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

Blog

  • Who am I?

    photoaaaaa

    Dear Readers:

    Hi there. Thank you for stopping by my blog. It’s always a pleasure communicating with people through writing, which I believe is the most authentic vehicle of expression of a self. My love of reading and writing inspires me to publish my thinkings in this blog. So Welcome All with my Whole Heart.

    My name is Stephanie Joori Suh, living in a suburban New Jersey town in the vicinity of the New York City. I work in the City for livelihood and write at home (or sometimes on the Second Floor in a Dunkin’ Donuts’ shop nearby my workplace) for selfhood. The great psychologist and thinker Viktor E. Frankl, who is also the founder of Logotherapy, has urged us that we strive for realizing our values that are: Creative Value, Experiential Values, and Attitudinal Values in order to arrive at meanings of our lives. How true it is! I believe those who write are united spiritually in fulfilling such noble deeds. We are kindred spirits.

    I may not write perfect English prose due to English being my second language. I may not sound ordinary in the sense that my writing speaks with certain streaks of foreignness. Nevertheless, it is my quest for actualizing what I possess inside by means of literary expression. And I have to purge it out, unravel the mystery in me that is dying for the discovery of the truth in me.

    Hence this little blog has come into being; it is the birth of my brain child, or rather the manifested ego qua meaningfulness as in terms of Logotherapy. So many thanks again for your readership, which is also meaningful to me.

    All the Best,

    Stephanie S.

  • The Diary of a Mad Legal Secretary by Eve Halliburton

    The Diary of a Mad Legal SecretaryThe Diary of a Mad Legal Secretary by Eve Halliburton

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    Stephen King said that people love reading about what others do for a living because it’s so entertaining and thrilling at the same time with subject matters being closed to the real world. It gives readers a sense of realism or verity in which we all are rooted because work is what ties to us in reality where we face existential absurdities in dealing with human imperfections in conjunction with performing demands imposed on our daily tasks at work.

    Hence a story of a neurotic legal secretary who has good heart but is driven to a borderline madness by witnessing the idiosyncratic characters she encounters in the office: The bumptious boss, the snobbish lawyers and their ilk, the ingratiating and ruthless HR personnel, the pitiful and sometimes cunning co-workers. Reading this story is like watching a black comedy which induces both pathos and satirical comedic relief.  In fact, this diary seems to be more of a therapy journal in which the narrator purges out her hidden innermost feelings and emotions about her work and the people at it; it’s a Punch-like compendium of caricatures in word format.

    Ms. Halliburton could have written this hilarious book as her memoir of a seasoned legal secretary in a prestigious Manhattan law firm. Or more likely than not, the author might have written this diary as a way of releasing her own stress and distress. For whatever reason it might be, Stephen King was right in saying that we enjoy stories of others in relation to their jobs because this book is easy to read and enjoyable, providing the reader with the kind of pleasure a Peeping Tom indulges in by peeking at what others do and feel about their work  with a telescope.

  • Before I go by Catherine Cookson

    Before I GoBefore I Go by Catherine Cookson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    This is my first encounter with Mrs. Cookson in her writing. What a world of writing she immersed herself in out of the melee! The book is one of her post mortem work discovered by her estate with the other unpublished novel, and I can see Mrs. Cookson must have intended to have this memoir published after she’s long gone because of the self-evident title of “Before I go”. This book is filled with her innermost feelings towards her family – her mother whom she called “Our Kate” and her dearest husband Tom and the people who entered her life, such as Nan Smith, the various doctors who attended to her lifelong health frailty, and her faith as a doubting Catholic. As an illegitimate child of an unwed mother from a poverty-stricken family, Mrs. Cookson however did not yield herself to the the bare necessities of life as it demanded.

    Mrs. Cookson was a true example of a triumph of will and hope over experience and condition. Working as a manageress in a laundry, the author did not resign herself to the complacency of her social class. Instead, she raised herself above the hubbub of life and arrived as a fine writer who wrote about people whom the readers could relate to based upon her experiences. Also, her Catholic faith, which she had been fighting with reason to no avail, was the bedrock of her character and shaped the way she looked at the world around her. For it was her faith to which she held on in times of trouble and from which her compassion, pity, and forgiveness sprang.

    What I like about Mrs. Cookson is her feistiness and pride which distinguished her from her peers and people of similar social origins. But this does not mean that she became haughty and untouchable with her literary success; on the contrary, Mrs. Cookson still retained her charitable nature although she often lamented about it because of people’s appropriation of her compassion and pity gratuitously.

    The reader will be able to read the mind and heart of this fine and very human writer. It’s not about her lifelong health problems of nose-bleeding, 8 miscarriages, and a peripheral vision by advanced age; this memoir is about Mrs. Cookson’s resilient spirit that enabled her to rise above the planes of biological hindrance and societal prejudices.

  • Two Fellows – Part I

    two

    So there he was. You could always find him there at the same time, at the same place regardless of a change of four seasons, like it was his duty to do. Looking over the fence smartly seated on a rock on one balmy afternoon, Toto was calm and steady. His big brown eyes full of yearnings and visions glanced at the dancing leaves on the quince tree outside the fence where there were only a few fruits left because Grandma, being of generous and affable nature, had given the well ripe ones to the neighbors. However, such intermittently displayed quinces surrounded by the abundant leaves appealed to Toto’s inquisitive eyes: the way the leaves swayed to the tune of the breeze was a part of the nature’s orchestra that stimulated all of his senses, which ultimately led him to the outburst of his exhilaration in long howling like a wolf pup in the wild.

    Toto was a Jindo mix, aged 9 weeks or so. Toto came to Joe’s home on a cold winter afternoon a year ago with Pa who brought him in his jacket. He was a white puppy looking healthy but a bit apprehensive about the new surrounding. But mind you that there was no sign of fear in his eyes but intelligence. Joe named him Toto after a legendary dog in Korea who returned to his owner, an old woman who had given the dog to her nephew in a city miles away from her home in Jindo. So he wanted to have a dog whose faithfulness and loyalty would be equivalent of those of the legendary namesake. Joe wanted to keep his new puppy till the end of the world because he had lost Lana, a Samoyed mix puppy of 9 weeks old, to distemper 2 years ago. This time, Joe thought, would be the last time to let such thing happen to him and the dog. It was his new bound duty, a duty that suddenly appeared sacred and fateful to his destiny. Boy as he was, Joe was resolute in his new pledge to the life and protection of Toto as his guardian. Looking at Toto who was napping beside him on the rock by the quince tree, Joe could hear the whisper of the breeze that blessed his guardianship and fellowship of the human and the canine. What a nice afternoon it was to both the boy and the dog.

    “Joe, can you come here quickly?” It was Joe’s sister Judy. She was 16 years old, 2 years senior to him. Judy also loved Toto and dogs, although her favorite breeds were Labs, Border Collies, Shiba Inus, and Bichon Frises. She had been secretly entertained having a Bichon Frise until Pa brought Toto home. She had a soft spot for this particular breed since she had read about a homeless elderly man who sailed through the tribulations with his Bichon Frise dog named Willow; the image of the small, curly haired dog with large soulful eyes in the arms of the man still lingered in her mind. But it’s not that she did not lie their Toto. Toto was their another sibling, the youngest brother whom Ma had lost by miscarriage 6 years ago. Judy’s love of Toto was not to be confused with anthropomorphism because she loved Toto the way he was, the way Toto was the closest natural wonder. He was Judy and Joe’s guide to the natural world like Virgil to Dante in his journey to Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Through Toto, Judy and Joe could see the wonder of Nature in which all creatures existed and made the human existence all the more conspicuous by appreciating the pristine beauty which was to be beheld in the eyes of the innocent.

     

  • Easy as Pie Crosswords by Stanley Newman

    Easy as Pie Crosswords: Really, Really Easy!: 72 Relaxing PuzzlesEasy as Pie Crosswords: Really, Really Easy!: 72 Relaxing Puzzles by Stanley Newman

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    I have always admired people who do crossword puzzles on newspaper as a pastime; unlike word searches in which your mission is to find right words and circle them, crosswords require your cognitive abilities to conjure up right words, plus a mastery of the English language, including knowledge of idioms and certain expressions endemic in the English speaking countries. So as an admirer whose English is but a second language, finding an easy crossword puzzle was necessary to partake in the craft. Hence this puzzle book came along: deliciously enjoyable and generously easy, this puzzle book is recommended to anyone who is a novice in this field of crosswords. Moreover, this puzzlebook is spiral-bound, so that you can flip back the pages easily and solve the puzzles comfortably. This will be a nice addition to your coffee table readings at your leisure time.

  • Daily Life in Victorian London by Lee Jackson

    Daily Life in Victorian London: An Extraordinary AnthologyDaily Life in Victorian London: An Extraordinary Anthology by Lee Jackson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    This book is a fruitful archive of personal diaries, newspaper/magazine articles, letters both official and private, and other historical records, all of which portray a glimpse of the everyday life of the Victorian Londoners – the poor, the middles class, and the middlings in between – minus the poshness of Downton Abbey. In this book, the reader will peep into many lives of different folks, kinds of job they had, the work conditions, and the places they went for recreations on holidays, and feel empathic towards their victorian kindred spirits. However, this is not a book of insalubrious living conditions for the proletariat, nor the litany of existential woes in living hard lives. In fact, reading this book is like reading a Charles Dickens’s story featuring an Oliver Twists, a Pip, a David Copperfield, and many others of interesting characters working for odd jobs . This book is about the humble but vibrant in Victorian London who were never the boring.