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

Tag: diary

  • 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

  • prompt 57

    Are you a good judge of character?

    I would rather consider myself an observer than a judge, which sounds stern and draconian. In this regard, I see people’s true colors through their speaking manners and behavior patterns. Also, being bicultural and bilingual means you are endowed with a particular eye for seeing the universal characteristics of humankind that are uniquely diverse yet oddly familiar.

    “You are too sensitive,” people tell me, but I can’t help it because that’s the way I was born with the unique eye that enables me to see people’s characters whether I like them or not. No, not a psychic. Perhaps something of an ancient Sybil, I would instead call, will be more the like. People don’t like this ability because, like an MRI scanning, their inner worlds are revealed. Something should be left buried to protect the good of others and the keepers, I presume. Still, there’s nothing you could do about it when you were born with the eye, be it either curse or gift.

    It reminds me of Midas’s golden hand that turned everything he touched into Gold and Cassandra, whose words people disregard even if she was telling the truth. But then I think my cats are better seers who could see the true characters of people like Odin’s two ravens, Memory and Thought, and Freya’s two cats driving her chariot. ⭐️💫🧚‍♀️

    Digital art by Danielle Zemba from Fine Art of America
    Stephanie’s two cats ⭐️

  • prompt 56

    When are you most happy?

    From L to R: Toro and Camille

    Happiness is made of purrs and meows, kneading and cuddling, kisses and hugs, all packaged in striped and black furs with soft-cushioned paws. The happiest of me is when my cats are next to me at home.

    The happiest moments are in the company of my cats, Toro, the Tabby, and Camile, the Puss in Boots. When I go home after work, Toro and Camille greet me at the front door, rub their little heads against my leg, and say, “Mello, (Hello in their language).” My cats also stay on my bed at night while I am sleeping. I often wake up in the middle of the night and see Toro in my arms and Camille at my feet, which is so comforting and warm. Since they became my family, I have dreamed of nightmares or any supernatural scare springing from my mind. It is said that cats have the extraordinary power to ward off evil spirits, and I believe so. My brother had the same experience in Japan where, before adopting his cat, he used to hear someone walking upstairs. Of course, that ceased after the cat became a family.

    Even though Camille has brought me good luck for my present job, I am happier when Toro is beside me. He is such an affectionate cat that I am so happy that we are a family. The veterinanrians love Toro and Camille because they are so sweet and gentle. Love makes happiness, and my cats are love. Happiness is my cats.

  • prompt 52

    Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?

    While I am debating whether life today is what I pictured a year ago, I like to think that it is better sailing with fewer storms and more blue skies in the uncharted sea of life than last year’s voyage.

    Last year’s voyage was arduous to sail through Ocean of Life because my ship was too frequently hit against rocks, met with the sirens that charmed me with the promise of stable sustenance kept on the mirage of Treasure Island, and stranded alone on the watery main with no sight of the kingdom of the shore. Providence, the faithful call, Fate to those who feel left out of favor of the divine, was the cruelest at the whims and caprice of whoever was toying with my lost star. But then, at the lowest ebb, I saw a tide coming toward my ship, and I took it at the flood.

    So, I am steering the master key with my trusted sailors, the First Seamen Toro and the Second Seaman Camille, on board. We are together for this sailing, and with the more tailwinds and blue skies, I hope I can reach the land on the other end of the rainbows where my lost star is waiting for me, still sparkling excellently bright and gorgeously brilliant.

    My trusty sailors Toro and Camille: “Sail Away, Captain!”

  • Don’t think too much

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    Don’t think too much

  • Prompt 31

    What principles define how you live?

    Ask any acclaimed mountaineers, such as Edmund Hillary and Reinhold Messner, why and how they climbed up the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. Their answers were simple: there was a mountain to climb, and they had to move forward. Likewise, here are my life’s three guides: imagination, creativity, and hope that accompany me in this life’s journey.

    I am a figure of paradoxes, contrasting light with dark, ideal and worldly, bright and melancholy. I see myself trapped in the Labyrinth of Crete, where the Minotaur lurks in the corner of the maze, waiting to ambush, yearning to eat me. (It is more poetic than being lost in a level of the dreadful Backrooms, as it were.) Normal is not default, and insecurity constantly stalks me like a haunting revenant, resisting departing this world that it longs to remain for an unfinished business. And yet, there is always this impalpable, mysterious sense of what-if flickering in its iridescent halo from a distance. So, I follow the light, walk forward, and never look back because moving forward keeps me alive. Didn’t Stephen Hawking also collaborate with it by saying that it is possible for humans to travel to the future but impossible to return to the past?

    Creativity is essential because it gives a sense of existence, of what it means to be a human. Viktor E. Frankl said three values shape a meaningful life, which are creative value, experiential value, and attitudinal value. I enjoy appreciating the artistic works of others and learning to accept who I am. But I am also delighted in creating my own creations, however good or bad they may be. Writing is such a means of expression by which I can express myself. It is fearful of disappearing like a speck of the world, and I am not nothing.

    I can imagine myself one day arriving as an acclaimed memoirist, diarist, or essayist. Novels are not my forte because I can’t write things I pretend to be or know. That is why I prefer reading nonfiction, and I like to think that I can write it well.

    Thus are my principles – or, more fittingly, my guides – in life. I am a Dante who imagines, a Virgil who creates, and a Beatrice who hopes through life’s journey.