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

Author: Stephanie Suh

  • Sound of Wind – Vol 1

    Mountains landscape in Vorarlberg, Austria

    Monday, May 1st, 2023

    Today’s Article: Labyrinth

    Have you ever felt that no matter how hard you tried not to make the same mistakes, you would turn a full circle as if trapped in a labyrinth? If you have, then you are not alone, and you are not uniquely flawed. Put it bluntly, you are not a loser and will never be. 

    We live in a society – or in an era inclusively – where uniformed measurement of success in status represents who you are regardless of how long a way you have come despite everything, Unlike Ancient Greeks who valued what individuals had endured and achieved as much as they possibly could under the most depraved circumstances, we look at what our eyes see in the face of the mind because of the misguided belief that only the fittest will survive in the Darwinian theory of evolution. Here in the States, people believe those subsisting on welfare are lazy losers because they are uneducated or less educated. But that’s not the case. People with college degrees also find themselves mired in the rut of life, eager to get even a mime-waged job just to get by lest they should be thrown out to the streets. Sometimes educated people live in poverty, not because they are substance abusers or mentally deranged, but because they have different personal reasons that are not to be generalized under specific circumstances. We are all different, and different people have different needs. Didn’t Depeche Mode sing in “People are people?”

    Failure discriminates against none, embraces everyone, and we are one in it. The Beckettian philosophy of failure as a championing, not championed juggernaut of doom echoes the Nietzschean credo of what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Try again, fail again, succeed again. Or fail worse. Better worse. Fail worst. Till you get sick of it for good. Throw up for good, ad nauseam. If you are doing it, you are not alone; I am not alone. We are not alone. Don’t forget about it.

  • cat’s eyes

    The eyes harvesting sunlight
    see a day moon and stars
    under a golden veil in the skies
    that no one sees at a glance
    that no one could care less
    unless you have the eyes
    like his that sees the spirit
    and the soul and the heart.

  • Prompt 19

    If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

    I am one of those sentimental folks who tend to make a parallel with themselves to the characters of a story in a book or film due to an uncanny spiritual ability to channel into the psyche of another. Methinks this could be something of an ancient Greek or Roman Sybil, who foretold the prophecies at holy places in ecstatic mania. Accordingly, my choice of avatars is of independent, strong-willed, but mistaken women whom people could not fail to notice out of the melee: Cassandra and Ariadne.

    Cassandra, the daughter of the last king of Troy Priam and his wife Hecuba, was a priestess of the god Apollo, who bestowed the gift of prophecy on her. However, when she refused the god’s amorous advance, the cruel god fated her not to be believed in her predictions. So when Cassandra warned her people of the fall of Troy, they didn’t deign to acknowledge her but to scorn her for such hokum. Alas, poor Cassandra! I knew him, Ariadne, for your beautiful deed and heart was betrayed by Theseus, whom you helped kill Minotaur and save the Athenian youths from the labyrinth! Theseus abandoned his beautiful savior on the island of the Naxos and sailed on to Athens. Why did he forsake her? It’s because the goddess Athena told him that Ariadne would be nothing but a nuisance in his way of constructing her namesake city-state! Before being the sacred and immortal goddess, Athena was also a woman, but how could she force Theseus to bloodlessly forsake the poor Ariadne, whose benevolence saved the youths of Athens?

    Both Cassandra and Ariadne’s benevolence and strong will were not appreciated by those whom they helped or tried to help. What a tragedy it was! Likewise, my heartfelt intention and humanity meet with cold shoulders or the least respect from the people I help and have helped. Sometimes I wonder if nature bestowed beauty on me, would they be unkind or appreciate who I am? Then I think of Cassandra and Ariadne and cannot help but feel for what they had been through.

  • ode to failures

    The sun’s up, and the day’s begun
    The eyes open, the heart chimes
    arise, awake, or forever fallen
    Hoping, achieving, sorrowing
    Try again, or better yet, fail again
    Better worse, alas, still worse
    Worst then, fail worst yet again
    Till ripped apart, broken again
    stumbling, crying, ad naseum
    A circle of life as is the nature
    whatever it is, the spirit’s high
    not made of crude materials
    but born of stars, dews, and fire.

  • Prompt 18

    What job would you do for free?

    I would work for something attending to the welfare of cats pro bono. With All My Soul, All My Might, and All My Spirit. The best place for me to do this is probably in a shelter or a rescue center where I can devote myself to cats needing help with my undivided love for man’s best consort.

    Being a cat person not made of the crude materials of this world, I feel most comfortable with my two cats, Toro and Nero, at home. Who says that cats are aloof and egoistic? Hardly so. Cats are so affectionate and kind and beautiful both externally and internally. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables, was a cat lover who averred the beauty of the feline folk: “I love them. They are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.” Indeed so, for when I am crestfallen because of the woes of daily life in this world, my cats come next to me and nestle their little furry body and soft head under my arms, purring, consoling, and allaying my fury and disappointment and sadness. Unlike my fellow human species, my cats know me well and accept me for who I am. They say animals can see the true colors of our characters. True, especially in the case of cats who can see spirits.

    I have noticed that people dislike cats with a sense of pride as if there were some peculiar virtue in expressing such shameless disapproval of cats. So be it because cat people are a particular tribe whose sensitive nature and delicate sensibility fit those of cats. Edgar Allen Poe and the Brontë Sisters would ditto in the constellation of literary stars excellently bright in heaven with their cats in their arms, purring and meowing. Therefore, in light of those mentioned above, why wouldn’t I willingly work tending cats free of charge?

  • Prompt 17

    Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

    Oscar Wilde was right in saying, “Be yourself; everyone is taken.” A person’s uniqueness results from the courage to express oneself, confidence in being oneself, and love of oneself without making oneself parallel to the outlook of others for their beauty or power.

    Nowadays, women’s beauty has never been so outrageously uninformed than before, thanks to social media, where famous or not pretentiously show off their surgically created beauties to mold into a standard beauty manufactured and advertised by the media in the form of celebrities. As Edgar Allan Poe averred, “There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in proportion,” no beauty is perfect, no one is perfectly beautiful as Plato confirmed we live in the imperfect world, where no perfect beauty exists. I think everyone of us in this world has one thing or more beautiful internally as well as externally if each of us looks into the eye of one another, whether it is a stranger or acquaintance. But in this millennials, Generations Z and Alpha dominated 21st century, my talk of the simple and sophisticated beauty at once is only an outcry of a madwoman, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    As times go by with the leaves of my tree falling off in my season of life, I am disheartened by people’s comments about the years passed manifesting on the external castle of my soul, which I always retort with a quick denial because age cannot wither me away, nor custom can stale my unique character reflecting on the windows of my soul! I would rather be a lonely beautiful witch than a cantankerous woman complacent with her stage of life, always gossiping and crude.