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

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  • The Avonlea Story – Existential Episode on the Collies and Ms. Cubert

    IMG_3732It has been almost over five good years since the Collies have immigrated to Elysia from Scotland. By now the family has well settled into the ways of life in their adopted home country, especially their beloved town of Avonlea, which has become their hometown. After all, anywhere can be anyone’s home as long as it feels comfortable and peaceful, if not exactly welcoming. Besides, if the customs and languages are similar to those of your native country, the process of acclimation is comparatively smooth without Herculean challenges. So in this respect the Collies have lucked out thus far.

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    The Collies live in Avonlea, a suburb of Charlottetown where Paul Collie, the head of the household works as a manager of the Food Department at Diamond Trading Corporation. His resourceful wife Laura Collie works at home as a part-time seamstress, making and altering clothes, curtains, and tablecloths on order from her clients who all have heard about Laura’s finesse in sewing and knitting and crocheting from the grapevine of Avonlea and even Charlottetown.

    In fact, Laura owes her craftsmanship to her great Aunt Meena in Edinburgh, Scotland who used to own her own embroidery shop until her death six years ago. It was also this embroidery store where Paul and Laura had met together for the first time, which led them to walking down the aisle of the Church of Our Lady in Danube three years later and taking a marital vow of faithfulness, love, and understanding. There were moments when both Paul and Laura adhered to what they thought infallibly right but the sacred promise before the altar always won. Their faith always won. Moreover, Paul and Laura are always happy to work hard for their darling Lana, a dainty bright seven-year old girl who is always eager to help others in need.

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    Recently, Lana has taken up a piano lesson under the tutelage of Ms. Brenda Cubert, a spinster who is finely conversant in classic literature, impressionist paintings, baroque/classical/romantic/ancient Greek music, and European history. Ms. Cubert thinks that Lana has a musical talent because of her quick sense of rhythm, aptitude for improvising melodies without musical notes, and her unalloyed appreciation of beauty of music and the Arts in general.

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    But this is what Ms. Cubert thinks to herself; she keeps everything to herself in fear of jinx, for she believes that if she says something good about anything, about herself included, things will suddenly turn sour and belligerent against her… To dismiss it mindless superstition of a spinster is a great injustice to her fine quality as an individual of deep intellectual curiosity and as a woman of sophisticated sensibility and delicate disposition. Such brooding inclination rather arises out of her  empirically shaped mode of thinking due to her eggshell sensitivity. Notwithstanding all of this intricacies of her mind, Ms. Cubert is all intelligence, all beauty, and all kindness.

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    You can get used to just about anything.” In certain cases, the adage seems to be in effect, such as in the case of the Collies whose life as a family of immigrants is quite smooth and placid. To them moving into Elysia, in this cozy town of Avonlea is akin to moving to a commonwealth of The Great Suhsland under the reign of Queen Stephana  whose sovereignty also includes Scotland. Whether or not it is this cultural similarities or affinities that facilitates their adjustment to the new land, the Collies will always remain a strong family bound by responsibilities and duty and love and understanding as Paul and Laura promised to each other in the matrimonial ceremony before the altar. Sempre fidelis, that is.

    *Extra Feature

    This is my very first experimental video featuring the panorama of the diverse residents in the town of Avonlea. All of the cast and setting are decorated and posed by myself. For those of you who have already read one of my short episodes about these folks might be familiar with them. The purpose of this video is to convey the leitmotif of the episodes I sometime write about these little residents vividly in combination with music which I deem humorously fit the whole idea of the story itself. In future, I plan to make a series of short stop motion animated films on these figures.

  • The Birth of Humanities: Mythology by Edith Hamilton

    MythologyMythology by Edith Hamilton

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    The essence of myths is threefold: it is a branch of natural science, trying to explain what humans saw around them. It is also a genre of pure classical literature. Besides, mythology is religion, the deepening realization of what human beings needed in their gods and goddesses. That is, mythology is a way to show us the way the human race thought and felt untold ages ago. Through mythology we are connected to the men who had close relationship with nature, who had no real distinction between the real and the unreal, unchecked by reason but with the spirit. In this light, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology breathes life into the Greek, Roman, and even Norse myths, which are the bedrock of the western civilization – the stories of gods, goddesses, and heroes that have imbued the humankind with multifarious creativity from time immemorial to present.

    The aim of this book is to produce knowledge of the myths that had been recorded by ancient writers and poets. In fact, the myths as we know now are the creation of great poets, one of which is the Iliad by Homer. Unlike the Egyptian, the Greeks made their gods in their own image and breathed them with their emotions and feelings. It is uncertain how the genesis of the Greek mythology came into being; however the earliest Greek poets arrived at a new point of view which had never been dreamed of in the world before them. It was at this point that mankind regarded itself as the center of the universe, intent upon producing the beauty of human, which was the very consummation of reality.

    According to Hamilton, what distinguishes Greek mythology from others is it’s foundation on the factual reality. The nonsensical took place in a world, which was essentially rational and matter-of-fact. For example, Hercules always had his abode in the city of Thebes, save when he took of a journey to accomplish his twelve labors; Aphrodite’s birthplace was just offshore from the island of Cynthera; Pegasus’s comfy stable was in Corinth. There was a sense of reality in the mythological world but no place for magic.

    Mythology is not a tome that requires of modern readers perquisites for scholarly knowledge of academic languages, intellectual superiority, or historical knowledge of the ancient time. It is an anthology of entertaining and inspiring tales of gods, goddesses, nymphs, and mortals who fell out of favor with the divine, written in plain English; it’s like listening to a very well-read story-teller. In Mythology, we meet all from the mercurial gods and jealous goddesses on the Mount Olympus even to Norse gods in Valhalla. We are fascinated with tales of Cupid and Psyche, Odyssey’s Golden Fleece, and forlorn Clytie whose love for Apollo pined away. We discover that Paris of Troy used to live with a nymph called Oenone before deserting her for Helen of Sparta. Also, we listen to the legends of constellations of the stars as well as many other references for literature, paintings, and music that have been deeply inspired by Greek mythology.

    Mythology is the most comprehensive and lucidly accounted tales of mythology based upon Hamilton’s extensive collection of the sources from great ancient poets and writers. Of all other books on mythology of the western civilization I have encountered, this book is by far the most excellent in providing readers with both entertainment and knowledge without academically esoteric approach or literary pompousness. Mythology succeeds in  offering education and appreciation of art that has been passed down to our present time for thousands of years. For this reason, Mythology by Edith Hamilton is a touchstone for books on mythology.

     

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  • The Moon in the Water

    girls-night-moon-water-lily-painting-beautiful-mood
    courtesy of google.com

    Like the Moon in the Water,
    She’s soaked in a desire
    to fill her with full of light,
    the virtue of high mind, the sublime pursuit,
    spurning airy celebrity.

     

  • A view from the Window on a Snowing Day

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    Snow Scene In Paris Painting by Eugene Galien-Laloue courtesy of fineartamerica.com

     

    Looking thru the window, what do I see?
Snowflakes softly falling down from heaven,
Smiling faces of little children,
Neighbors shoveling scoops of snow away.

-  'tis in one scene of Winter Play.

Thinking to myself, is everyone happy?
Doing what they've been doing thus far,
Fulfilling demands placed upon their 
life is a surety of simple security?

-  'tis in a script of Life Play.

  • About Bluebells

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    “Bluebell Haze” courtesy of ArtTudor Store

    The tears of dryads in a forest, naiads in waters

    over the death of their beautiful prince

    morphed into the flowers of dainty bluebells

    vowing to the constancy of doleful remembrance

    of the once fair face of their beloved with kisses.

     

    P.S. I love the flower words of Bluebells: Loyalty and Constancy. 

  • Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson

    Neither Here nor There: Travels in EuropeNeither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    When John Steinbeck, who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Travels with Charley: In Search of America, met a young man in traveling across America in his converted camping car named Rocinante, he met a young man who longed to travel to Europe with the idealization of the continent as he had seen in magazines and books. Steinbeck, being already weary of the existential dealings on the road, advised him, “What’s the need when the world is conveniently at your fingertips in colors without all those travel-related hassles? You can see the world in books and films and still keep your ideal images of Europe.” Which is exactly why Bill Bryson, an American- born British writer renowned for his great sense of wit and superb command of the English language, decided to embark on his journey once again twenty years after he and his pal Katz backpacked across Europe. Bryson wanted to see Europe in itself with a tabula rosa and write something about the cultures that seemed at once so different and yet so oddly similar in his own eyes. The result is the touchy-feely, impetuously hilarious, and astonishingly insightful Neither Here Nor There.

    Bryson’s journey began and ended in the two geographical outposts of Europe, Hammerfest and Istanbul. By virtue of his narrative both so inviting and vivid with the use of languages both colloquial and literal that are so characteristic of his writing style, readers will easily and willingly follow his train of travel through the chapters, as he first takes us to Hammerfest to watch the beautiful shimmering gossamer of Northern Lights. We find Bryson feeling not-so-attractive while sitting on a bench at a park in Copenhagen, where all people looked handsome and beautiful. Such existential estrangement became heightened in Belgium, for all along he felt homesick, reminiscing about an old diner in Iowa and its cantankerous but hearty old waitress he frequented. In Amsterdam, he was concerned about the country’s “oddly wearisome” social conventions in regard of its complacency toward untenable political stance under the banner of tolerance. We see Bryson in the streets of Stockholm disappointed in the perfect socialist country littered and defiled by wastes mindlessly thrown away anywhere by its civilized residents without a shade of shame.

    And who would not but sympathize with Bryson’s pathos in Florence? Here in this City of Flowers, Bryson saw the ubiquitous Gypsies importune everyone, with their haggardly clothed little children as an instrument for orating their poverty to passers-by at which Bryson was righteously indignant. He questioned himself why the police were not making any efforts to stop the Gypsies from harassing people. Further in Austria, we feel for him as his idealization of Austria as the epitome of all things European was ungraciously punctured by unfriendly services, an irritatingly slow mode of business operation, and a lack of charming coffeehouses where he could rest his spent body and spirit for a time. What a Don Quixote-like journey full of episodes  it was.

    Bryson’s cultural notes of each country he visited were, however, devoid of malicious sarcasm or jingoistic ignorance of its customs or social conventions. Things that he experienced in his travel in Europe was a clash of cultures he came from – originally Iowa, The U.S. and England afterwards – and cultures he had imagined in his mind, all of which spellbound him like a Boy in Wonderland. In fact, what fascinated him in Europe was his discovery that the world could be full of variety in which there were many different ways of doing essentially identical things, such as eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. Unlike other travel writers who only write about the sunny sides of the countries and peoples in their interests, Bryson is unafraid of telling readers his observations through his experience with a certain kind of fraternal or avuncular affection added by his trademark wits wonderfully interwoven with intelligence and humanism.

    The travel ended in Istanbul with his hope of seeing more of the world, his everlasting wanderlust still luring with a vision of Asia across the Bosporus Bridge. He’s all up for the unforseeable happenings awaiting for him to encounter because that’s the glory of foreign travel, a travel to a terra ingonita where anyone can become a stranger, a wanderer blissfully ignorant of almost anything. To Bryson, the whole existence of traveler is to be constructed by a series of instantaneous guesses and endless actions. Notwithstanding all the woes of a lone traveler who was culture-bound, Bryson’s travels in Europe was something of his experience in Wonderland filled with a great sense of childlike wonder and appreciation of the wonders of each country in its own colors. Neither Here Nor There is his tale of veni vidi, vici experience and entertaining accounts of the world through his eyes with amusing and telling details resembling none other than themselves.

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