We each seek to retrace those steps that led us from where we once were, to where we are now. ("Found in Translation") - Kathleen Alcalá

I have always read science fiction along with mainstream fiction. Some people look down on “genre” fiction as not true literature, but alternate worlds and points of view fit perfectly with my upbringing in the southwest, with cousins on both sides of the border. Our reality has always been alternative. Other writers will tell you it is comics that sustained them when they were young, but that’s really the same thing, except in pictorial form: narratives willing to address the “what if.” (madam mayo)

The idea refused to wholly reveal itself, but continued to float just below the surface of my thoughts, like a ship just beyond the horizon of consciousness, or a rotten water lily sinking beneath the surface of a pond. (p164)

Once we lost the keys to our houses in Barcelona during The Plague, or the Inquisition or whatever other excuse was given for taking our properties, all the world was our temporary habitation. We saw each place through the eyes of the stranger seeking that pocket of refuge where we could set up shop until the next disaster turned people against us.