His paintings are in galleries and art collections around the world. His fiction and poetry have been published in many prestigious magazines. He was a brilliant, kind, sensitive and irreplaceable man.
Mark and I met in art class at Eastern Michigan University in the fall of 1980. He was 19, I was 17. I always told him the only reason he liked me was because I didn't like him. I liked smart guys and he was too cute to be smart :) he always had a train of cute girls following him wherever he went. He used to laugh that the first thing I ever said to him is 'What a dork'. - I don't remember that :)
He proposed (for the first time) from his second floor dorm room window, yelling out over the parking lot as I pulled away with my friends headed for Florida and spring break. I just laughed but I knew then (we both did) that we'd always be together. Even when we weren't.
There were a lot of years that we weren't. He was always on a quest for answers and sometimes it took him to the far corners of the continent, sometimes to the far corners of his mind. But he always called to check in on me when he returned. Never with what he was in search of in hand.
Mark loved The Beats, Hemingway, Pollock and Bukowski. He loved their work, he read every word by and about them. He saw himself in there, I know. He understood their darkness. The struggles with their demons. He battled his own demons fiercely until the day he died. Until the moment he died.
Mark was the real deal as they say. If I hadn't known him as well as I had I might say that I don't even know what that phrase is supposed to mean.
His lit professors at University of Michigan knew he was a dark horse and tried to put reigns on him. I could have told them what an exercise in futility that would be.
He told me about the time, when he was only 8, in third grade, the class was asked to write a poem for their homework assignment. Mark came in the next day and proudly read his aloud, he knew even then that he'd hit a home run:
spitter spatter
spitter spatter
make them cakes
a bit more fatter
The nun angrily accused him of stealing the poem and got even more furious with him when he denied it. To prove his innocence he said, "but wait, I have another one, too."
woosh weesh
woosh weesh
see those cars
go faster
sheesh
She promptly smacked him across the knuckles with a ruler and sent him to the office. "Thus, my first lesson in what it's like to be a poet in the modern world." he used to say :)
Painting, reading and writing were without a doubt Mark's favorite pass time but swimming with Henry & Lucy would come in a close second I'd have to say.
He would actually put the stick in his mouth and try to wrestle it away from Lucy. Cracked me up. She won every time :)
Henry is a weird golden, he doesn't really like to get wet. Mark always said it was his 'royal blood' and called him 'Princely Boy' and 'Kitty Scherbatsky' (funny, if you remember your Tolstoy).
The only time Hen would dive in the water was when Mark threw a stick the size of a small tree or if he challenged Hen to a race. Henry loved racing and don't think they aren't seriously competing here. This was for the Gold folks. Mark loved his dogs more than just about anything.
Here is a link to his most recently published short story,
'Butterfly Mesa' in
Jack Magazine.
And these poems, a couple of my all time favorites, published in
Simply Haiku Magazine a couple of years ago.
I can say with certainty that no one who's ever met Mark could honestly say they've ever met anyone else like him. Seeing the world through his eyes is something everyone should try. (but pack a chute and maybe some smelling salts) I know I'll never be the same for it.
Knowing him changed everything about me. About my art, my writing. And the way I saw the world. It challenged everything I thought I knew. He always said that he and I were like soft shelled turtles, too sensitive sometimes for the world at large. We were both often and easily hurt. So we tried in vain to protect each other.
Mark's mom told me the funniest story once (all right, probably more than once) and I think it offers great insight into the way he saw things.
I think he was about 3 or 4 (correct me if I'm wrong here, Mary), they were in the supermarket line and he pointed to a bald man in the line next to them and said, 'Look mom, that man has invisible hair!' A true Mark moment, that :)
Mark has been sailing with his family on Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula since he was knee high. He taught me to sail on our little 24 foot Tanzer when we lived in Alaska. He was so proud of me when I learned to dock all by myself, with the motor of course, where he usually preferred to dock under sail - the show off :)
He had an uncanny sense of the wind his father had told him when he was young. He was proud about that. Sailing with his dad and brothers John and Karl was one of many fond childhood memories he often told me about.
I can't help but laugh right now remembering the first time he took me sailing on his dad's boat when we were kids. He keeled the boat so far over I had to sit on the side to keep from falling in. He scared me so badly I never wanted to go sailing with him again. So when he wanted to buy our boat in Alaska I said, 'are you crazy, I'll never go on that thing! You about killed me that time."
He was forced to admit that he was trying to scare me so I'd sit closer to him and he could kiss me. aw, cute. Of course, I then let him buy the damn boat. Have I mentioned his manipulative side? :)
He loved his family but the apple of his eye was always JoAnnie as he called her. His baby sister who he loved more than anything. He always told me about how the three older boys would compete for her affections when she was a baby. I didn't mention it at the time but from what I always saw the three older boys competed for just about everything :)
But I think maybe they competed for JoAnne's love the fiercest. They would play different animal characters and act goofy, talk in silly voices and make funny noises, Mark re-enacted it for me many times (trust me it would make you laugh - maybe more at him than with him?) the winner apparently whoever made her laugh the most.
I remember only a few years ago sitting at the dinner table and the boys, all well into their 30's and 40's at this point still arguing about who made her laugh the hardest. Mark would still say it was him.
Mark and I finally got married when I was 34 and we've been married ever since. 12 years in April. Even though we were estranged for the last 4 months of his life. A regret I will never get over. But I know that letting him go to do his thing was part of what we were. Part of what we'd always been.
Here's a picture of him last Christmas Eve. He had surprised me with tickets to the Santa Fe Symphony. I thought I'd grab a quick picture since it was nearly impossible to ever get the man out of paint clothes :)
His senseless, violent murder is a perfect example of the shoot first, think later mentality that has become all too common in this country. Violence is something that Mark always despised. He was the gentlest soul I have ever known. This should never have happened.
When Mark was a child he told me that he used to go out into the woods behind his house near Marquette, Michigan and lay on the ground perfectly still until a chipmunk or squirrel would clamber up onto his chest or legs. He said that the first time he did it it took a long time but after they were used to him they would come much quicker. He liked to lay there without moving and see how long he could get them to sit there with him.
He could lay there happily like that, dreaming away, for hours at a time. That's what I like to think he is doing now. Just laying there dreaming, watching the chippies, as he called them. I like that image of him.
Mark at work, you can see why I wanted to grab a pic of him dressed up! :) Splattered head to toe with orange paint, like he was every day.
We used to laugh at this picture and call it "the Finnish Man-Whore shot" don't ask - he's from the U.P. remember, he could do a scary Finnish accent - often without even trying :)
But more often this favorite photo of ours was referred to as "the idiot man-child shot" after William Faulkner's vision of the future of America (Mark loved the Cohn Brothers. Barton Fink was an all-time favorite).
The basic reference to our joke was to the symbolism of Falkner's end scene in Absalom, Absalom and also in The Sound and The Fury of the in-bred family idiot standing on the burning remains of the family estate.
Culture, knowledge and beauty ravaged by greed, depravity and ignorance who itself has no means to survive without the aid what it's killed off.
I for one find that image particularly apropos to end with, considering... I know he would have enjoyed it ;)
"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." —–– William Shakespeare. Macbeth (Act V, Scene V).
Thank you sincerely to all of his many patrons who have purchased his artwork and followed his literary career over the years. He always appreciated your notes of encouragement.
And thank you to all of my customers who have waited patiently for commissions while I try to put my life back in some semblance of order. It feels like half of me is missing. Nothing in my world is ever going to be the same because he's not coming back from his quest this time.
I can only hope it's because he finally found what he was looking for.
We all love and miss you Mark.
© 2009 Mark S. Weber & Jenny Berry. All Rights Reserved.
