This book constitutes a first amendment speech REVIEW / COMMENTARY of our experience at this location. In 2013, Steve and I visited the Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, California. We went there to visit his mother Marion Freedman, his father Lewis Freedman, and grandparents Joseph and Leona Hurst. We also went there to visit Al Jolsen, the famous singer who lived in the early part of the 20th century. Al Jolsen and Steve are cousins on his mother's side. The experience was amazing. I shot lots of photographs. The park is tranquil and relaxed. Amazingly, the photographs afterward, showed some interesting orbs and energies. In fact, it was there that I caught the largest orb that I have ever caught on camera. Some people claim that orbs are dust particles or something insignificant as such. But I believe that nothing happens accidentally. I believe that everything happens for a reason and timing is imminent. I believe that time, the timing of the occurrence of things, communicates something. As an artist, sometimes I use my creative work to document time. And how so? To use a metaphor, in every writing, a phrase for instance, there are silent pauses or spaces. As an artist, I want to engage with those spaces to give the nature of life a deeper meaning. I also believe that we live in a multidimensional universe. It's not unlike people who believe in God, in spite of the fact that God doesn't appear to have a physical existence. So then, where does God exist? I would argue God, or God's components can be experienced in different ways in different dimensions, spaces or universes. I also believe that human beings and well animals too and other things in nature, have a reflection or existence in other spaces or dimensions. As an artist I am trying to understand the nature of the self and its reflections. I am also interested in how mechanical devices, like cameras for instance, pick up on elements of the world around us that aren't evident to us human beings with the mere use of our senses. I make an analogy here to seaweed. Seaweed is a living organism. But seaweed, as it grows, does not appear to be able to differentiate as different kinds of animals or fish come around it. For instance, a dangerous great white shark could swim by the seaweed, but it, the seaweed has no way of differentiating that from a clown fish, etc. Living deep in the ocean, seaweed would not be aware of what lays over the water. Should a storm ensue, it would only feel the ebbs and flow of the water around it, but it would be unable to understand the nature of the storm itself and how it looks in other places or dimensions such as outside of the water. The point that I am trying to make here is that we too, human beings, are equally limited by our senses. A dog, for instance, can only see black and maybe one or two colors. Can you imagine? Human beings can see more colors than dogs but as it turns out, our eyes only pick up 1% of the electromagnetic light spectrum. Can you imagine what the world would look like if we could see more than 1%? It would be intense. And this is one of my quests as an artist. I am trying to imagine the world with an expanded sense of consciousness. Hillside Memorial Park is a beautiful park. It has flat areas and hills. These hills remind me of waves...
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.