This is a First Amendment Commentary. How do we 'remember' places where we have lived in the past? As an artist who often works on the mental re-construction of scenes of all types, I am interested in learning how the mind 'sees' and remembers places. I even take this one step further. I often spend time 'seeing' or 'sensing' with my minds' eye and in the process, try to re-experience places and spaces that are relevant to my work. This book is an attempt to combine an interest in the mental processes that take place when human beings 'remember' their past and how that ultimately defines the brain's capacity to experience life. It is an attempt to understand how human beings experience images from the past. When I daydream or when I dream or meditate, I also experience images which I think of as other realities. These can expand and grow in intensity and sometimes be even more powerful and beautiful than physical reality. I usually think of places where I have lived with nostalgia. Amongst the many questions that arise are: Do we leave something behind wherever we go? Are these 'things' we leave parts of ourselves? What parts are these? Can they be recaptured? And how can we more accurately re-experience the past and possibly change it by changing the present and future perception of it? At times, when I am awake, I could make an analogy of my sense of memory experience to the viewing of an old film. The film, tattered and damaged by time, is similar to the images that I experience in my human mind as I 'remember' them. In the images, (photo-paintings) in this book, I captured parts of a condo in which I once lived. And yet, one could ask, why go to the past? My answer is that the past is part of who we are today. The past is part of our present whether joyful or sad. To revisit the past when it is more drab or lonesome than jolly is difficult but to do so, I believe can bring joy to our lives. Here it is we find the worth of the exercises in this book. In these pages, I revisit the past, by means of art, photography, writing, and psychic intuition. I get in touch with my memories of it in order to better understand it and perhaps, at instances change it. And the therapy in this book is aimed at exactly that, changing our perspective or perceptions of the past in order to improve our state of mind and mood in the present. I hope this book will entice you to revisit your past and somehow, in those cases where there is darkness and sorrow, see it in a different light, with a better and brighter light.
About the Author: I am a survivor who believes in the inexorable power of the human spirit. I am a believer who has seen through tragedy into the eye of the setting sun knowing that the morrow can bring a new and brighter day. I am a compassionate human being who empathizes with the suffering of others and wants to be there for them. And I do this by writing transformational stories and creating art filled with characters and images that are imbued with passion and love. I was born in California. At five I was abducted in the trunk of a car. I only saw my mother a few times after that. I was moved from place to place as a child and hid in the US, Mexico and Spain. I went to ten schools the first twelve years. During this time, I had to contend with a father whose mental illness and drug and alcohol addictions caused him to be a dangerous sadist. I was barely eighteen years old when I ran away from home because he threatened to kill me with a 38 revolver. But I got on my feet, found a job, bought a car. I graduated from UCI with a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics and the ability to speak several languages. While there, I married a medical student. My first pregnancy ended in stillbirth. Notwithstanding this and other hardships I graduated from UCLA Law School in 1992. We moved to Texas and while I was raising my children, I graduated from the University of Texas Dallas where I received an M.A.. There I took several writing courses. Then, I began a career as a visual/writing artist. My artwork, mostly surrealist, includes extensive writings, short stories and poetry. One of my paintings "The Kiss of Death," is featured adjacent to a Picasso in the acclaimed documentary by the BBC: THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A MASTERPIECE: THE KISS BY GUSTAV KLIMT ICON OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Today, I engage my writing, photography and art in an effort to understand the nature of the human experience, the processes of the mind, the experience of memory, visual and mental perception and life in general. My art and writing also include queries into the nature of the universe and the existence of life after death. As such, my art constitutes a form of auto-biography. I see it as a glimpse into an American woman artists experience at the turn of the 20th century. Ultimately, I am glad to be able to share my artistic experience. Perhaps others will find it useful in their quest to understand life.