Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Author: Stephanie Suh

  • Fiddlesticks! – on Smartphones

    RE: 8/20/2018 edition of The Los Angeles Times on “Your smartphone is a teddy bear”

    We are swimming in a dazzling sea of modern technological conveniences, and we are drowning in it, whether we are against it or not. We have come a long way since the inventions of a talking telegraph (a telephone), an electronic toaster, a walkman, and all other apparatuses that have become inseparable from us, to arrive here in the 21st century where we seldom begin and finish our days without gazing into (or being glued into) monitors with our hands on keyboards. Surely, it’s a marvelous human cultural progress, a fantastic collective enterprise of the human minds for betterment. Hip, hip, Hooray for the magnum opuses.

    Apart from the marvels of our ingenious inventions that have made our lives a bit more bearable to fulfill our daily tasks, how about our non-technological aspects of life then? Do we really think that smartphones provision us with the bells and whistles of our equilibrium? At least two researchers at UC Irvine declare the resounding “Yes.” According to their recent study of psychological impacts of smartphones on our behavioral tendencies, the high-tech gizmo guarantees a feeling of security by saving us from social faux-pas in awkward situations. In fact, they “conclude” that smartphones function as efficacious stress relievers.

    John Hunter and Susan Pressman are the names of such revelation, and they want to debunk the infamy of a smartphone as a mindless gizmo used for killing away our otherwise productive moments. They conducted an experiment that involved 3 experimental groups of those who had (1) the phones but were not permitted to use them; (2) the phones and were permitted to use them; and (3) no phones among a control group of UC students. The results were all over but the shouting: that those with the phones displayed less degree of anxiousness and anxiety than those who had none when they were purposefully estranged from the control group. Conversely, those without the phones exhibited the highest level of the stress hormone alpha anylase in the saliva. Besides, those with the phone but were not allowed to use them showed the least level of the stress hormone. Consequently, the researchers raved about these results, rhapsodizing about the positive effects of a smartphone on our psyche.

    Neither a luddite nor an anachronist adhering to a primeval way of living, I am all for the munificent technological largess of our time with open arms because I also, inevitably, use it myself in my daily life. But the researchers’ triumphant conclusion of their experiment seems rather precarious and cursory in relation to the following speculations: (1) What were the age groups of their experimental groups? Did the researchers target a specific age group? (2) What were the education and social levels of the experimental groups?; (3) were there any variables in the experimental groups and the control group?; and (4) were the researchers by any chance funded by technologically-based companies?  These are the questions that my heart suspects more than my eye can see.

    The image of a devil’s advocate is what I am donning on this topic, but this article pushed me into the position on account of rather superficial results of the experiment devoid of the information on the aforesaid speculations. Also, looking at people wallowing themselves in small smartphones everywhere, especially on the subway and the bus, other than books or kindles, renders an apocalyptic image of the world nearing the doomsday or a scene of horror creatures that turn into zombies every night. “Magnas civitas, Magnas solitude,” Francis Bacon once lamented a great feeling of isolation in a great city. That says it, I should think so. Our sense of belonging and security is not bound by a possession of smartphones, nor does it replace your sweet teddy bears.

  • Carpe Diem, Ladies and Gentlemen! Enjoy the Moment!

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    It’s a dewy one Saturday morning after the nightly rain that cooled off the fiery flame of the sun. Thanks to the abundance of flora in Avonlea, the process of transpiration by which leaves of plants release moisture  into the air that results in rain on earth, the land of Avonlea is hardly parched, and the atmosphere always fresh and fragrant. That is why Helen induced her husband Priam to move to Avonlea a year ago from Roanoke, where humidity and mosquitoes ruled in autocracy; it was an unsavory place to live, let alone to start a family. The rumor had it that the nondescript town was later set ablaze and ravaged by a man driven to madness by such a torid ambience of the toil. In the background of all this, Helen cannot be happier than now, while listening to one of her repertoires, “Downtown” by Petula Clark on her iphone. In fact, she feels as if she and her George were flitting on her aerial bicycle in the blue sky.

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    Meanwhile, Sally and Bonnie are cooing Alfred, a  baby son of their neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Redfox who are on holiday  to Prince Edward Island. Their vivacious daughter Judy is at a parochial summer camp in Thousand Silvers. The Redfoxes are scheduled to return home tomorrow afternoon, so it’s not too much of onerous task the two ladies have to tackle, straining themselves over how to pacify a crying baby, what to do in case he becomes sick out of the blue, and when to change his diapers, etc. Fortunately, Alfred is so mildly-tempered and easy to take care of in the bargain that it is actually a pleasure attending to the toddler without feeling stressful. Sally ponders if such equilibrium in temperament would be a manifestation of solidification of genetic composition. In a minute, Sally and Bonnie are going to take Alfred out for their usual morning promenade.

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    “Look, Bonnie. Alfred’s got a cute mole on the right cleft of his lips! So adorable! I wish I had it too!” “Let me see. Hmmm… I had not noticed it until you told me so. Don’t you know that his sister Judy’s got the same mole on the left cleft of her lips? And so does Mr. Redfox? It seems to be a genetic trait of the family. Definitely. Funny that a man like him has got it, while his wife has dimples. But then the dimples are more precious and feminine and more desirable than a mole, no?” In fact, Bonnie secretly wishes that she would have the same attractive dimples around the corners of her lips that would make her face prettier and perkier. But it is just one of those innocent, muliebral wishes of  a lady who doesn’t think that she’s pretty enough to be wooed and sought after. But then who can blame Bonnie for vanity when a gentleman likes a pretty lady? But let us put all the convoluted thoughts and tangled emotions and untamed emotions aside for this bright Saturday fragrant with fresh petrichor. Forget all the worries just for Today and Tomorrow, which is Official Holy Rest Day, and let’s just pretend to have million dollars in our bank accounts for the weekend.

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  • Kill or Cure? – on Medieval Medical Practice

    RE: September 1, 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine article by Elma Brenner

    The grace of health is conspicuous only by its absence when we fall into sickness unexpectedly in the course of our earthly lives. Throughout the history of human civilizations, there have been many interesting ways of curing illnesses peculiar to different wells in sound body,” went to Temple of Aesculapius, the demigod born into Apollo and Coronis, a beautiful mortal, later raised by the wise and kindly old centaur named Chiron, in eager hope of seeing the demigod in their dreams to listen to his prescriptions for the maladies, primarily consisting of a mixture of herbs and cooling potions followed by divine incantations. In this regard, the people in the Middles Ages were not more different than their ancient pagan Mediterranean counterparts. Moreover, their medieval attitudes toward sickness and a general well-being was no less incongruent than those of ours as Brenner takes us to the time period in this scintillating article.

    Pace our prevalent perception of backwardness of its culture and science in the tenebrous reign of the Church, there was a multitude of practical treatments for maladies as well as preventive health cares that appeared to produce efficacy to certain desirable extents. Just like their 21st century progeny, medieval physicians emphasized on the importance of preventive health cares, such as “Rapid stair climbing” for 3 or 4 times a week to strengthen cardiovascular endurance, a moderate diet, good sleep, and other types of physical exercise to promote general health of the medieval folks. In fact, it seems to me that such measures may seem as a wise way of preventing an individual from falling into a serious type of sickness that might have required of a physician a diagnosis of which he would not have yet known at that time,  or even if he had known it, he would not have known the cure.

    It is also very interesting to know that during this period of time, a physician was to diagnose causes of ailments and then referred a patient deemed necessary for a surgery to a surgeon whose status was considered less than a physician’s by dint of the nature of the physical exertions that involved unpleasant sensory aspects, such as bloodletting, collecting urine, and most dreadful of all, cries and screams of the patients under the surgeries without anesthesia. All of these physical “drudgery” or “legwork” was strictly undertaken by a surgeon under the guideline of a physician who offered prevention medicinal advice based upon a patient’s case-history, observation of pulse, urine, and blood. Thenceforth, at the instruction of a physician it was an apothecary, a modern day equivalent of a pharmacist you see in Duane Reade or Rite Aide, who completed the physician’s job by supplying the prescribed medicine to the patient.

    Since the medieval times was undeniably under the aegis of the Church that functioned as the Divine Terrestrial Office with its authority imprinted in all aspects of life, a spiritual application of supernatural agency in the cure of sickness was de rigueur for a medicinal procedure. For example, the Church instructed the agnus dei to see a priest prior to visiting a physician who also often had some degree of medical knowledge. Moreover, in the practice of Couching, which was a cataract surgical procedure by which a surgeon moved the cloudy lens on the iris of the patient to the bottom of the eye with a gold/or silver needle, 4 recitations of Pater Nostra –  the Lord’s Prayer-  were administered.

    In view of the above, it seems to me that except for the absences of antibiotics, surgical methods, and anesthesia, some of the practices are still existent, such as the use of uroscopy, which is the examination of urine to determine a patient’s conditions, a general medical procedure involving the trinity of physician, surgeon, and pharmacist, and the advocate of preventive health cares are very much similar to those of the 21st century counterparts. Hence, I am in agreement with Brenner that it would be our fallacy of human ego to flatly deride or discredit the medieval medical practices as backward or ludicrously primitive or even barbarous and proclaim our modern superiority. For were we pitchforked backward in the Middle Ages, perhaps we would understand their ways of working the cure apropos the medieval epoch. But then the prospect of going through  a surgery minus anesthesia – not even a dosage of Vailum – makes me thank God for the fact that I wasn’t born in that time.

     

     

  • There Was a Girl with Bangs

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    There was a girl, and she had bangs
    Right below her crescent eyebrows.
    And when she was happy,
    she was sweets to the sweet,
    And when she was sulky,
    she was colds to the coldest.

  • All Things to All People: on the importance of education by Daniel Defoe

    Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was something of a daring noble rebel. If the name does not ring a bell to you at first blush, the name “Robinson Crusoe” will dawn on you with the popular images of the character and his faithful servant Man Friday constellated in film and animation firmaments. Defoe’s timeless classic Robinson Crusoe popularized the form of English novel along with Samuel Johnson’s epistolary novel Pamela in the canon of English literature. A writer conscientious as well as prodigious, Defoe did not hesitate to put his credo into actions by wielding his pen across paper. His bounteous works were in fact used as his arsenal of intellectual arguments against the ills of the society he did not fail to notice in all aspects of everyday life, such as the mistreatment of women, the poor, and those whose beliefs did not conform to the Church of England in his time. Defoe was neither an intellectual snob nor a hypocrite; in fact, he was not afraid of speaking his mind in a most poignantly cogent way as manifested in this short prose “Charm School for Women” from his essay on The Education of Women (1719) in which Defoe pillories canonical discrimination against women as grave injustice against humanity.

    Defoe believes that it’s a lack of education that makes a woman proverbially turbulent, clamorous, and uncouth by comparing the soul in the body to a rough diamond that must be polished to its most naturally brilliant luster in order that its true beauty is manifested, just as the soul is thus distinguished from nondescript melee or even brutes. Defoe criticizes that men make women brutes by preventing them from being made wiser by dint of denying them the advantage of education because of the fear that the new enlightened womanhood will vie with the manhood in their improvements. Defoe then suggests that women be taught languages, especially French and Italian with a special focus on a subject of history so as to make them understand the affairs of the world and how they swing and thus wise.

    In my point of view, such emphasis on the study of history strikes the chords with John Milton’s provident observation that: “Poetry makes us witty, but history makes us wise.” Knowledge of history enables you to realize a commonality between the bygone eras and our time in the discovery of truth of human nature across a great divide of time and space, so that we may learn from the past and use the knowledge as to better the world in our time, which will be an ongoing cultural enterprise so long as the human race exists. The universality of truth in satisfaction of reason and the cyclical nature of human affairs have been manifested in the Holy Writ as follows: “There is no new thing under the sun” and “Old things are become past; and lo! All things are become new.”

    Defoe’s viewpoints of women’s education is far from patronizing or condescending in the capacity of a sympathetic or lenient master deigning to address to his maids. On the contrary, he speaks as an altruistic, eager academic who feels for the pathetic states of women deprived of the privileges of education that will do a world of wonder to womanhood if equitably given. He avers that proper education will teach women the proper management of their natural wits, so that they will prove to be very sensible and retentive. Therefore, to withhold women from the crown of education is injustice itself, which in my opinion also goes against Christian charity in terms of sharing what you already have with those who do not in order to double the joys and cut the misery in halves. Moreover, the refined women’s souls as a result of education are the grist to the mill of society with more culturally refined and publicly civil-minded individuals. In light of Defoe’s provocatively humanistic perspectives on the education of women that does not smack of flagrant political ideology to gain popularity of womankind and his beautiful allusion of a woman’s soul to a rough diamond in its primordial form, this brief treatise on the importance of education of women is an illuminating read worth the noting with a nod.

  • Broken Will, Lost Soul

    RE: 8/12/2018 article of “Broken Guy goes down with plane” from the Los Angeles Times

    However bleak and and fatalistic his views on Death of God and Nihilism might be, the one definitive thing German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche knew was this: “Anyone who has a why to live can bear also any hows.” How reassuring it is because it means that even if life presents you anything but shattered dreams, aborted hopes, and clipped anticipations for whatever you try to work out, as long as you still hold steadfastly onto a sense of purpose – that is a why to continue this so-called “life”- your life will not end in nil, or in crash such as the man I read about in the newspaper today.

    His name was allegedly known as “Richard Russel,” according to his bantering with an airport controller during his audaciously precarious aerial heist of an passenger aircraft he had stolen from Sea-Tac Airport in WA. He was reported to be a 29-year old former ground service agent at Horizon who had also run a bakery with his wife until 2015. It is reported that he died in crash on a wooded area on Ketro Island south of Seattle, WA by saying, “I wasn’t really planning on landing it.” The plane did not hit any structures nor did it cause any collateral damages to private properties, since the island itself is underdeveloped. The whys and wherefores of Russel’s quixotic joy ride have not yet been manifested in the course of the current FBI investigation, but judging from his communication with the controller, he might have been suffering from existential vertigo in which he had lost a sense of purpose, a why for continuing his life in dealing with demands of tasks that everyday life had imposed on.

    In case of art imitating life, Russsel on the passenger aircraft reminds me of Don Quixote who, on his beloved Rocinante, gallops toward the huge windmill to vanquish it, a stereoscopic symbol of pompous hypocrisy of life that generates nothing but the ills. Foolish, yes, needless to say. But heinous or even insidious? Hardly so. Stealing is one thing, but ending his life out of emotional distress is another thing, as they are apples and oranges in the sense that he meant no fatal harm on anyone by using the stolen aircraft as a weapon of mass destruction as in the case of the terrorist carnage of 9/11. I wonder what might have gone through his mind in the cockpit of the plane as he was nearing to the end of his life: a phantasmagorical display of his memories that he had collected through life, willed or unwilled? Perhaps, being a pilot of the plane might have given him a tactile sensation of being capable of piloting his own life, that ineffable stupendousness of capability, which would have given him the equal dose of confidence at the spur of the fateful moment.

    Playing a pseudo psychiatrist is not my forte, but it is viable to think that Russel ‘s contemporary strains of life and postmortem malady that anesthetized his Reason and thus emboldened him to do such a foolhardily venturesome act at the expense of his own life are something that we can feel pathos at the least. And that is why I find it hard to criminalize him by putting him into a moral/ethical Procrustean bed, which also brings me back to an act in Macbeth:

    “Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage; and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”