I am flipping through the imaginary pages of MtnMan’s portfolio. I understand he is Mark--Mark Ramstead as he has said in response to my many messages.
You are able to find Mark’s no-touristy folio on Red Bubble. It tantalizes us with all mandatory sites to see along any I-40, I-10, I-80 pre-meditation to go west and stay there.
If you are to follow him around, I would recommend that you go thru San Bernardino and for gawd’s sake, Barstow. Here’s the deal on all that: in San Bernardino there is a gas station in which the guys have nothing better to do than to demean women. Now, I don’t typically recommend such sight-seeing detours, but these guys are so extraordinarily swathed in male privilege that I must.
This may be akin to the Orange Show in Houston or the, sob, sob, Watts Towers in LA. See them before it’s too late, you see, is the point of all that weeping and odd comparison.
And, Barstow, well, the only personal reason I have to go through there is so I may turn Mr. Thompson’s well-turned phrases over and over in my mind as I speed under the blistery sun in a rented convertible:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to drive.”
I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.
--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971.
So there I was, surfing Red Bubble, and somehow through the String and Chaos Theories of art appreciation (may we add Parallel Universe ideology?)…somewhere in there was Mark.
I believe his love for his Mom and Dad is and always has been, outstanding in the rain, cold, heat and snow (see evidence here) and, further, I suggest that he is a draftsman incognito.
Additionally (as they say when they do go on), there is a Cezanne-Gone-Mad latent tendency (in this portfolio at least) that may drive you mad with its tantalizing twinkle in the eye. You don’t have to watch too closely for it.
Anyway.
Given all that, Mark Mountain Man Ramstead’s vision touches me this morning as I re-visit the obligatory natural resources up and down the coastal and other-side-of-the-Divide wonders of this Woody Guthrie song.
That these post-Adams monoliths can be so intimate is a thing. A really fine thing.
I self-console and reconcile these younger, more electronically-bound aficionados of nature who have viewed this work and find it strangely scary because Blair Witchiness has forever estranged them from the cold morning mists of an ambling trek through old forests.
There are people of the Rock Nation in there and Green Folk and devas all rising up to greet you, I say to them.
Prevent matricide and restore the vision of Gaia to magic on the right-hand path! I rail in my usual mania...
Hardly any homicide happens here beneath this canopy!
The only terror you’d better fear is just a black bear’s brand of howdy.
It ain’t no thang.
You can clank that away with a couple of nice metal drinking cups.
Huh? Oh, go to the flea market or swap meet.
They used to make them with clips for your pack or belt loop.
Haunted forests are cool, so cool.
You may find Mark Ramstead’s work on Red Bubble under the appropriate guise of MtnMan.
As you might have guessed, I like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment