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

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  • 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

  • “Drag Me to Hell” (2009 Film) – movie review

    Image credit: Google

    At first, I didn’t like the movie poster, which was too screaming of “HORROR” aimed at the teenage audience. So, I avoided watching it for over a decade since its release in 2009. But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, the movie advertisement kept popping up on Amazon Prime and NetFlix until I clicked on it last week out of curiosity blended with 90% boredom and 10% of my brother’s words to try it. I know I was destined to watch it now that I have watched it.


    The movie’s protagonist is Christine, a relatable character, a young woman from a country to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, who wants to build her own life as a successful career woman so that nobody will look down upon her. She is more naive than innocent, with a good heart, if not golden. Nevertheless, she cares about people’s feelings and does not have the iron will to harbor her vengeance against those who insulted her. But sometimes, it’s those little people who get the biggest shoutout. She meets her Waterloo and literally crosses the Rubicon to face the demon. Still, the question echoes: did she deserve the curse? Why is it always that the ones who are good ninety-nine times get picked on and punished without mercy for a one-time fault? What makes them scapegoats for an offense in the eye of the beholder?


    The movie’s director is heartless and sarcastic about human nature in the face of reality by being merciless to the protagonist as if he were trying to play God, who he appears to think is remote and unsympathetic to the plight of his children. Otherwise, why does he let things happen to her and do nothing to protect her from evil? Christine might be nervously anxious to prove herself worthy of better opportunities as a single woman away from her not-so-pleasant past, but that cannot be the cause of sinister consequences. She could have loved herself the way she was, and all would have been well. Indeed, we should be kind and attentive to those in need. Still, the politicians and the celebrities with money are evasive of punishments for their wrongdoings because they know they can get away with anything, even from the curse. And I do not pity the spiteful Gypsy woman who drags the meek, not the powerful, to hell.

    Christine deserves no place in hell.

  • Prompt 59

    How are you creative?

    It’s the stars that made me. Image from Google

    The stars met in the celestial jar and made me of Fire, Dew, and Spirit. From the jug pours the streams of ideas into the palace of the heart and the dome of the mind. I am Aquarius, whose inspirations from the outside invoke the creative spirit from within. The impulses are like flashes of fancies in a frenzy of visions springing from the mind’s spring as though to be possessed by a jolt of magical madness like the ancient sybil or oracle of Delphi.

    Writing is my hobby, and I write best when I feel like doing it without the restraint of perfect grammar or fear of infelicities of expression. Freedom and individuality are the Aquarius, and so I am. I write for leisure, which applies to three facts of Why I Write by George Orwell: (1) Sheer Egotism– I want to let the world know that I am also a practitioner of the witchcraft of writing – particularly in English – that is not a prerogative of the professional writer; (2) Aesthetic Value – The words always fascinate me, and the English language is the most excellent of all because of its richness in vocabulary and diversity in meaning. I want to write English as beautifully as Charlotte Brontë as creative as Wistawa Szymborska, or as heartfelt as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and (3) Historical Impulse – Writing on my blog and my other off-line writing will be a record of someone who lived this contemporary era that I lived and wrote something which could be attributed to archeological and anthological artifact. Who knows?

    Some say depression is their Muse who awakens their creative sphere from within. David Lynch, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries believed so. But mine is pleasantness. I don’t want to make a Mephisolean pact to be the most adored writer. I may not be the best or even famous writer or blogger, but I write on my blog because writing as a creative value is the best way to actualize the purpose of living in search of finding who I am. When I am on the ridge, looking over the Pacific Ocean from the top of the Canyon, or watching big airplanes flying the skyways, the Muses whisper in the ear, awakening the dormant spirit yearning for the pep of creative stimulation. Also, my cats Toro and Camille are reliable and the best natural Muses who invoke the creative spirit within me. One day I want to write a short story based on them.

    My Muses: Toro and Camille from L to R

  • Nativity Haiku: Merry Christmas 💫

    Image from Google

    The baby came to the world,

    The light filled the manger,

    The star shined bright,

    The world became a delight.

  • 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