I traveled all over and wish to travel more. I traveled to Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, Thailand, China, and Japan.

In Peru I went up to Machu Picchu, an interesting place it seemed to me, spiritual of some sort, I couldn’t place the feelings I had. I spent two years in Kyoto Japan, a historical city where I studied Japanese painting. I had already worked in oils, and watercolor. As I stayed there I began to understand why Japanese painting is the way it is with colors and nature, this is because of the countryside with autumn colors and four seasons. The overall feeling conveyed something to me. In China, I could feel its history the great technological achievements and also its contributions to engineering, science, and mechanical technology, its invention of gunpowder, guns, cannons, canal locks, and many other things.

Overall I believe that the separate disciplines of science, engineering, crafts, arts, scholarly studies, the humanities, and spirituality are all one they are interrelated, there are medical illustrators, forensic sculptors, paleontological illustrators, historical illustrators who contribute to the National Geographic, these are few of the examples, people could create their own blending of science, engineering, and art, think about Leonardo da Vinci and others who did similar thing. He wasn’t the only one who worked on several disciplines, every country has had such people.

Since I was a child I’ve always been attracted to things that were beautiful, interesting, powerful, ugly and strange. I used to look into the side of a sheet of glass and imagining seeing into another world, as to what would it be like to visit that world. I saw all kinds of strange creatures inhabiting that world, I imagined interacting with these people. Because it didn’t matter what they looked like they were people, like ourselves, but different. I didn’t have too many playmates so I did things with myself and stories of strange worlds began to grow. I used to draw these worlds. But what also stimulated me were the fairytale books, the illustrations of interesting strange and beautiful historical worlds of fantasy. It seemed most of them were situated in medieval England or Northern Europe, but I read about other stories set in Russia, China, India, Arabia, Japan, Polynesia, Africa, Pre-Columbian America, and other places, I was always interested in the American culture I grew up with.

Because I grew up in Hawaii, in school we always learned about the Ancient Hawaiian legends, which were interesting, wonderful and beautiful. I heard about one legend of how the Polynesians got the sweet potato, its origins in America’s. What I learned is that Ancient Hawaii was divided into states that competed in war. There was a boy whose father guarded the coasts against enemies. This boy befriended a strange boy who was shipwrecked; the strange boy said that he came from a place where the sun rose over an endless immense land. The boy hid this stranger, then the father found out and killed the strange boy, and from his body, a sweet potato plant grew. There is evidence the Polynesian’s went to America’s, South American archeologists have found evidence that the Polynesian’s brought the chicken to America’s not the Europeans. They found Polynesian remains in South America.

I remember when I was in the elementary school my teacher had a large book on world mythology that she studied and taught about in class. There were other books on Norse and Greek mythologies. They taught us to value other peoples and cultures. My cousin and her classmates created book report on Native American nations, another cousin was given a project to draw what people would look like on other planets of our solar system.

In the story, I mentioned about a Rock and Mushroom that can speak through telepathy. To the Japanese rocks have Buddha nature as all things in nature, to them rocks have souls, this is why many Buddhist temples and secular places have rock gardens. That is why during my stay in Japan for two years I learned to appreciate rock and even inanimate objects said to have life, this is what I realized about Japanese painting, that when an artist goes out to sketch they look for the soul of a thing they are drawing transposing this in color and line. For me, this is the way I approach things. In my opinion, this is how all art is approached with varying individual ways every writer and painter puts their own perceptions as to what the world is, we all do this, artist or non-artist, this is what I learned in oil painting, acrylics, watercolor, photography, and writing. Putting color on a surface has a life force of its own. As a professional photographer, this is what I learned about the photos of the wedding couples I took and other things I photographed for artistic reasons. I learned that every person, other life forms and things in this universe are equal to every other.

I am intrigued by places that are different from any in our world, imagining what these peoples and places would be in terms of spirituality, though, architecture, technology, a technology of only the mind without mechanical or electrical machines, machines without material substance. Imagine ways of doing things not even thought of in this world. There is an infinite number of ways to do things or to solve problems.

In the book the Senetha warriors could be similar to the old samurai, in Japan of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the samurai was in decline they had to borrow money from the merchants and bankers, their influence declined as the merchant class became more powerful. For the Senetha warriors, they were already in decline, they had just become people on the council or senate it was in a way to guarantee a place. The craftspeople, scientists, engineers and scholar, farmers were already replacing them on the council. Their world and society are changing, this means the environment, their ways of living and culture, all societies have had to face change.