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

Author: Stephanie Suh

  • On Netflix’s “Making a Murderer”

    Brandan Dassey – “The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse” – Samuel Beckett

    Maybe I should not have watched it, but alas, I did, and with the afterimages of the faces and scenes still haunting the brain chambers, refusing to leave, I am writing about the Netflix documentary to cast them out to the wilderness of forgetfulness – but with a voice of the heart.

    The documentary revolves around the death of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, who the county and the state justice believe was murdered by Steven Avery and Brandan Dassey. Since the stories about the accused are readily available online, I will not delve into whether they are innocent or guilty in this post. But I cannot help thinking this: Prejudice by social class prevails over the carriage of justice and the great cultural divide between rural and urban, working and middle classes, and state and federal governments in the States. America is arguably a country of no aristocrats, yet class distinctions are apparent, and stratification is broad. 

    In the case of Steven Avery and Brandan Dassey, although they were not poor, their parents were deemed fit to caricature characters of laborers equivalent to medieval serfs or pre-industrial European peasants speaking with the class jargon in heavy dialectical accents. Would the police and courts act differently toward the accused and their families were it not for their family backgrounds and social statuses? Hollywood celebrities and those with money and power can do anything and yet get away with their wrongdoings because they have the status and best lawyers who can make innocence of murderers, and vice versa. 

    That is why I’m not too fond of police profiling, which always seems to accuse those from unhappy childhoods tainted with physical and verbal abuse, especially and mostly from parents. It’s not only about sexual violence but, most of all, about parental verbal and physical abuses that bludgeon their children’s psychs. You can’t just typecast someone because they fit your profiling for a particular crime type. Where is the goddess of justice? Remember, even the goddess of fortune plays the Wheel of Fortune blindfolded to give everyone a fair chance of a lot because she can’t see who is rich, bright, or beautiful to look at. 

  • Prompt 209 on my favorite tv shows

    What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

    I used it to watch “Knight Rider” and “MacGyver” as a kid in the 80s because they were adventurous and chivalrous, Indiana Jones-type protagonists with bona ride missions to accomplish assigned by their benign wise bosses, of mercenaries of good causes for the Pax Americana.


    But regardless of the zeitgeist of the 80s, both shows were distinguished by their use of wits rather than guns. They were modern-day Western shows minus firearms and horses, in which good guys fought off bad guys and continued their journeys as romantic wanderers.


    To calling back yesterday, there were remakes of my favorite TV shows, but alas, the spirit of yesterday was not summoned with a wishful bid time return. You can never go back to yesterday.

  • Captive spirit

    Don’t say good night,
    for you will not see it,
    you’d better not say it
    it’s better that way
    so your spirit won’t
    leave for a night’s work
    across the starry skies
    riding on the moonlit
    waves of silence
    to the ghosts, it knows
    from your pasts
    you know not
    to inform them
    of your secrets
    deepest, darkest.
    So, you see it
    better that way
    that you say not
    good night
    at least for a while
    and let not your spirit
    tell it all to the ghosts
    haunting you even if
    you do not want.

  • prompt 208 on what brings me peace

    What brings you peace?

    The bliss of peace is made of these: a baby’s laughter, the soft flurry touches of my cats on my face, and their purring and meowing, listening to my favorite tunes and singing along alone, getting my hair done nicely, saying I love you to my cats with their little hearts on my heart.

    Peace may be transient, a precariously illusory daydreaming, or a timed reprieve from existential responsibilities. Still, peace is happiness when the breeze of peace envelopes me with a fragrance of acacia and takes me to the sea of skies.

    Peace be with you, readers.

  • prompt 207 on what to change

    What would you change about modern society?

    I believe a family is the nursery of a society, a nation, and the world. Whether it is headed by a parent or parents or a de facto breadwinner in the form of a non-disabled child, one thing is certain that good parenting is absolutely required for nesting humanity. That said, I will propose a law enacted for a qualified parent or parents who are mentally and physically able to nurture and nourish their children regardless of class and ethnicity.

    I believe there are no evil children, contrary to the popularity of demon children from Damien in Omen to Rosemary’s baby. Still, only bad parenting can produce the so-called demon children hell-bent on destroying humanity. For instance, so many convicted killers had disastrous childhoods destroyed by parental violence, from beating, swearing, and molestation to humiliation and degradation. How can you beat such a little child just because they are troublesome or bothersome? And it doesn’t matter the level of education or social status of a parent for the crime of child abuse. Not all of us are made for parents with maternal or paternal instincts, not because we are inherently evil, but simply because we are not for the roles.

    Therefore, I believe there should be a legal touchstone for being a good parent before having a child. If a mother or father is not ready to bring a child into this world and show him or her the beauty of life through thunder and lightning, then don’t be. Not everyone should be a parent.

  • Prompt 206 on mind boggling

    What bothers you and why?

    I am bothered by people and their hypocrisy. Injustice, Avarice, Cruelty, and Ignorance. A lack of charity and understanding. Weakness to all that glitters, power to all that pleads. Aristoteles said we can’t live alone unless we are beasts or gods. But I tell you, humans are angels and demons, the children of Janus with two faces of light and darkness.

    People can move heaven and earth, making a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, so much so that we can make a criminal of an innocent man like a human sacrifice to idols or false deities. For example, I watched a Netflix documentary about Henry Lee Lucas on Friday. He was known as a “Confession Killer,” who claimed to have murdered 600 victims all over the U.S. But did he kill them all? He killed his mother for sure because she was atrociously violent toward her son, beating his head so severely that the portion of his frontal lobe was permanently damaged, let alone his right eyeball that burst out, which was later replaced by a false prosthetic eye. Lucas was said to have an IQ of 87, but he could read, write, speak clearly, and draw quite beautifully. It was his social IQ that put him on a pedestal of the mentally inept.

    While watching the documentary, I could not help but think that Lucas was a victim of circumstances and prejudices. He was coerced into confessing falsely to the killings that he had not committed because the sheriff under whose custody Lucas was fatherly to him with warmth and kindness that he had seldom received. It was painful to see Lucas pleading not guilty to the falsely confessed murders through the cell in front of the hordes of reporters and camerapersons as if he were a freak in the circus. He was crying, and even if he might have lied, you could not/should not bear false witness.

    Nevertheless, those who chanted vehement epithets with no mercy but spite for the murders that he had not committed did not apologize to him as if doing it would be an immoral thing to do. And people continue to be merciless to those lowly in social status or need care out of collective neglect. We champion human rights, equality, and justice while doing the opposite things to those who need the championed values. It’s sickening, and that is what bothers me.