on] Hahaha. Them calling, guess that. They? Who are "they" anyways? The masses? The average? The dull? The "guy from next door"? Yuks! [sarcasm off]

"If you ever have tasted the extraordinary, you'll never be satisfied with the ordinary again" Richard Bach - Jonathan Seagull

I've won a few prizes too. But I don't even know where they are. ;-) The dorky side, see?

I'm really good with big dogs too. We sync. I speak fluently "doggish", wuff. I talk to birds of prey. And they answer. I hug trees. And I spend a lot of time running in the woods with my "boys".

I'm quite good at fixing things: I repair my cars and bikes myself; lately I built a walk-in closet for my daughter. I clean, renovate, decorate and mend. If needed I even sew. Poorly.

No sixpack. Brainpack.

The haircut? LOL. No, really, the vibes. The Force. Hahaha ;-) People often sense the intellect and feel respect (which really is quite odd). Some feel creepy then and fade away. I can small talk, but often just won't.

I have a kind of sixth sense too - I dream very lively and feel many things. I can sense the "aura" of persons and their cognition. I like used to play "Eye-Games". You know, I'm the guy who quiets the room when stepping in. After that I stand a little aside. Watching. Evaluating. Listening. Only when the inner circle is around I finally open up. In a lecture I always ask the last question nobody has an answer to.

My hands. I've got big hands and a lot of big scars on them. Actually I'm a bit proud of that. Fighter hands, showing the pain lived through. Playing some d-minor sonata on the piano. That's me.

I don't really care about the superficial "looks" stuff. (But I adore real beauty) You have what you have. So do I. And I don't mean your eyes, hair, teeth, boobs or clothing. You shine, as a human, your soul does. So does mine. I've got a load to carry and a lot to give. People usually approach me, not vice versa. And I usually get what I want. Although I don't really want so very much these days. Most people are disappointing anyway *sad* Am I a misanthrope? No. But often just not in the right place, I guess.

Notice: When people read me, they often imagine me as some kind of giant - and then are disappointed when they meet me in person. Now - we can dispute whether it's the greatness of the text - or the size of the man... (5'10'')

Books:
Twitter is killing my reading time. But: Just re-read Steppenwolf (by Hesse). It's so... accurate. Magic.
Anyhing by Dostoevsky, Goethe's Faust, Dante's Commedia Divina, Moore's Utopia, Rousseau's Confessions, Voltaire's Candide, Thomas Mann's Magical Mountain, F. Dürrenmatt, H. Hesse (Siddartha, Demian, poems), Hamlet. Metaphysical stuff like Brian L. Weiss or Khalil Gibran's The Prophet. Old german poetry like Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich Heine or Rainer Maria Rilke. American poetry by Walt Whitman. Emerson. Finnish poetry by Eino Leino and Tommy Taberman I read old English originals like Milton's Paradise Lost or The Tales of Canterbury. French existentialists like Sartre (I love "The Chips Are Down") and Camus. Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum), Victor Hugo: The man who laughs. Politics: John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Ayn Rand, everthing about Liberalism and political theory in general. I read a lot. My philosophy is somewhere between Hegel, Locke, Plato Schopenhauer, Rawls and Rand. Well, at least I can say I have one...

I am developing an own political theory in which i try to combine the best of both diametrical political systems of the 20th century. For that I've developed an "abstraction thesis" of societies - and I'm writing a book about it.

"History is the progress of the consciousness of freedom." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). There you have it: Dialectic, Rhythm, Weltgeist. The great triad of mental evolution: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. Hegel came from Stuttgart too and went to the same school my daughter does, btw. Maybe I should write a dissertation about him someday...*sings* que sera, sera...

I really honor Bertrand Russell *raises hat*. On the plane or train I read sometimes lighter things too like a Gatti, a thriller or even a Crichton (in English). As a kid I loved Stephen King, Karl May, Hitchcock's "???", Ludlum, Follet and Jerry Cotton. I love cold war spy stories as much as I hate communists. (I'm old enough to actually have visited the Soviet Union!) As a kid I used to read everything: labels, signs, manuals - just every piece of text I could get my hands on. I used libraries a lot earlier on, now I read much as ebooks too. I could extend this list forever, I guess. There's so much to read and so little time... I'd love to get deeper into Shakespeare and Moliere. Theater is my weak point yet. Want to teach me?

Reading now: "Illusions" by Richard Bach (ummm... yeah, weak moment there), "Minervas Owl", History of political philosophy by Jeffrey Abramson, was great! Still trying to read Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. But I fall asleep at it all the time.

See, it's preemptive multi-tasking. ;-)

The greatest story around is Goethe's Faust. It's German poetry at it's best and I read in it every once in a while - just because of the beauty of it's language.

Movies: Twin Peaks. Anything by David Lynch. You have to see this film to understand me: "Frozen Land" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388318/). Schindler's List, The Pianist, Slumdog Millionaire, all kind of documentaries. Finnish movies by Kaurismäki.
PS. I'm not really a great movie guy - I like to form my own pictures of a story. In a book you can do this, in a movie you see only the pre-thought pictures of others.

TV: CNN, AC360, Twit.tv, TED, Discovery, any documentary and science program. Any news program or tech story. Again Twin Peaks, Veronica Mars, Wire in the blood, Mankell's Wallander, The Late Show, Letterman, Harald Schmidt.

Music (secretly my real life):

Just discovered: http://chrystabell.com/

Minimal House, Progressive House, Deep House, Experimental House, Vocal House, Ambient, Lounge, Zero Beats, Techno, Electro, Trance, Classical (esp. piano music, i adore Hélène Grimaud and Martha Argerich), Rachmaninoff, esp. the 2nd piano concert. I'd die to be able to play that one, listen and cry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEkuzVlUjoo, Sibelius ("Tuonelan Joutsen"), Bach, Bruckner (8th), Brahms, Schumann. My girl plays the violin. So we listen to Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi too. And, not so voluntarily these days, Emocore or Scream ;-)) In moodier times I listen to Music from Twin Peaks by Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise; the very late Johnny Cash (Hurt!), Coldplay ("Scientist", "Yellow") or "Chasing cars" by Snow Patrol. I love Robbie William's "Angels". There are some nice pop artists too. But mainly I listen to minimal house (Koletzki, Deadmau5, Crowdpleaser, Soulsearcher, Lützenkirchen, Pascal FEOS) , many DJ mixes and trancier things like oceanlab, Schiller, Andain. In the car we'd even listen to some hip-hop LMFAO or Pitbull, esp. after our latest vacation in Florida (I'm madly and completely irrationally in love with Miami). Sic! Oh I forgot Falco (Jeanny, Out of the Dark!), and one of the all time greats Culture Club with Der Erdbeermund, Phil Collins - "In the air tonight". And so on.

Food: I'll eat about anything. (but fast food!) There's nothing like a good "Rostbraten mit Spätzle" (swabian steak with noodles), mmhh... German food is really the best in the world when it comes to bread, sausages, noodles and meat. Otherwise I like Indian, Mexican and Italian cuisines too. Some Finnish stuff is quite good as well - such as dark bread, cranberries, fish and Christmas Ham (joulukinkku). As a kid I had to work in our family meat and sausage factory. There I learned the cooking. We eat salads and vegetables with every meal, I watch the fats closely (the former biochemistry student lurking here), so no animal fats. We eat lots of fruit, according to the season. I'm not a real gourmet - but occasionally we visit some good restaurants. Food is, European as we are, a really important cultural event for us. So I cook a warm meal every day, we eat together and talk about the things going on. My kid cooks with me now too.

I should mention this: I really like good smells. My current favorite is Armani Black Code. I like his clothes too. (little Narcissus greeting there...) And yes, I do wear suites at work, sometimes. And I own ten times more shoes than the average German man. Proves something about the average man, doesn't it?

"things" being used in a broad manner here - not a physical thing, but "Thing" in the way Kant uses it

0. my freedom (of thought, of speech - it's the meta level)
1. my daughter
2. my greyhound dogs Yes, we have two boys now.
3. music
4. my laptops, 7 PCs (I live in a kind of technical museum soon. arghhh.) wikipedia, and the interwebz
5. my books
6. my work

I adore beauty - the running Greyhound, an old Jaguar cabriolet, a bonsai tree, a medieval cathedral, fine clothing, a sunset at sea, a green mountain forest, an artistic picture, and, of course, a beautiful woman - beauty is healing, nutrition for my plagued soul and comfort in this ugly, noisy industrial world. I like class - without pomp, quietly and valuable. And forms - of nature or man made. I live, think and write in "pictures" and look always for perfection (which is, dear fellow philosophers, per se, imperfect...)

You. The Unknown. Life. Death.

April 2012: Would like to write a virtual dialogue between Amartya Sen and John Rawls about justice and fairness.

---
Faust: True, I am more clever than all the vain creatures,
The Doctors and Masters, Writers and Preachers;
[...]
So I have turned to magic lore,
To see if through the spirit's power and speech
Perchance full many a secret I may reach,
So that no more with bitter sweat
I need to talk of what I don't know yet,
So that I may perceive whatever holds
The world together in its inmost folds.
---

Well, that sounds better in German.

Why I'm so restless, empty on the inside, unready. Where to go next and what task to fulfill. Who to serve when all authority is gone.

- the billion people suffering hunger on this planet
- women's rights in Muslim countries (fan of Ayaan Hirsi Ali)
- the kids in the slums of Bombay I saw when I was there
- the current political system and it's unfairness
- my "abstraction theory of political systems"
- science, knowledge & (anti)-religion
- how to make my intellectual legacy come alive
- where to find my soul mate or pair soul or angel
- what's all that metaphysical stuff I'm experiencing about
- how to write my next book

I'm sometimes thinking about dropping out of society and devoting to nature, like Heidegger did. My capabilities to handle superficiality, greed, anger and fear are limited. I really need to write more. Relocating seems to become more and more an option.

Maybe you'd want to drop out - and move to Montana? Woods, Dogs, Mountains and Kids. Deal?

"Science is the poetry of reality." (Richard Dawkins)

As a kid I always wanted to invent a plant which would grow so fast that nobody would have to suffer hunger again. So I studied biochemistry in the early 90s until my family ran in a depression out of money. Dream buried.

I love physics (Sagan, Tipler, Einstein, Planck ) and was building moon rockets when the other guys went playing football. Should have studied physics, but was too afraid of the math. Stupid me.

I'm fascinated by some great love stories in history: Hera & Zeus, Caesar & Cleopatra & Marcus Antonius, Augustine & "The One", Romeo & Juliet, Dr. Faust & Gretel, ... I know it's there - the bigger-than-life love story. I want to live it!

I strongly believe in an energetic entity called "soul", it's capability to wander in time and between bodies, rebirth, karma, the thing I call "source". I have a plan for a big novel with that as motif. Soul wandering. And the above love story, of course.

I've been through all kinds of phases in this life. Ups, I mean really high ups and really low downs. Like a pendulum. I've seen it all. Living in five star hotels, business meetings, hipster parties and the street. I've owned every materialistic thing I'll ever need. My family has gone through all classes of society - and I'm quite comfortable in the middle class right now. Resting.

I had a quite rough youth (I was, I guess, a so called "bad boy" until my early 20s). I have little to do with my parents today. Both drank. That's why I do not. And you shouldn't either. And no, not everybody comes after their parents - that's a stupid myth! It's illogical - because it would simply mean the end of evolution. That thinking makes me a strong anti-racist. I believe in the power of personality and mind more than in any determinism in sociology or genetics.

I've had two serious motorcycle accidents and one near-death-experience, which really changed the game for me. I was in the Light. It's really there, you know! And: It gives me the perspective I need for the writing.

There is a great picture in Dante's Commedia Divina: All those plagued human creatures are climbing uphills under pain into the purgatory - while Dante and Virgil walk relaxed and happy downhills just after having visited it. This is me (and you...) watching all others still failing in life...

I've studied communications, politics, business administration and information technology since. I'm getting more and more seriously interested in art and philosophy. I love academia and great minds. [reality off] My biggest dream is to get the chance to study philosophy at an Ivy League University - at least for a couple of semesters. [reality on]

There is more in this world than man made "truth". There are other forces and other realities to which only few of us ever have access. (Have you ever really seen a four dimensional cube?) I always think of Stephen King's "shining". We have it. We are different. We are old souls. We have been around forever. And: We are one. When it all comes to an end we rejoin the "source", the mysterious thing all live evolves from, the big spirituality. I was "on the other side" and came back. Now I have to find you.

typical?

* getting an espresso doppio with my nerdy friends downtown OR
* attending a political convention OR
* walking the dogs in the dark woods OR
* sitting on the couch chatting on blogtv with some crazy people 10,000 miles away. OR
* programming some weird database abstraction layer
* writing, obviously

I used to be an active techno/house clubber and DJ/party organizer. I still do attend parades and rarely a party too. I do dance (or at least do something remotely similar to it. My daughter laughs at it. But it's just oldschool Techno.)

I don't own a single pair of jeans. Or boxer shorts. For that matter. I'm not fat.

---

Faust. Well now, who are you then?
Mephistopheles. Part of that Power which would
The Evil ever do, and ever does the Good.
Faust. A riddle! Say what it implies!
Mephistopheles. I am the Spirit that denies!

---

*as a programmer I'm very skeptical about the computer models predicting climate change. Science is always only the current state of error.
* as a scientist I'm very skeptical about statistical analysis. I believe in the power of brain and not numbers.
* as a social scientist I'm skeptical about political correctness; actually I like being politically incorrect.
* I don't care about my carbon footprint - as long as in China huge coal deposits are burning freely without anybody caring.
* as a thinker I question any "truth" anytime.
* I've worked in a slaughterhouse. And despite that I'm not vegan. But I think profoundly about killing.
* I'm a boy - I love big V8-engines and loud bikes
* as a normative theorist I believe in the existence of values.
* I'm an insomniac.
* I often provoke people, mostly unintentionally.
* I can get depressive at times. I get quiet and introverted then. And hurt. But any form of art rises out of depression! So, the pain of the world is the food of my art.
*Thoughts of self destruction are no stranger to me and the idea of suicide has been around at times. There is a price to pay for a creative mind. No point in denying that.
* I have a bitter, sarcastic sense of humor. But don't tell anyone. ;-) My mom always told me, words were more powerful than guns. True. And they can hurt more too.
* I've never paid for sex. And never would.
* I've had an affair with one of the most beautiful women in the world. Well, she was only human too.
* last but not least - I haven't ever been married. Naive as it may sound: I'm still waiting.

If you got the poetry in this profile.

If you can fly in your dreams. If you are, symbolically speaking, Dante's Beatrice - my beloved guide through all celestial spheres of heaven.

If you need to be completed If you demand some progress in your life; if you have the feeling you must proceed to another level; if you want to explore things; if you feel being more than just your body & intellect - or if you feel some strange vibes just right now reading this stuff.

And if "wine" is not one of the six things you can't do without.

If you have and/or want kids and animals, esp. dogs. If you want a family of your own and a loving, caring, experienced father for your kids. My daughter is 15 now - I've been there. I know what I'm doing and don't have to guess like all those little boys. But: I'm not looking for a mother for my daughter. She has one.

If you can sit on a motorcycle for days. Even better if you drive one yourself! If you don't mind sleeping in a tent. If you're interested in history. If you love museums, castles and old cathedrals. If you could live in the mountains of Colorado or Northern California or Switzerland.

If you want to travel to Tibet and India.

If you want to see Florence, Rome, Athens and all the places human culture has evolved from.

We are old souls. And we have been to all those places before. One of the most amazing thing you EVER will experience, is to recognize a place of your a past life of yours.

To any gold-diggers (you know these ads from Eastern Europe etc.): please move on, OK? I am independent and you should be too.

I'd go about anywhere for a date if the chemistry is right - actually the craziest date I ever had was in Bombay, India. So, please don't let the geography or ethnicity confuse you. I love meeting people NOT like me - other cultures, nationalities, skin colors, religions... Hey, it's a globalized world - we can fly.

I'm looking for someone really special. You are one in a billion. You are reason, not conclusion. You've come a long way, through many storms and rainy nights, through the heat of life, though passion, solitude, pain and relief. You know who you are, why you are here and that there is yet so much more to be found in this world. You have seen, learned and understood. You are a person to spend the rest of this life (and the next ones) with. And for that person nothing is too precious.
---

Margaret:
It seems to me as if I must
Force myself on you and you thrust
Me back, and yet it's you, so kind, so good to see.
Faust. If you feel it is I, then come with me!
Margaret. Out there?
Faust: To freedom!