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

Category: Miscellany

Anything that’s on my mind.

  • prompt 64

    What makes you feel nostalgic

    Some say being nostalgic is a herald of reaching the age of Judge according to Shakespeare’s 7 Stages of Life. Still, I tend to feel nostalgic whenever I listen to the music I first heard and liked or watch the movies or shows popular in the era I grew up with.

    a scene from “Take On Me” by A-Ha. Image credit from Google

    Music is the food for moods and the excellent medium to pitchfork the listener to yesterdays and make them beautifully recollective. When I listen to my adolescent 80s pop music, the images and even the smells of the time creep into my mind and fill my eyes with the vistas of the memories unfolded like a film. The following songs are the instant time machine songs of the 80s: Take on Me” by A-ha, “Telefone” by Sheena Eastern, “Don’t Forget About Me” by Simple Minds, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” by Tears for Tears, and “The Reflex” by Duran Duran. When some people, especially those of the MZ Generation whom I am surrounded by at work, say they are ancient songs and ask about my age, I tell them there is no expiration date for the love of music by not testifying to my age. Instead, I feel sorry for the generation because they have no privilege of living two centuries in this digital age.

    Image Credit from Google

    For the 80’s movies and shows, I loved watching “McGyver” and “Knight Rider,” which I still watch on Apple TV whenever I feel like it. It’s so wonderful to travel back in one fell swoop through the media entertainment to the times when I was the merriest without having to worry about getting a job and caring for my elderly parents. My parents were young and beautiful, and my grandparents whom we lived with together in a house cared about me.

  • prompt 63

    What relationships have a positive impact on you?

    Little more than kin, and less than kind: Toro and Camille frm L to R

    Relationships are a web of connectivity that can be toxic or beneficial. Of my web of relationships, I treasure the ones connected to my team at work and my cats at home.

    My new team manager neither scolds me nor drives me to the highest level of stress, which is detrimental to my health, especially the neurological aspects. She gives me the autonomy to perform my tasks at my own pace and style, and I always get the jobs done on time or beforehand. Her liberal management style, blended with concise organizational skills and firm leadership, lets me utilize the best of me in performing my assignments efficiently.

    Also, my relationship with my cats Toro and Camille has provided me with emotional warmth and a sense of togetherness, which I find hard to receive from my fellow humans. Toro and Camille are transparent in expressing their emotions and unique in looking into my inner world. They know who I am and greet me when I return home as if they knew about my wrestling with the existential dilemmas and despair from working in the office packaged with favoritism, cliques, and discrimination. My cats are indeed little more than kin and less than kind.

    In conclusion, my relationships with the current team manager and my cats have felicitous effects on my continuous ebbs and flows of mood waves as kind nurses tell me that I am doing fine and will do fine.

  • prompt 62

    If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?

    My Softball Team’s Mascots are Toro and Camille from L to R

    My softball team would be co-ed, all classes, every race and ethnicity, aged 40 and above, as long as the players can do daily exercise consisting of push-ups, sit-ups, and 2-mile runs (in their own paces) with no serious medical issues.

    I am not affiliated with the company 🤗 image creator: Google

    It would be a league of amateur sportsmen and women who want to spend their leisure actively and healthily with good, clean fun in the credo of Mans Sana in Coporore Sano (“Healthy Body, Sound Mind”). Therefore, ASICS will sponsor our team’s sporting goods, such as uniforms, shoes, socks, etc.

    Camille’s bow tie has it: red, blue, and white ⭐️

    Accordingly, the team’s color will be an American tri-color of red, blue, and white, representing Health, Inspiration, and Simplicity consecutively. The mascots will be my two cats, Toro, the Tabby, and Camille, the Puss in Black Boots, symbolizing Fellowship and Sportsmanship successively.

  • Prompt 61

    How have your political views changed over time?

    Image from Google

    Aristotle said that a man is by nature a political animal, and if he isn’t, he is either a beast or a divine being. I am not sure if I am a divine being (in my head in the ether), but my faculty of the mind has become more polished to discern the business of politics in corporates of nations worldwide.

    For instance, the Democratic Party’s promise of cancellation of student debts for Americans was too good to be true that it almost sounded like a scam to me. I never believed it, albeit with a shadow of hope, because who wouldn’t when everything helps? Then, when the Supreme Court ruled it out – all over but the shouting -the party switched swiftly to SAVE Plan as if they had known it and devised it as Plan B. IT was a political bargain, knowing that the Republican Party wouldn’t allow it. It was a Game of Fortune on a Wheel of Fortune. Both parties know who to play it, and ordinary people – those who work their fingers to the bones with the yokes of life – are played with the scripts.

    I am not against the Democratic Party. After all, President Joe Biden raised the Social Security Benefits for my elderly parents, to which we are grateful. But I don’t like when the party and the leaders use the common people like pawns as King’s gambit for their political gains. Consequently, my political views have become more wiser and clearer.

  • Prompt 60

    You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?

    Image from Google

    Books are in my Kindle:

    The Library of Babel

    With the floating stairs

    In the times and spaces

    Reaching the stars bright

    basking in the starlight

    The dome of the library

    Holds a myriad of mystery;

    Every book in bundle

    From the Babel Kindle

    Is a magical adventure

    From humdrum to splendor

    Flying on a golden chariot

    Like Freya’s Chariot

    but with my cats cuter

    Toro and Camille together;

    I am in my perfect space

    For the alchemy of writing

    And the witchcraft of reading.

    Camille and Toro from L to R

  • prompt 58

    Share what you know about the year you were born.

    Photo Credit: Google

    The year I was born was the Year of the Tiger. It says a lot about me. Independent, Loyal, Considerate, Solitary, Inquisitive, and Compassionate. They say a Tiger is a born leader and fit for running a business. Indeed, I am a writer of my own and an independent thinker. But it’s rare to encounter someone with my year and my generation as a whole at work or in public, which I always feel in-between, transitional, liminal, or cruel to be kind, lost even.

    • My mom delivered me by admitting herself into a maternity ward in St Mary’s Hospital in Seoul, Korea, on a snowing wintry evening. Dad was working at the bank, and she didn’t want to interrupt his working time. Mom, being exceptionally devoted to Mother Mary, wanted to deliver her first child at her namesake’s hospital.
    • U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency following the Watergate scandal.
    • The first human ancestor Lucy, dated to be 3.2million years old, was discovered in Ethiphia. Lucy is named after a Beatles’s song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” But I still don’t believe she is our huamkind’s ancestor.
    • Hello Kitty came to the world! ❤️ And Forever!

    Consequently, I feel like my generation has become an age of Judge according to Shakesperea’s Seven Stages of Life, whether I’m not too fond of it or not. Denial of the age is asking for trouble against natural law, said Cicero. Of course, there is nothing new under the sun, but the contemporaneous MZ Generation is a different tribe reminiscent of the children’s tribe in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies or Stephen King’s Children of the Corns. Amid the generational waves, I can’t help but think that my generation is those who rescued the stranded children in Lord of the Flies or the couple who tried to save the doomed children of the corns. But no one seems to care about it but to disappear beyond the time. But you know what? We are the survivors of the change from the Metal Age to the Digital Age, and we are yet to be withered and stale.

    From Pinterest