The day after my birthday is my final appointment.

The anniversary of the September eleventh attacks was made somehow more personal this year. September tenth is my niece Michel’s birthday. She would have been twenty-three. Her family and friends gathered at my sister’s house to celebrate her life. For a few hours, all the media stories about [...]]]> And every small tragedy is also large.

The anniversary of the September eleventh attacks was made somehow more personal this year. September tenth is my niece Michel’s birthday. She would have been twenty-three. Her family and friends gathered at my sister’s house to celebrate her life. For a few hours, all the media stories about 9/11, all my memories of that day, were not on my mind. There was only family and friendship and the capacity we have to make each other stronger even as we all are struggling.

But when I returned home, after I put my little boy to bed and resettled into the routine of life, there it was, on TV, on the radio. My own memories of where I was, how I heard didn’t matter. What now took hold of me were the voices of the people who lost someone — the last phone call, the shock and disbelief. I didn’t know then but I know now — what it is to lose someone with no warning, to be doing something banal like getting the kids ready for school or, in my case, shopping for socks, and then suddenly everything is irrevocably, horribly, terrifyingly different.

"Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. History is a construct, she tells her students. Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still, there are definitive moments, moments we use as references, because they break our sense of continuity, they change the direction of time. We can look at these events and we can say that after them things were never the same again. They proved beginnings for us, and endings too. Births and deaths, for instance, and marriages. And wars." - Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

Every violent death leaves a mark on those who lose someone. It doesn’t matter if they die in a national tragedy or at the hands of an abuser or in a random act. The people left behind have a void within them. It’s like a black hole — it can consume light. For me, it is the terror of staring down meaninglessness, the firm belief that No, not everything happens for a fucking reason. It’s the anger — the kind of anger that made Achilles drag Hector’s body around the walls of Troy, the anger that can destroy you if you let it. It’s the despair — of everything left undone, unsaid, unfinished. And it’s the longing — the longing that comes with powerlessness — to be able to change something, to go back in time and fix it, the bizarre fantasies. What if I had a telephone, I often think, that could call the past? And I could just call her and say, “Michel, don’t go outside. Don’t ask me why I know you shouldn’t, just believe me. He has a gun. He wants to hurt you. Don’t go outside. Call the police.”

And it’s the pain of knowing what the loss does to those you love. When I think of my sister, my brother-in-law, Michel’s sisters, I wish I could take some of their pain and feel it for them. Maybe I do. Maybe we all feel some of the pain for the people we love.

Last week, I finally did what I’ve been meaning to and I went to Humble Beginnings, a tattoo shop in San Jose, to consult with an artist about the tattoo I want. I’ve had a Mucha-esque composition of chrysanthemums in my mind for some time, but I didn’t find any [...]]]>

Autumn by Alphonse Mucha

Last week, I finally did what I’ve been meaning to and I went to Humble Beginnings, a tattoo shop in San Jose, to consult with an artist about the tattoo I want. I’ve had a Mucha-esque composition of chrysanthemums in my mind for some time, but I didn’t find any artists whose work looked how I wanted until I spied the lovely sleeve of Art-Nouveau-style lilies adorning the receptionist at the hair salon where I go. She referred me to Blake Brand. I looked up some of his work online, read reviews of the shop, and was hopeful that he would be the artist for me.

After going to Humble Beginnings and meeting with him, I am certain. He has a laid-back, friendly demeanor and understood what I described to him. My appointment isn’t until October, and until then, he suggested that we start emailing back and forth so that he can see images that inspire me, send me drawings, and get everything just right. One of the images is on the left. The others are vintage botanical drawings and Japanese ukiyo-e, since Japanese art had such a profound influence on late 19th century art.

The shop itself was really cool (and clean), with artwork by the artists and magazine features about the shop framed on the maroon walls. There were a lot of young women there getting tattoos, and one of the artists is a woman, so there’s absolutely no skeaze factor.

I used to get impatient with the part of shows like Miami Ink (I don’t watch L.A. Ink because I just can’t deal with Kat Von D’s SoCal drawl) when people talked about the meanings of their tattoos. Because I’m just a griping misanthrope sometimes. But in order to have something put permanently on your body, you’d better feel like it means something to you.

In my case, the chrysanthemums symbolize my favorite phrase: memento mori. “Remember you are mortal,” what the slave whispered in the ear of the triumphant Roman general. They are the flowers that are placed on graves on All Saint’s Day in Spain. They are the flower of November, the month of my birth — the height of autumn, when death creates beauty. I want the stems to cross to form an “M” or perhaps even two M’s — referencing the phrase and also representing two people I want to remember, my father (Matthew) and my niece (Michel).

Japanese Chrysanthemum Ukiyo-e

Vintage Botanical Illustration

I stopped by to visit my mom this week with Mateo, something I usually enjoy. Unfortunately, I arrived just as my mom was starting to watch an episode of The 700 Club. Every time I see part of an episode of that show, I [...]]]>

"the hate" © Karin Dirkx, used under Creative Commons License

I stopped by to visit my mom this week with Mateo, something I usually enjoy. Unfortunately, I arrived just as my mom was starting to watch an episode of The 700 Club. Every time I see part of an episode of that show, I find something disturbing. But this time, I was horrified and sickened as I witnessed Pat Robertson, with a bland smile on his face, compare opposing Muslims who are trying to build mosques in non-Muslim-majority countries to opposing Nazis.

At about 28 minutes into the episode the following exchange takes place:

Robertson: I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said? Well, you’re a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots?

Co-host: Well, in that day I think they were looked down upon and frowned upon.

Robertson: Why can’t we speak out against an institution that is intent on dominating us and imposing Sharia law and making us all part of a universal caliphate? That’s the goal of some of these people. Why is that bigoted? Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?

You see, Robertson and those who work for him believe that Islam is striving for world domination. Their proof for this threefold:

First is a verse from the Q’uran that says that Islam will “dominate the universe,” but as they don’t cite which verse it is, I do not know what it says. I’ve tried to find it, so if anyone can point me to the right place, please do so. However, being raised Christian I can cite a verse in the Bible that make similar claims about Christianity:  Revelation 2:26-27—“He who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations—‘He shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the potter’s vessels shall be broken to pieces’—as I also have received from My Father.”

Second is the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. I guess the premise is that if they did it once, they will do it again?

Third is the construction of many large mosques in European cities that have large Muslim populations. In light of Pat Robertson’s later “Nazi” comment, I found this portion outrageous because CBN’s reporting includes a quote from a member of a movement calling itself “Pro-Cologne” that opposes the “Islamification” of the city of Cologne, and of Germany in general. (You can see this at about 27 minutes in to the episode.) This is a far-right fringe movement, so reviled by most residents of Cologne that 40,000 protesters disrupted a Pro-Cologne rally in 2008. Bars in the city hung out banners proclaiming that they would not serve beer to “Nazis.” In parts of Germany, however, the anti-Muslim sentiment is far more frightening than the efforts of Muslims to build places of worship.

I wanted to try to engage my mother in questioning Robertson’s rhetoric, but I was so upset that I became more confrontational than I wanted. “Don’t you think the way that was reported was implying that all Muslims are to be feared?” I asked. “Don’t Christians actively try to convert people? What proof is there that regular, everyday Muslims in France or Germany are part of a conspiracy to take over the world? Why don’t Muslims deserve to have places of worship in the countries where they live?” But my mom really couldn’t be engaged on rhetorical level. My logic could not penetrate the strange cognitive dissonance that allows her to say, “I agree with him,” and also say that she “loves the Muslims.”

“We’re not going to agree on this,” she said, “so we might as well drop it.”

But I can’t drop it from my mind. It confuses me utterly how someone so caring and loving as my mother can hear a man like Pat Roberston speak like this and not see his hate for what it is. “You’re a good person!” I cried. “How can you believe this if you’re a good person?” But she just shook her head and said sadly, as if I were the one caught in the thrall of a demagoge, “Oh, Jennifer.”

This is something that I wonder often. How can a good person believe horrible things — like that an earthquake struck Haiti because the Haitians were in league with Satan, or that 9/11 was God’s punishment for American acceptance  of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way–all of them who have tried to secularize America.”

I wonder this as a daughter, and as a writer. Part of the reason I was questioning my mother so vehemently after watching this show was that I wanted to know how. How belief can burrow into someone’s mind, leaving tunnels ready to fill with anything that claims to be part of that belief. Could I ever hope to understand my mother well enough to write about someone who thinks as my mother thinks? I want to understand how the core of a person’s character, as I perceive it, could be so at odds with her opinions. That is what the certainty of faith can do, I think. And what must I seem like? Probably like someone who is denying what to her is the obvious — as if I cannot perceive what is right in front of me. “You’ll see,” she told me.

It happened again. A young woman days away from graduating from college was the victim in a murder-suicide. Marcory “Cindy” Caliguiran was 25. The man who murdered her and her friend Kyle Williams was her 54-year-old husband. It happened in one of the parking [...]]]>

"China Doll's Gift" by humbholthead, used under Creative Commons License

It happened again. A young woman days away from graduating from college was the victim in a murder-suicide. Marcory “Cindy” Caliguiran was 25. The man who murdered her and her friend Kyle Williams was her 54-year-old husband. It happened in one of the parking garages of my alma mater — one I parked in many times. The resonance with the murder of my niece Michel is so painful. Why does this happen again and again? Why did it happen even once?

Lately, I’ve been reading about abusive men, trying to understand why they do what they do and wanting to know how to stop it. Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft and The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans were enlightening. They show how the abusive man tries to define his partner, making her question her own perception and then trying to replace it with his own, terrifying her with anger until she is pliable to his desire to control her.

I thought of my father as I read. He was a good man, but he was consumed with anger. He was raised by his grandparents, and his grandfather was abusive to his grandmother, whom my father adored. And yet, with this model, he grew up to control our household with his temper. He disrespected my mother frequently. He had fits when he’d scream and swear. The doors in the house where I grew up were dented and splintered where he’d punched them.

It was his way of having the kind of control over a household he could not have as a child. In this way, he made for himself a wife who tended to him but also relied on his judgment (since hers was defective, according to how he defined her), sons who respected him, and daughters who adored him. When I was young, one of the most distressing situations I’d find myself in was when I was upset and crying and would turn to my dad to help me, only for him to yell at me for being upset and crying. I realize now that it’s because his idealized daughter would never be unhappy because she knew she had a doting father who gave her everything she needed. When I didn’t fit that ideal, he lashed out at me.

That’s the core of the issue: Abusive men lash out when their partners or children — or whoever — dare to behave like real people. Real people have thoughts and desires of their own, not those the abuser wants them to have. They act in ways the abuser doesn’t want them to act. This is very threatening to a controlling man, and so he will use abusive tactics to force them into at least a semblance of what he wants reality to look like. What’s truly frightening is that the abusive man often sees himself as the one who is being attacked. That’s what I think is behind murder-suicides — the abuser is trying to show the world that he was wronged and to put himself in the role of victim.

Strangely — just as I had been writing a post about the danger of using tragedies that would be devastating in real life as fodder for fiction when Michel was murdered (maybe someday I will finish that post) — I was contemplating the pressure young women face to be defined by outside forces when I learned about Cindy Caliguiran’s murder. I was thinking about it because of this — a call for submissions for an Asian-American comics anthology. I was brainstorming an idea about all the stereotypes about Asian women that a real, breathing woman of Asian descent must face. This time, I want to finish it. I owe it to Michel — and to Cindy, and to all the women like them who died because they dared to be real, not what someone else tried to make them into.

We all need to be aware of the warning signs of abuse and to know what to do if we suspect someone we know is a victim of abuse. This HelpGuide page is a good resource.

Brian, Mateo, and I went to WonderCon this weekend. In years past, the weather was invariably rainy during this comics convention, but this year it was wonderfully warm and sunny. We spent a couple of hours outside of the convention hall each afternoon, having tea and lunch at Samovar and then [...]]]>

Brian, Mateo, and I went to WonderCon this weekend. In years past, the weather was invariably rainy during this comics convention, but this year it was wonderfully warm and sunny. We spent a couple of hours outside of the convention hall each afternoon, having tea and lunch at Samovar and then playing on the grass in front of the Metreon.

There are several of my favorite things in this photo: Mateo, of course; a beautiful park with grass and trees; a mild, sunny day; San Francisco — and, I have to admit, my outfit. Sometimes I put on some clothes, and I feel like they’re perfectly suited to me and what I’m doing that day. Clothes like that make me feel confident and happy. They correct or hide my perceived faults (shortish legs, lack of a defined waist) and highlight what I like (I’m like an 18th-century dandy in my admiration for my calves and ankles). Vanity, I suppose, but good clothes make for good days for me. This was one of those days.

So here are the elements of my good outfit day:

Black quilted motorcycle jacket: I bought this at Express years ago — maybe even a decade ago. It was one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Even after a lot of wear, it still looks new (except for the linings of the pockets — one is completely shredded, another worn very thin). It was too small for me in the shoulders for a little while when I gained a few pounds to help in the conceiving-a-child thing, but I knew I could not give it up. I’m glad because now that I’m back to my normal weight, it fits perfectly again. Something like it.

French gray blouse with tattered-edge diagonal ruffles: A new purchase at H & M. I used to wear almost nothing but black or dark colors, but lately I’ve been loving light neutrals. The tattered edges of the ruffles keep this blouse from being too fussy or girlie. (The motorcycle jacket helps with that, too, which is why I chose it.) Something like it.

Mossimo black skinny jeans: I used to buy skinny jeans at Urban Outfitters for $70 or so. They fit well, but the color faded fast. Then I found these at Target for $25 — they fit even better than the UO jeans and have stayed uniformly dark after a few washes. (Please note that whoever does the styling for Target’s website sucks. The jeans the model is wearing in the link are at least a couple of sizes too big for her, hence the saggy crotch and butt. They totally don’t fit me like that. I am not fond of the wrinkles added at the front, but I’ve ironed them mostly out.)

Madden Girl black booties: These are kind of cheaply made. I have had to fill in scuffs with a Sharpie and clear nail polish. They’re also what I call “three-hour shoes.” After three hours, my feet start hurting. But they’re so damn cute. (Those in the link are a bit different from mine — mine have a single, wide strap fastened with a button instead of several narrow straps with buckles. I like the buckles better, and I’m trying to convince myself not to buy these booties.)

One of my principles, which I often [...]]]> My principles, when it comes to the art of fiction, tend to be molten: hotly held and hotly defended, but ultimately a fluid thing, able to be shaped and re-formed. But real-life tragedy has a way of turning principles from debatable points of discussion into immutable, inarguable doctrine.

One of my principles, which I often repeated in blog posts, columns, and convention panels, is that using the death or brutalization of women as a motivator for a male protagonist or as a quick way to show that a villain is, indeed, villainous is lazy and offensive. Especially common in comics, a medium so often used for stories targeted toward young men, this lazy writing turns women into objects and depicts women as perpetual victims, never as protagonists in their own stories.

Horror struck my family on December 10. My 22-year-old niece Michel was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. He shot her several times with an assault rifle when she went to walk her dog and then shot himself with a handgun. Michel was about to graduate from college. She was about to do everything.

After the shock began to wear off — or maybe it was part of the shock, for me to think about such an abstract thing — I began to think about Gail Simone’s “Women in Refrigerators,” a list of female superheroes who have been killed off or otherwise victimized. This is what happens, I thought. This is what happens to women who dare to be the protagonists of their own lives.

You see, Michel had had a transformative year. She had become a leading figure in a community service fraternity at her university, Alpha Psi Rho, and was voted “Miss Lady Rho” for her efforts. (An honor that has been since renamed as the Michel David Award.) Over the summer, she had gone to Costa Rica to volunteer at a sea turtle refuge and had overcome a lot of her insecurities and fears.

So much so that she would not take back someone who had mistreated and disrespected her. She was ready to move on, to be fully her own person — something that a selfish, possessive, sick young man was not willing to allow to happen. Dan Shoemake was a murderer, like so many murderers of women depicted in comics, but, unlike them, he was real.

You know who else was real? Michel. She was beautiful, smart, fun — just the type of wonderful girl who gets murdered in stories. In superhero comics, she would be a reason for a man to take on the evil in the world. In indie comics, she would be the tragic backdrop to the journey of self-discovery of some melancholy man who loved her. I’ve seen these stories all too often — in comics published by prominent publishers and small publishers alike, in the slushpile again and again as I read submissions.

But in Michel’s life, she was the main character. Her story was her story. Women like her — and women unlike her, and men of all kinds, too — deserve to have stories like theirs told, deserve to read stories that are actually about women.

This video is kind of ironic because Michel herself was a gamer.