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

Tag: english

  • Prompt 30

    What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

    Dear Reader,

    After a long and tiring day at work, I look back today and regret not doing things the way I wanted – yet again. Since I spend more time in an office full of strangers with nothing in common with me other than working for the same employer, reflecting on today’s memories and actions brings me a feeling of sorrow and sympathy. It’s always this matter of diplomacy of interacting with others without offending them, which is what I should pay more attention to.

    The art of social interaction is hard enough for me to achieve without having a poker face or a public mask – persona. I have seen people who ingratiate themselves with those whom they regard as socially beneficial and politically influential. I see them, all of whom are women, but I don’t see beauty in their visages, nor their minds and hearts. Those able-bodied, fair-weathered friends or sycophants are unashamed of their deeds, acting as if they were all above others, thinking themselves better than others.

    Not that I begrudge them such a skill of flattering, but I realize that having the diplomatic forte may help me to live a more comfortable life for me and my two beautiful cats. Indeed, smile is the best global language where no spoken words are required. I can smile and smile beautifully, but my beautiful smile is unrelated to currying favor from the powers that be, so to speak. Still, it would work wonders if I could pay more attention to my facial expression and the whole demeanor of my body in a polished way so people would not be rude to me.

    My wish is someone’s daily life or just a fancy, but it is still my wish to induce a good impression on me, no matter where you are from.

    Good night. Carpe Diem!

  • ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ by Jennette McCurdy


    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    When I first learned of this sensationally titled book with the pinky perky cover photo of the author from the New York Times Book Review, I knew I had to read it because of its boldness and frankness that I believe would strike the chords of many who must have felt or wished it (let’s be honest). However, it was more like seeking a kindred spirit in such a titled book because I felt exhilarated with camaraderie and, once exonerated from such membership, a desire to revolt against mothers.


    But the book isn’t an angst-ridden, hate-filled, violence-saturated memoir nowadays in-vogue among celebrities who live to tell their dark life histories. Although it isn’t precisely wholesomely hall-mark like loving family history, it is worth pointing out the moments of love and warmth that childhood memories sometimes invoke because we thrive as human beings on those memories. McCurdy’s mother may not have been perfect, but who is an ideal mother anyway? The Bard once said that look not with the eye but with the mind. She was the one who saw talents in her daughter, encouraged them, and made them blossom into a pink dandelion when many parents either ignore or overlook the bests of their children for their future. Although I can understand McCurdy’s disaffection with her passionate mother controlling her life, I am envious of having such a mother who was willing to sacrifice her hard labor for her daughter’s success.


    The cover photo is puzzling. The author has a smile but not smiling, or instead trying to smile but is subdued as if her emotions are changing instantly or frozen in the moments between joy and sadness, independence and confusion in the transition of belonging to freedom. I can’t honestly fathom what the author thinks inside, but one thing is certain she loves her mother, who is now unburdened with the cares and pain of the world. Perhaps, that is why she is glad her mother died.



    View all my reviews

  • Once More unto the Breach! Here comes my New Year’s Resolution

    Once More unto another year, once more!

    As the first day of the new year has almost ended, I feel the urge akin to duty to make a new year’s resolution. There’s not much but high hopes for low heaven, with a reasonable scope of expectation and humble measurement of happiness. And since none other writers know about the depth and breadth of humanity than Shakespeare, I deem it fit to match his quotes with the contexts of what I have resolved to make this year of Rabbit fruitful and blissful.

    1. Be Not Afraid of Challenges
      ‘This is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap. For in my way it lies.’ – Macbeth
    2. Don’t be easily crestfallen
      ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ – Hamlet
    3. Read More, Write More, No Matter What
      ‘We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.’ – Hamlet
    4. Keep it simple with humor
      ‘I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.’ – Much Ado About Nothing
    5. Let not a curse be my light purse
      ‘I say, put money in thy purse.’ – Othello
    6. Be vigilant at all times
      ‘Love all, do wrong to none, trust a few.’ – All’s well that Ends Well.
    7. Overcome existential malaise
      ‘Then I defy you, stars!’ – Romeo and Juliet

    Nobody says life is easy, and we know it to the point that such a saying has become a cliche. But life itself shouldn’t be and is not because we are such stuff made of spirit, fire, and dew, harvesting sunlight and starlight. Now that I have listed my New Year’s resolutions as above, I feel fresh of spirit charged with new energy like the Energizer bunny to keep going in my life, even if perils will lie ahead. But in the meantime, let me be that I am who I am as I write this post in my tiny room with my two cats, Toro and Camille, and seek not to alter this moment of simple pleasure.

  • The Pope and the Heretic by Michael White

    I first learned about Giordano Bruno through a tweeter thread about Shakespeare discussing his one of many influences, including this Don Quixote-like miscreant Dominican priest who wrote The Art of Memories, the subject I was and still am keen on to improve my regressing memory. Since then, Bruno has resided in my memory chamber as an enigmatic pariah, a formidable rebel without compromise. So when I came across this book by Michael White, a former member of the 80s pop group Thompson Twins, I knew I had to read it.

    White describes Bruno as a martyr of enlightenment, thinking ahead of his time. Unfortunately, Bruno was born into the wrong place at the wrong time, so he suffered from the Catholic Church’s authoritarian rule that dominated the World’s knowledge. However, Bruno’s theory that Jesus was preternaturally a superb magician and therefore not the Son of God, not to mention that the Holy Ghost was the spirit of the World and that Satan would be saved, was sufficient to raise the eyebrows of the ecclesiastical figures. Also, he opined that the stars seen in night skies were actually suns and that there were other worlds in the universe where living beings like humans existed. I speculate such an opinion might have influenced a modern-day belief that we are not alone in this universe because there are extraterrestrial beings. All these ideas were indeed revolutionary. But unlike Galileo, who was said to murmur, “Still, the earth circles round the sun” after he was acquitted of heresy, Bruno was stubborn in his ideas. He proudly defied the Church’s intention to pardon him if he would recant before the death sentence. In his excellent lyrical portrayal of the dramatic confrontation, White sees it as the microscopic representation of the conflict between religion and philosophy, myth and truth, superstition and science.

    Notwithstanding White’s admirable wealth of knowledge used in defense of Bruno, I cannot help but think that White’s stance on Bruno overlooks or connives at some facts. The Catholic Church put him at stake on account of his theological errors, deemed dangerous to the spiritual formation of the Church and the Faithful as a priest to the Church. Bruno was not a willing martyr of his ideas but a Simon Magus-like figure trying to trade his knowledge for recognition in the arms of different sects of Christianity, such as Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Episcopalianism, across Europe.

    It’s an irony that rather than the man written about, the man writing about him turns out to be a genius in writing. Perhaps White, a former musician, attributes this to his lyrical rhythm of narration drawn from his emulous erudition. Moreover, he writes the language of the general reader in the panoply of academic disciplines, and the reader will find no time for disorientation or disinterest. This book carries a tone of what the Italian anti-Catholic activists campaigned against the Church, with Bruno as the symbol of persecution against what they believed in. Nevertheless, it is worth reading it if you are a proponent of Giordanism or just a curious bystander like me.

  • Turn of the screw

    One more chance
    and the soul’s deep
    misery in the abyss
    would be beatitude;
    Universe!
    Save the soul
    in bottomless watery
    fit where no light dares
    to reach, not even God
    cares to send his grace
    to the despondent
    whose prayer for his
    grace is a turn of the screw.

  • Powder

    Happiness is her
    coveted poetry
    She’s kept away
    From writing
    Without knowing
    The face of love
    She’s seen only
    As in lovers’ faces
    Harvesting sunshine
    Reflecting starlight
    With a fragrance
    Of a perfumed powder
    She bought a long ago.