From Seattle to Mars

And thus we turn to the east.

Seattle’s morning traffic on the major roads is a hell variously described as a pinch, a gridlock, bottleneck, a stopstart, a wait, a jam… so we head east on the back roads to avoid it..

Good move. How pretty. How enlightening. An intimate view of backwoods life in America.

From the land so densely crowded with towering trees we pass through fertile valleys where people are farming by hand. Yes, hand ploughs in American fields and groups of people at work planting - rice, it turns out..

Duval pops up, a quaint and inviting little touristy town. The road meanders on following what seems to be an old canal almost clogged with waterlilies out into swampy lands and more cultivated fields. It is rich volcanic soil here where the Cascade mountains make such a grand backdrop, their ridges making a horizon serrated with the spikes of pine trees.

Valleys of baby corn, strawberry fields, a town called Carnation, blueberry farms, hay, hay, hay, a flower farm, a Christmas tree farm, horses and a fast-moving river glinting in the sun. Snoquelmine Falls. We don’t stop although it seems a popular spot. We are on the clock today. We have a date..

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A sweeping new road going by the proud name of “Better Way” reveals the latest thing in rural housing developments, very sophisticated with elaborate rock engineering tiers for houses up the grand old mountain..

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Suddenly, dense traffic, lumbering trucks, red lights. It is the motorway junction. Route 90 East. We scoot onto it and join the flow. The road is rough and noisy but big and good after the back roads. It cuts through valleys with mountains towering on either side, some still with their rocky peaks capped by snow. Some slopes are almost vertical and feature ski lifts. Ski slopes and chalets come into view amid the mountain coverings of mighty trees..

Oh the trees. So many trees. Beautiful, but they can become claustrophobic.

I’m glad when we start to enter a rain shadow area where the trees are sparser and smaller..

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Now the Cascades have given over to softer undulating hills which are covered in wind farms, huge mighty turbines..

Then the plains come with hay and cattle - and Trump signs..

America. The great open road at last..

Ironically, the landscape is a bit like that around Port Augusta. It looks like saltbush plains - until we come upon the great inland reclamation project with mile upon mile of giant circular crops irrigated by vast, slow-moving sprinkler arms. I’ve seen these crop circles from the air and wondered about them. Now my wonderment is that I am actually driving across that landscape between them. Corn, corn, corn - miles of corn, that great American staple..

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Finally we reach Moses Lake which is a charming resort town set around a mighty inland lake. Here, my Brainstorms friend M R “Mars” McDonald is waiting for us with his art teacher friend, Geoff. We have never met but know each other over many years from life shared in that great online community founded by Howard Rheingold. Mars is an artist and his work is on show at the Moses Lake Museum and Art Centre.

I’ve loved it for years as he has shared it on Brainstorms and Facebook. But, in reality, his photo art somehow miraculously impregnated into perspex sheets, is so vivid it is almost 3-D. Thrilling.

Mars is an urban archeologist. His study is the land of posters, be they noticeboards, telegraph poles or dumpsters. He depicts the details of the layering of posters, the years of replacements, overlays, tear offs, staples… One happening eclipsing another over the years, Circuses, meetings, plays, concerts, politics… Marvellous colours and shapes, messages, images, textures…

The result it a semi-abstract of strange melancholia, a commentary on transience … The depth of field and the high focus of the images gives them new and different perspectives. It’s all pretty wonderful.

Mars walks me through the show.

It is extensive and the gallery, there in the civic building of Moses Lake, is sleek and versatile. The other art on show was of complementary high standard, a section of it wood sculptures some of which reiterates elements of Mars’s idiom.

Thereafter, Mars takes us all to lunch in a charming gourmet market and restaurant. We have rich, juicy, immense burgers, mine a reuben in burger form - naughty American food. Messy and delicious.

It has been a very special and rewarding meetup..

Pataphysics with Howard

Friday night we had a date. A Brainstorms Meetup.

Eight of us, associated with Howard Rheingold’s pioneering virtual community of Brainstorms, were to gather at Howard’s Mill Valley home and then go out for dinner.

Muti-faceted uber guru Howard Rheingold, once editor of The Whole Earth Catalogue, is a famous pioneer and explorer of the internet, of virtual communities and the general implications of the technological revolution. He was founder of Electric Minds and later of Brainstorms.

I belong to his Brainstorms community and many of the people I am visiting to meet in the flesh on this road trip are fellow members of this stimulating and eclectic virtual community.

Howard has one of the most interesting and beautiful little studies in the world - his computer room-cum-office which is tucked beside the house. It is exquisitely compact and full of the art he produces. Howard also is an artist and one of his trademarks is his vividly-painted footwear.

Also in his lush and lovely garden is his neat little workshop and another studio in which a marvellous pataphysical project is underway - the construction of a Time Machine. It has been six years in the planning and is just taking shape with the help of Howard’s fellow pataphysicists.

Two people can sit in the Time Machine and interact with various gadgets which will transport them to a chosen time. Not that they leave this world in so doing. Howard suggested that outsiders could harass them if they wanted. It is all a concept of whimsy and imagination.

Howard’s garden is a magical sanctuary, curtained in lush greens. His fruit trees bend with well-loved years. His pear tree leans with the history of storms. His vegetables reach for the sun from their raised beds. Spiders happily trap invasive insects. Everywhere, tucked into corners of the garden to pleasure the corners of the mind are little surprises - plants and rocks and artworks. It’s a private wonderland.

And thus, thanks Howard, did we start our San Francisco time with what the Indonesians call, “cuci mata” - washing the eyes - and learning of the limitless possibilities of pataphysics.

Thereafter, the eight of us, including Howard’s wife Judy Mass Rheingold, swarmed by car to Sausalito off to gather around a big round table and break, not so much bread, as lots of crab legs - and to talk about life, the universe and other things of note or not.