Running around in Circles: Is there an end

Next week I'll be in NYC seeing old friends, visiting a museum or two, and checking out the shops, sights and eateries I frequented in
the years I lived in the City.

One stop is the Jewish Heritage Museum to
hear a talk by Diane Ackerman about her
2007 book the "Zookeepers Wife."

I am hoping that not only will I enjoy
Ms. Ackerman's talk and appreciate the Irène Némirovsky exhibit, the visit will move me forward in my own work.

For as long as I can remember I've been consumed with World War II and the Holocaust.

I've read widely on the subject but I've not even touched the surface of the number of non-fiction, fiction and memoirs written about this period in history.

But several books stand out as invaluable in educating me to the history of the times: Treblinka was given to me by a member of the Dutch Underground in the early 60s and provided me with a new understanding of resistance and Lucy S. Dawidowicz book The War Against the Jews which provided me with facts.

I have under construction 13 collages about the holocaust, each one representing a person, place or event of World War II. Several are complete and the first in the series, Geboren (born), is dedicated to a life-long friend born in a transit camp at the close of the war in 1945. Others are also dedicated to persons or places that have come to have special meaning to me.

I've written a short fictitious diary in the voice of a soldier as part of a larger project with fellow artists and a short story about a past life memory of being concentrated as part of a Women's Theology Project.

I suppose as the phenomenologist and symbolist I am, I hope to purge my grief at this event that seems encoded in my genes and have these pieces exhibited next year at our art alliance.