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

Category: prompts

  • Prompt 108 on Job

    Do you enjoy your job?

    I am grateful for my job which provides me with a steady income and decent benefits. Moreover, I am proficient at my work. Similar to Earl of Kent in Shakespeare’s King Lear, I am qualified in what an ordinary person is capable of. And the best quality in me is diligence.

    The only thing I am not content with within my current job is the company culture dominated by the employees, my so-called colleagues who like to form cliques, their clubs of buddies and gals sharing the same linguistic background, which I call cultural and ethnic affinities. Never have I experienced such a shocking sense of isolation. It never occurred to me in New York City or even New Jersey, where I spent 30 years of my younger self. This clique mentality is a thing of the West, especially in Los Angeles, CA. It’s like being surrounded by high school or teenage students whose mental ages stopped growing. Maybe I am getting old, but as a person of keen observation, it is a new type of discrimination. You are unwelcome in their circle if you are quiet and look very different. They will not even bother saying hello or hi and not even include you as an existing human being.

    When I was on the East Coast, where the history of cities is longer and the culture more civilized and cosmopolitan, such estrangement was hardly felt. But then, I can’t complain about my current job as long as it provides me with a livelihood to support my elderly mother, two cats, and my aging self. If the people at my work were kind, friendly, and mature, my current job would be the kind of business I love. I would rise and go to it with delight. But beggars can be choosers.

  • prompt 107 on word

    If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

    It’s Passive or Aggressive.

    Passive-aggressive. There is no such thing as being passive-aggressive. One can be one or another, but not both. It’s a fad psychoanalytical term that profilers, shrinks, and mobs like to call neurodivergent persons for convenience as a thoughtless, careless invective.

    The term passive-aggressive refers to a timidly introverted or neurodivergent person who is prone to a frenzy of ire or anxiousness. But who isn’t? One cannot be always happy, pleasant, and smiling in public, which I find creepy, reminding me of the clown from the movie “IT.” Introverts and Neurodivergent people are not accustomed to voicing out their feelings and emotions, such as disappointment, frustration, grief, or angst, in the way neurotypical persons do, so they tend to suppress them while also needing to make their voices heard in a way that is communicated less diplomatically or effectively than their counterparts.

    Mob psychology corrupts words because it is not the words that are harmful but the user of the words who breathes the evil spirit into them. People also like to label those different or distanced from them with malicious epithets. Also, the words like positive and negative are overtly used, and the meanings are bastardized. There are no negative people but disappointed, ignored, and misunderstood people. Do not use it for people just because you don’t bother to know or are not interested in learning. Therefore, Passive-aggressive is a gaslighting word, and it must be banned. If not, then separate them.

  • Prompt 106 on Drink

    What is your favorite drink?

    As some people go to bars to drink, I go to the Green Mermaid’s Coffee Tavern, aka Starbucks, for my favorite drinks with a Kindle and an iPad. Their menu is inventive and innovative, welcoming new additions. These drinks are my sprit drinks.

    My first favorite drink is Iced Hazelnut Oatmilk Shaken Espresso. Because of its oat milk, the flavor is wonderfully smooth, richly silky, and beneficially wholesome. It’s my comfort drink.

    My second favorite drink is Iced Caffe Americano, my staple morning must-have to perk me up. And it is always iced because I find Americano tastes better when cold.

    My third favorite drink is Iced Passion Tango Tea Lemonade. The color says it all about the prettiness of the flavor, which isn’t too sweet but refreshingly delicious and refreshing because it is added with lemonade. Without it, the tea will not be as lovely as it is.

    I believe we should all have favorite drinks because, without them, life would be all gray and grim. Mine happens to be the above-referenced drinks from Starbucks. I am not affiliated with Starbucks to write this column, but I read Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz (you are welcome to click and read on the link.) with relish.

  • prompt 105

    Who are your favorite people to be around?

    My Camille and Toro from left to right

    I don’t trust a man, a woman, the young, the old, the good or the bad. People are not to be trusted, as Albert Einstein himself observed it too. So, I don’t have favorite people, which is also meritocratic and egoistic. Loves, I have, and they are my cats who appraoch me and want to play with me, even if people don’t.

    People may be kind at first, but they change their feelings toward you depending on who and what you are. People talk of love as a gadget, such as a smartphone, when they do not realize what love is. So, I do not beg it and desperately seek a society of my favorite people because today’s favorite people may give you cold shoulders tomorrow.

    Yet my cats are different. They come to me when I go to bed at night or wherever I am at home. They bunt their little heads forcibly against my hands or legs as though to confirm I am loved. And they listen to me attentively when I talk to them. I know my cats have souls, and we will depart this world together for the distant star, our final destination. I don’t covet Goddess Freya with her chariot driven by the two cats, for my cats are not my subjects or pets but love.

  • Prompt 104

    Write about your approach to budgeting.

    I believe that the simple is the best in every aspect of my so-called life, so I try to plan my budgeting as minimally as possible to make it realistically achievable in the way that works for me.

    This year, I have started keeping a personal ledger book to discipline my expenditure habits that worked adversely. So, I got a pocket-sized personal budget planner I carry about to record my daily expenses against my checking account. Also, I save $100.00 from my paystub to my savings account. I used to save $200.00, but then I habitually spent it all on my Amazon shopping. $100.00 seems more achievable, and it has worked so far.

    Every night I write my diary and review my budget planner to reflect a day’s work and progress. It gives me a sense of control in myself because by writing with pen to paper, my acts of a day become visual through actualization. Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do, so I want to try it myself.

  • prompt 103

    Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

    The Accused 😅

    Breaking the law springs up a grim faced judge with a wig with a gavel prone to sentence: “Death by hanging.” But no one is immaculately clean, and to err is a human. I broke the following laws, but I am not a hypocrite, as supported by Robert Frost: “Far more violence has been done in obeying the law than in breaking the law.”

    1. Diatary Law – I enacted this law on the first day of 2024 to return to the disciplined dieting I used to keep five years ago. I broke the sections of eating after 6:00 pm, indulging in carb-enriched food articles at home, and consuming a load of junk food. Now that my doctor has ordered me to lose weight until a follow-up visit in three months, I shall abide by the law in full force and effect.

    2. Law of Affirmation – I have violated all of the sections of the law: Imagination, Visualization, and Manifestation, all of which unintentionally – and intentionally. It is unintentional because when things do not go well as I expect them to or life seems unkind to me, my eyes become blind, my ears mute, and my head blank. I become comatose, thus violating the law. Intentional in the sense that when I am lost of all, including the will to live, the law seems needless, just as I am not here.

    The consequences of the violation come not in they do a single spy but in a battalion. Health risks, such as high cholesterol and diabetes, may be foreseeable. Mental health will be put in critical care if they do not adhere to the above laws. Give me a month as a corrective period, and I will reinvent myself.