2022 is closing...

As 2022 draws to a close... 

There has been a family mental health crisis.

A high school commencement. 

An acceptance into an HBCU. 

A sudden death of a family member in the original home country. 

And then a sudden health crisis(me!) that took me to my primary care, urgent care, and later, the emergency room.

So many tasks and responsibilities I had in mind. I managed to do some later than others.

Now as the year draws to a close, my Christmas brings my siblings to celebrate with us, depression that has assailed me, worries about re-employment, new physical challenges that have grown worse due to a pre-existing condition. 

I feel a sense of hope and optimism as what many of the worries at the early start of 2022 worked out or things went into a different trajectory. This Christmas felt a blessing from a month-long health emergency and the support from family and friends. 

However you spend your winter season break, may you have a restful and the support from kindness, compassion, and empathy. 

May 2023 bring all I wish for us and more.

Inspiration in strange places

A B-movie fantasy watched in 1980s.
A first and second title from an author that becomes one's favorite.
An early obsession with Greek myth.
An early obsession with Sword and Sorcery ephemera.
A fantasy novel read in junior high.
Another epic fantasy series that blew the mind in high school.
These are just what is remembered that served for inspiration to the series worked on now.

I don't understand some people...

I don't remember if it was a writers' conference, a workshop, the Miami Book Fair, some random convention or event I usually attend when I'm bored and/or have some extra cash.
Anyhoo, a gentleman was impressed by the fact I was published and had my own website. He asked what inspired my stories.

I told him I grew up on Greek myth and so, at the time, Tabber the Red (my site), had Greek Mythology* on the Welcome Page. He told me that was surprising, since I'm not Greek.

Huh? What? How did you arrive at that conclusion?
No, I'm far from Greek (I'm 1st Gen Caribbean-American), but what I don't understand is that, as far as I could tell, neither was he.

Yet, I got the impression that had I matched his skin color, this man would never have said such a ridiculous summation to me.
What did being non-Greek have to do with being a lover of storytelling that has lasted through the ages?
~~~
I don't like pigeonholes: in high school art, as a girl, I wasn't suppose to draw superheroes.

Instead, I should be creating the fashion art the majority of girls were drawing (one fashion artist even got ticked off when she saw the outfits I created for my characters, and demanded to know how I could draw such outfits - so, she was jealous at how..creative the outfits on cartoon characters were?).

In junior high, I should be drawing still-life instead of cartoons.

In college art courses, an instructor/professor had the nerve to tell me I was too repressed and restrictive, especially when, after completing his assignments, I turned to sketching my own work during free time.

When I decided to take writing seriously, when it no longer became a passing interest, no longer a hobby, but something I wanted to shape my life, there were folks who told me to stop writing about animals, stop living in science fiction world, stop these childish dreams, and focus on reality, and read Urban fiction (you know, because I AM Black).

And let me also mention the English teacher, who, in my first-year of high school, accused me of plagiarism (don't worry, will explain in another post), and a science teacher from my junior high days, a truly dreadful woman, who later showed up at the college I later attended!

Here I was, working at the college bookstore as a cashier, and she, horror of horrors, was the next in line!

Dreadful Teacher: Oh, it's you, Ms. Welsh. You're here. (Because, she could never call us by our FIRST names, as she was mean enough not to make it personal)

Me: Hello, Ms. (Name deliberately omitted). How are you?

Dreadful Teacher: What're you doing here?

Me: I'm majoring in art.

Dreadful Teacher: Oh. THAT again? I thought you gave that up.

I don't know why I wanted to bite her instead of the normal thought of punching her, I guess that was just the so-called 'Furry' in me, but I grinned wide enough as if I was bearing my teeth in a snarl and wished her a nice day.
~~~
As human beings, we all have prejudices; we all make snap judgements. We're all flawed.Yes, if we know a person's ethnicity, we can hope to better understand him/her, if we know someone's name, it betters our chances of connecting with him/her.

I get it. What I don't understand is, when a person can just outright BLURT OUT his/her snap judgements at you on the summation of skin color? Or gender? And then on THAT flimsy basis, decide what you must like, what must be your hobbies, what must be your life? And when you completely change that illusion or assumption, YOU, not the person who makes the snap judgement, are the brunt of that person's ire or confusion?

I don't want to understand. I just want to draw what I like. I want to write what I like. So far, some people like it, some love it, and some hate it no matter what. We are entitled to our interests. We are entitled to our opinions.
But please, for those who think you can decide everything about a person just by looking at them, maybe you're in the wrong business.
You should probably do fortune-telling. Yet, even palmists study a person carefully before making a prediction.


*For those who visit 'Tabber the Red', I have since changed 'Greek' Mythology to 'World' Mythology because the Greek stories led me to reading other cultures' myths and folklore.

How my character became a case of mistaken identity

I was probably in 11th or 10th grade, when a schoolmate from junior high approached me during lunch period to ask me 'How's Sonny?'
My best friend (still is), got mad at me afterwards and demanded to know why I never told her about this ex-boyfriend named Sonny.

I laughed as it took me a while to calm her down. I explained that Sonny was a comic character I invented while stuck in summer school math class (I would be imprisoned in Summer School almost every year from 5th grade to 11th, with maybe a year or two of respite that I did well enough to move on to the next grade).

Later, thoroughly mollified, my best friend expressed her disbelief at how could an invented character seem so real to a person that they would remember years after?

I reminded her about this anecdote years later and she laughed at how jealous she had felt towards this classmate knowing something about me that she didn't (my best friend and I did not attend the same junior high school).

****
Birth of A Character

Bored out of my skull, and stuck in a class whose subject proved my greatest enemy for most of my academic life (Math), drawing a comic book was my only release.

I was puny, a loner, and nerdy. I wore glasses, had braces near the end of junior high into high school, where the wretched railway system was blessedly removed (Thank Heavens!), and I was bullied for one less thing, which was a blessing in and of itself.

Drawing was always an escape, like reading, and so I concocted a group of high school friends (Kids always want their heroes older) and they were: bears, cats and dogs.

I used notebook paper, drew the panels, inked, colored and put in the word balloons.
The story took most of Math period and through endless viewing of the school movie "Summer School" (how appropriate! Cool movie, by the way).

Soon, classmates were actually waiting for me to finish it.
I made a copy in the school library, kept the original, and watched like wildfire as the copy changed hands. I received praise and criticism alike : "I like his hairstyle!" "I didn't like the ending!" There were cries for a sequel.
I didn't have the marketing sense then: Had I sold each page for a dollar, my classmates would have paid it, and I would've made a tidy little sum to spend at the end of summer.

This episode on the power of my words escaped me many times after.
I would finally GET IT when I ended up in one of the few honors classes I'd take in high school.