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

Category: book review

  • Sea of morning calm

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    Looking at the sea, all blue and broad, the girls thought that they could not enjoy its loveliness anymore if they had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds and pearls. Now they knew how Anne of Green Gables felt when she looked at the serene beauty of sunset that spread through her mind and lingered there in alterations, while standing on the farmland with uncle Matthew: “God is in heaven, and all’s well with the world.” Even if it would not obliterate their worries, concerns and troubles in their hearts, the very moment of equanimity made the girls forget all of it and imbued them with a sense of the sublime in life, a budding sense of meaning of life  – to find a reason for hope with the awareness of odds in their favor.

  • My notes on ‘the Language Instinct’ by Steven Pinker

    I have read the sample version of The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker on my Kindle with keen interest on the subject because it chimes the bells of my soul and heart. This book is a polyphonic work of cognitive science interwoven by multiple strands of biology, history, sociology, psychology and philosophy that tells the truth of the nature of language and why it is a product of human evolutionary biological adaptation, not a socially engineering gizmo that shapes our thoughts. It’s a consilience of the knowledge of science and humanities, vis-à-vis linguistic determinism that we all have been conditioned to believe. Also, the knowledge of a language does not equate one’s level of intelligence because it is the Instinct. Which I find very encouraging and stimulating, for as someone whose English is a second language, the frustration of grammatical errors should not dispirit my spirit and make my heart feel cloddish and slow-witted.

  • Witching Hour

    s-l300The witching hour was nearing to cast its spell on the night under the aegis of Artemis, the goddess of the moon, and the passengers on the last train to East Ventura were inwardly invoking the power of Patience for a high hope for a low heaven – they all just wanted to go home after a hard day’s work, and no more. These aggregates were all bound by the same fate of being held up as hostages to the less practical and more unnecessary delay due to their inapt handling of one unruly passenger on board at Moorpark Station. The force of one unruly passenger carried the aggregates over the edge of their collectively simulated sanity and suspended their precious time to be spent at home. This nightly act of daily drama in the life of a commuter was in fact a repertory regularly put on stage by a company entitled Metrolink. It was performed yet again last night for an hour. Without Applauds, of course.

    Since I moved to California last October from New Jersey following the footsteps of the nineteenth century emigrants from the East to the West via mules-driven wagons on the Oregon trail, I have been trying to make myself adjusted to the Californian way of life in every sundry aspect. But the most Promethean challenge to overcome is commuting to and from work via train, and my whole life now seems to be run by train schedules operated by Metrolink, the Southern California’s commuter railway company. It takes about three good hours round trip to and from Union Station in Los Angeles without delays, so basically my free time after work during weekdays is to be spent on the train without much personal time at home in the evening. Let’s say the commuting time is agreeable at will due to my economic activities, but any such delays, including the aforesaid and waiting for an Armtrek train to pass by on the trails for about thirty minutes, are hard to receive my magnanimous understanding. And it seems that the last East Ventura bound train in the evening is set for giving me a series of trials by ordeal that I need not anymore. Woes to those who are already burdened with the yoke of needs.

    Call it a commuter’s blues or soliloquy, but whenever I am faced with another ordeal of habitual delay that seems to become part of my Immigrant Song in the Wild West, I think of the following Shakespeare’s quotation tinged with wits and pathos that speaks of our moments in life, such as last night’s episode of “Unruly Passenger at Moorpark Station”.

    And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe.
    And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
    And thereby hangs a tale.

  • there she goes (BBC drama 2018) – review

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    Although I am not a parent, I know that parenting is a grand task constant of every age. The ancient Greeks thought that to rear children was a hazardous undertaking and success was won though struggle. In this respect, parenting -like all other our human vicissitudes that life presents to us – can be something of an odyssey packed full of both foreseeable and unforeseeable events tinged with laughs and sighs sailing through thick fogs of uncertainty of the future but with silver-lined clouds of hope for tomorrows. A family is in the vessel of life’s voyage, and they are in for the adventure together as in the Yates of “There She Goes”.

    This drama evolves around Rosie Yates, a nine-year old learning-disabled daughter of Emily and Simon and her bright older brother Ben. Rosie is a beautiful girl in appearance, but she still wears a diaper and needs her parents’ help in all things she wants to do, ranging from going to a park to eating pastas, to wearing her clothes, and to combing her hair. Her intention of the will is expressed by raw emotions of crying, shrieking, lying down on a floor (even in public) and laughing. To be brutally honest, Rosie is unbelievably uncontrollable and patently outrageous in her unbridled behaviors as symptoms of chromosomal disorder. Looking at Rosie’s outbursts of frustration, I recollected the image of wild Helen Keller before she met Ms. Sullivan. I could not help but think throughout the whole series of the drama thus: ‘What if Rosie got a teacher like Ms. Sullivan? The Yates were of a middle-class family, and there must be a way Rosie could be like Helen Keller in order that she will be independent of her family’s twenty-four-hour vigilance. It will be beneficent  to both herself and her family.’  But then my wish would be father to the thought because the Yates would not seem to entrust the care of Rosie to any one outside her family.

    The drama is based on the real-life experiences of creator Shaun Pye to whom I applaud to the very echo for all that she has taken to raise her daughter. And I also feel for her husband brilliantly played by David Tennent who at first did not want to accept the truth of Rosie’s disability but later turned to be a loving father. In fact, Tennent’s performance excels in portraying a neurotic-looking father who has doubts about Rosie’s betterment but has no doubt about his love of her, his wife, and their son. He does it without a shred of overaction or hyperventilating emotions, which renders the drama a sense of verisimilitude. Parents or not, married or single, this drama shows the truthful and honest portrayal of family on a life’s odyssey bound by love and understanding and patience. If you like a simple drama that portrays the life of ordinary folks without perfect teeth and great hair but with a good storyline and elliptical scripts, this is worth watching.

     

  • this was a woman!

    Josephine Baker was surely more than just a pretty dancer who thrived on her exotic charms and wild popularity from her adoring admirers; she had the guts to talk back to the authority that ignored her presence, the voice to speak out against injustice, the pride of who she was and the will to fulfill her meaning of life despite her hardships. And she did all of this with a graceful choreography of decencies and humanity in style.

    Reading of the intriguingly informative article about this strong-willed, headstrong woman has confirmed me in the universal credo that no matter where you came from, with the best of what you possess and the will to meaning by actualizing your valuable attributions, you can rise above biological and social planes deemed to stunt your growth into what you want to be. In fact, Baker’s resilient spirit against social discrimination and personal hardships epitomizes what Nietzsche advised to the suffering humanity:” That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” In this sense, the figure of Baker transcends a statue of civil right activist that some people like to erect for pontificating about their political ideology and becomes a universal model of humanity as she herself practiced during her lifetime. For it was not that she loved the socially disfranchised people of her kind, but that she loved mankind more.

    Baker’s life was exciting, and the elements so wonderfully mixed in her that parliament of humankind might applaud her to the very echo and proclaim to the world “This was a woman!” For all her acts of courage and fortitude gracefully surrounding her person, those thousand decencies she exemplified as a citizen of the world flew from all her words and actions, really. 

     

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  • What happened to Mona Lisa on August 21, 1911

    687px-Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched108 years ago from today, an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia stayed a night at Louvre with Leonard da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in his arms and walked away the next morning with a trunk where the famous da Vinci’s woman was hidden. The workers coming to work at the museum early in the morning saw him but didn’t cast a shred of doubt that the unassuming handy man would keep the painting at his house for the next 2 years.

    What’s more, the museum had not noticed the missing of Mona Lisa until a visitor inquired after its whereabout. Mona Lisa was surely a beauty with a mysteriously enticing smile, but no one seemed to fancy her to a heart’s content; she was just one of da Vinci’s paintings worth displaying as a panoply of his ingenuity.

    Back in the humbling dwelling of Peruggia – the handyman who in his heart was a patriotic guardian of the Italian cultural treasures-, the kidnapped Mona Lisa began to cohabitate with him by perchance for 2 good years until her Italian abductor finally decided to return to his homeland with her. In his mind, Peruggia might have thought it just to return Mona Lisa to her birthplace as he was taking her to a local museum. On the contrary, it was not a wreath of olive for his patriotism that was bestowed on him but a pair of metal handcuffs that was going to be presented to him for smuggling. To pour salt in the punctured wound of his heart, Peruggia had to serve a brief spell in prison.

    What happened to Mona Lisa thereafter was a proverbial tale of an ordeal-turned-fortune; upon returning to the Louvre, Mona Lisa became so famous with the antics that she was the celebrity of the museum, let alone the most known painting of her creator all over the world. Shakespeare was right because Peruggia’s abduction of the painting was a tide that brought her timeless fortune.