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

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  • i speak

    Look not with the eyes but with the mind

    To write a litany of daily woes is not my priority, nor do I feel proud for sure, but if I just bear it with a grin today, I may fall apart. So, I want to leave it in words. After all, I am my own counsel, defending myself against injustice and abuse forced on me just because of who I am.

    It’s been over two months since I started my new job as a case manager’s assistant at a personal injury law firm. I like my job, and I am a good worker, always willing to perform my tasks given diligently, even if I may make mistakes because I am also learning a new trade on my own. But my case manager denies this, magnifying every mistake I make as if it were fatal because she is relatively new, feeling overwhelmed by a heavy workload. She vents her frustration upon me, assailing my introverted personality, diagnosing it as a mental case, and belittling my entire personal ability and outward appearance. Besides, she mistreats me with contempt and criticism under the pretext of toughning my sensitivity. Everyday is like being in a toture room of the Inquisition.

    Today she told me I did not comprehend English very well, upsetting her. That was a massive mental blow akin to verbal abuse enough to dispirit my will to write and read. True that English is my second language, and due to my insufficient social interaction with others, my verbal expression may seem inhibited. Still, I have a BA degree in English from Rutgers University with a decent GPA, and my letters to an editor of a British history magazine have been published more than five times. In addition, my book review of a certain well-known novelist got a raving compliment from the author himself. Yes, I am proud of these facts because I love the English language and always strive to be a better writer. But to hear such a callous rant from her plunged my spirit so low that I could not help but sink into the abyss of finiteness, then into a pit of the bottomless pit. People told me to be tough, but that’s disrespectful of individualities because otherwise, there would be no poets, essayists, or novelists whose eyes and sensibilities, and senses are exceptional from the melee.

    I am so tired of all these abuses from the people who pride themselves in being the survivors of the fittest. My mind is a river of tears, and my heart is broken to pieces repeatedly. I wish I had someone who would always be on my side and support me. Maybe, it’s my fate to suffer, but I want to be happy. Is it too much to wish for?

  • At dawn

    The dawn’s breaking
    through the gray curtains
    of the shadows of the past
    and releases moon frosts
    sprinkled with star flakes
    on the leaves of the trees
    and pours them onto the grass
    that makes the whole meadow
    a sumptuous panoply of pleasure

  • Prompt 22

    What does freedom mean to you?

    People think of freedom as a philosophical concept in belief when it is the fundamental right to exercise humanness, the state of being human. Freedom is not a prerogative of specific class or status or group, but a sovereign privilege of every human being to be who they are and to express themselves under the aegis of regard for individualities that can be at their most creative and effective when well-guarded by enlightened society with humanism.

    Freedom to speak against injustice, freedom to keep one’s character, or freedom to think differently defines freedom in a civilized society characterized by low unemployment and high long-term employment rates. Unlike Europeans, Americans are unashamedly puritanical about the rights of at-will workers, meaning they are always expendable at the whims and caprice of tyrannical employers. Here in the States, an employer can let an employee go any time out of the blue. A yearly leave of absence with pay averages ten days, which can’t be used at once but sporadically. Would it be a bit of a stretch to see a feudalistic or ancient slavery system in today’s American employee-employer, which includes all those foreign-born doing business in the States, relationship?

    Jean Jacque Rousseau lamented that we were born free but are in chains everywhere. Activists clamorously campaign for Freedom” to showcase their political causes in the media, but they may also have been perpetrators of someone’s freedom. Freedom is not a cause celebre but a fundamental right to practice a will to live. Abraham Lincoln called the “Jewel of Freedom in the Family of Liberty.” Ditto. Freedom is accessible only in a civilized society.

  • Prompt 21

    What is your career plan?

    I always think that a career is for those who have social ambitions to climb up the class ladder or to gain fame, such as professionals or celebrities. As a commoner who works for bare necessities and the accompanying mental equilibrium brought by financial security, I would say the word “job” is unassumingly fitting to me. Hence I will change it to “job plan.”

    My immediate job plan is to pass my ninety days probation period, which will end in early or mid-June of this year at the current job. I am a new Case Manager Assistant at a personal injury law firm where the Spencerian of the survival of the fittest is at its most tacitly manifested and vociferously encouraged. The high turnover rate is famously average, so matter-of-factly typical that it’s like a revolving door of a department store. But the generous pay rate and timely payment compensate for the reign of terror. I have seen many the hungry ocean gains advantage of the kingdom of the shore, and the firm soil wins over the watery main with loss and gain, gain and loss. So if I get paid at a decent pay rate every other Friday, I am content. So, I pray that I will pass the probation period, and that’s all,

    I work hard and well, but I don’t want to become a case manager that is a 24-hour job under stress. I want to be an excellent CMA, competent, efficient, and prompt, and that is my prayer.

  • Prompt 20

    List the people you admire and look to for advice…

    There used to be a section in the New York Times Book Review where an established writer was asked whom they would invite for dinner, alive or dead. So today’s prompt is relevant to the dinner list, (well for me lunch or coffee time list is more fitting) which comprises people I wish to have as wise and pleasant counsel.

    I want to have people who are well-read, open-minded, understanding, cultured, patient, and confident, with a sense of humor devoid of sarcasm. I want them to be older than I am, at the Judge or old stage according to Shakespeare’s seven stages of life, because they have withered the vicissitudes of life to live to tell. Of course, not all mature people are wise. However, still, I would feel more comfortable being in company with them to talk about the woes of life than with MZ generations who regard the preceding ones as something medieval, if not ancient or prehistoric.

    Therapists or counselors are paid to give us advice, but what if you don’t have the resource or are unlucky to meet a good one who can show you precise feedback with a touch of humanity? So I envy those who have people whom they can turn to for wisdom, not criticism under the pretense of grain of salt.

  • Wandering Cat

    The hate fills you with spite
    the heart is a barren desert
    the mind is a desiccated tree
    basked in the heat of hate;
    There’s a cat who walks
    by himself by the proud tree
    and his eyes full of memories
    that once beheld the leaves
    dancing in the breeze of peace;
    He catches in silence at the sight
    by the awe of the forlorn fate
    that wails into a void of ether
    and continues on his wander
    into the end of distant rainbows
    bridging over the skies yonder.