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

Tag: dailyprompt

  • Prompt 201 on small improvement

    What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

    all the heartaches give me headaches.

    I try not to overthink about things I can’t change or control. I care too much about people’s reactions and feelings at work and home because, as someone with acute sensory perceptions, all my nerves are tuned to the reception, making them exhausted and pained.

    For example, I get very agitated by the total silence created by the other in a room. I have a co-worker who says nothing all day, as if I were invisible in the same office. It bothers me and makes me uncomfortable. I then try to analyze and reason for such behavior, always finding faults in me for being introverted. It only makes my already complex psyche intricated like Gordion’s Knot that only can be let loose by one fell swoop of Alenxader’s sword.

    Alexander and the Gordion’s Knot

    But I don’t need Alxander’s help to cut the Gordian’s Knot because I have the sword. It is Excaliber in my mind that is waiting for me to wield it. With one fell swoop of the blade, I will be able to cut the intricate knot of wrecked nerves, troubled neurons, and interrupted connections between the sparks of the thoughts that will clear away the impurities on the mind so that I can have a clear mind and lively spirit.

  • prompt 200 on last live show

    What was the last live performance you saw?

    It was an A-ha concert on April 8th, 2022, at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, California, which was in my town. It was my second time seeing them in concert since I attended their New York City concert in 2012.

    I went there alone, but many came alone to see their first puppy loves or idols in real life. As the band became old, so did their fans, which proved that time was non-discriminating, visiting the doors of huts, villas, and palaces. Here they were, my old hot flames, once so young and dashing, now ripened with the years of experience, seasoned with the echelon of exercises. A-ha indeed grew mature, but they were more relaxed and confident, which endowed them with a different sensuality that the green salad days of youth can never have.

    The most interesting thing I noticed at the concert was that fans brought their young and grown children with their spouses to see their old loves. Although their children didn’t quite seem to enjoy the same level of pleasure that their parents were having, it was an excellent concert where people had a good time returning to the days of their begone youth by the witchcraft of music taking all of us to that time.

  • prompt 119 on reason to live

    What gives you direction in life?

    It’s always unexpected. This moment of Eureka of life. Or so it seems. Finding meaning in life is like searching for a lost star destined to be mine and yours when it falls from its journey to see you and me.

    I am still looking for my lost star, but sometimes, I want to give all up, facing stripes of existential dilemmas, crossing the vicissitudes of life that I don’t want to. At those times when I want to quit everything and leave this world, my eyes meet the eyes of my cats, who need my care and love. Then they come to me and rub their little flurry heads against my hands, legs, and heart, sending me the pulses of life all over my body, entering the palace of the soul.

    Small pleasures and simple joys keep me going like the Energizer Bunny beating the drum in an energetic march of celebrated longevity. My cats need me, and the need for care gives me a reason to continue this search for my star in life.

  • prompt 118 on my quote

    Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

    Many a quote I admire, but a quote I treasure is from the Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila that I cherish in my heart’s chamber and fresco in my soul’s palace.

    “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing. God is unchanging. Patience gains everything. God alone is sufficient.” Even if my faith in God might have led me astray in the course of existential life, the comfort that nothing will destroy me because there is always hope, even in the darkest night of the soul. Just as cloudy skies will become apparent and show the gorgeous azure firmament, what seems to be endless hardships will have an end, and they will stay not too long. Dum Spiro, dum spero. (While I live, there’s hope.)

    So, whenever I feel like reaching the bottomless abyss or being lost in a maze with no existence, I recollect this simple yet powerful prayer to bask in the sun of hope.

  • prompt 117 on getting nervous

    What makes you nervous?

    I get nervous with people. Many people, a few people, or just one person of no or little acquaintance. Not because I am misanthrope but because I don’t want to make a fool of myself by opening up a conversation that no one may be interested in.

    I also become nervous when alone in crowds, making me feel like a visible target for being a loner that no one takes an interest in talking to. It’s not because of low self-esteem that is automatically associated with such a tendency. Instead, it’s a survival instinct not to be seen as vulnerable in public.

    Given the above, I am a paradox, half moon, half sun, north-west, south-east, making me neither wholly human nor entirely ethereal. Or I may be a changeling, a human-born, a fairy-bred, which makes me less nervous about who I am or may be.

  • prompt 116 on beautiful stranger

    Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

    No, it’s not Madonna’s kind of Beautiful Stranger, but the one whose act of kindness flows from all her deeds and demeanor expressed to the other stranger.

    Back in the days when I worked full-time and studied full-time at college, my purse was often thin, which Benjamin Franklin would have disapproved as a sign of excessive spending. I had to sacrifice two meals a day and leisure to make a living as the family’s eldest child. One day I got on the bus to school, but it was too late to realize that I was short of money. I was embarrased to be a public display of poverty, so I was about to got off the bus crestfallen and misrable. The fact about me is that I am tranparant of my feelings and emotions, which are blatantly shown on my face.

    Then, a beautiful lady resembling one of those figures in the ancient Greek urns offered me help. With a gracious smile, she paid it forward with her money, and I could ride the bus to my classes. She sat next to me and started chatting with me. It dawned on me that she was an exchange college student from Greece and would return to her country soon. I thanked her, and she said she had been in my shoes before. We parted with smiles and hearts that are universal in all humankind.

    John Milton in Paradise Lost describes, “Those graceful acts, those thousand decencies, that daily flow from all her words and actions.” Hence, my beautiful stranger.