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6.

At each of the writing seminars we are asked to take off our shoes at the door of each

building. But I’m embarrassed to show my feet. My pudgy little empanada-looking pata
feet. Looking around at the other women, I see most of the mujeres have lovely-painted

toe nails, long and slender and graceful feet. I am wearing sox. Even at home I never
wear sandals.

I hide in socks, always my mother’s daughter, sound of the ocean, just outside, water
within view, and it’s sound, crashing waves, again and again, unfamiliar, ETERNAL,

reminding me again and again, in the most demanding way I’ve never heard, and I

swallow hard at the thought of my feet, my ugly patas, and yet the ocean SOUNDS, eternal
and endless, and through it’s voice it repeats – until last I listen - “It’s not about your

FEET muchacha, it’s about being here…”

7.

Alegrἰa – the Spanish verb for joy; the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good

fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.

Alegrἰa. Alegre.

How does one move from ansias to alegrἰa, from anxiety & fear to the state of joy? When

and how does this happen? Is this movement the color of green and blue, as of this place,
or has it always been settled in the vibrant red-earth and adobe-brown’s of my own

homeland?

I’d read Pam Houston’s work many years prior, finding a familiar theme as she

maneuvered her way through landscapes and adventure. Like her, I’d worked on rivers,
not as a rafting guide, but a fish biologist. I’d admired Pam Houston’s work and writing

long before hearing about Writing-by-Writers, came to know her through her amazing
writing, whether essay or novel or memoir. And now I am on the coast of California,

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