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

Tag: english

  • Who were the First People? – ‘The Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon’, – review

    The Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon: The History and Legacy of the First People to Migrate to EuropeThe Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon: The History and Legacy of the First People to Migrate to Europe by Charles River Editors

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    You don’t have to feel obligated to believe that apes are your distant relatives lost somewhere in the missing link because it is one of many theories based on educated guesses anyway.  In fact, few species in the natural world are more indubitably wonderful and incredibly mysterious than mankind that Shakespeare swiveled his head in wonderment and uttered, “What a piece of work man is!”  Accordingly, the origin of races has always piqued the curious, fanning the fiery imaginations of the human race and the wherefores of modern humankind in the discovery of the two kinds of the First People from Africa around 1.5 million years ago. The Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon: The History and Legacy of the First People to Migrate to Europe by Charles River Editions will present you these two unlikely yet compatible hominids in the panorama of human evolution that is unrolled as it narrates the sequentially arranged series of scenes from Africa to Europe and Asia.

    The book helps you to unwind your conditioned belief that the unkempt, clumsy Neanderthals were not the ancestors of strictly non-Europeans; In modern populations of Europe and certain regions of Asia, DNA derived from the Neanderthals makes up between 1% and 6% of human genomes. In fact, the Neanderthals, who evolved separately in Europe, are a member of the genus Homo like Homo sapiens and share approximately 99.7 of their DNA with modern humans. This also leads to a wonderous finding of the co-existence of the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens migrating from Africa roughly between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, about the time when the former slowly began to extinct due to weak immune systems, incompatibility with the changing environments, and gradual domination of the latter who knew how to manipulate fire as an essential living tool. The interbreeding of these two different peoples was most successful if a Neanderthal man mated with a Homo sapiens woman because then the offspring became fertile, contrary to the sterile progeny of a Neanderthal woman and a Homo sapiens man.

    In addition to the Neanderthals as an intermediate evolutionary phase between Homo erectus and sapiens, you will come to know that Homo sapiens developed in Africa left the continent in the second wave of migration around 150,000 years ago and settled in Europe and Asia, thereby continuously living and occasionally mating with the Neanderthals, who were eventually displaced by more hunting savvy and physically advantageous Homo sapiens with their domesticated canine companions appearing around 36,000 years ago. The movie ‘Alpha’ will supplement the pictorial vividness of the history of the first anatomically modern human race with their first domesticated beast whose symbiotic relationship continues to this date.

    In all likeliness, this book is a comprehensive read on the pre-historic legacy of the first anatomically modern people and the other hominid whose genetic similarities still manifest their evolutionary linkage in parts of modern Euro-Asian populations. Written in plain language devoid of elaborately subjective interpretation of the theory of evolution, the book will entertain your spare time, and your mind will feed off the sensation of exotic kind of knowledge that will enhance the treasures in your cabinet of curiosities. On a note of persecuted minority creation science follower, this book will provide you with a much less outrageous theory of human evolution than the hardcore origin of the species that graphically strips off even a remotely anatomically human semblance of the supposedly very early human species in despair. That’s quite a catch, isn’t it?

    View all my reviews

  • #ShakespeareSunday

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    “My gracious silence, hail!… Ah, my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, And mothers that lack sons.” (‘The Tragedy of Coriolanus’, A2 S1). “And all my mother came into my eyes, gave me up to tears.” (‘Henry V’, A4 S6). Thereafter, “my thoughts were like unbridled children, grown too headstrong for their mother.” (‘The History of Troilus and Cressida’, A3 S2)

     

    P.S.: This week’s theme is “Mothers and Children”, and the above is what I have found to be fit for the subject. In order to incorporate the quotations into one coherent paragraph of a drama, I have also slightly adapted the original texts to create a smooth flow of the narrative. 

     

  • the changeling

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    If she is pretty, she is never lonely because she is wanted and loved. This much is truth, no? Beauty works a miracle in the eyes of a dull man without imagination and of a cruel man without tears. Oscar Wilde, who always had something to say about beauty, affirmed that it’s better to be beautiful than to be good because beauty captures your attention. So, if you are bereft of beauty, then you must work very hard to get people to know who you are. Beauty is indeed a joy for all seasons, rain or shine, and is also a privilege to be loved first before loving.

    Judy always must be in love with someone who didn’t even know of her existence because the feeling of love would transform her from a plain Jane to a sultry Cleopatra as if a pixie had cast a glamour spell on her, pitying her denied sense of pleasure and detachment from a constellation of lovers. Judy, despite some flattering feedback on her appearance from onlookers, was always discontent with what she saw in the mirror that seemed to reflect her what she didn’t want or couldn’t see in her true self. She felt that her features were in want of spectacular beauty that would make herself loved, and her solitary disposition dipped in an exclusive flavor of selectiveness doubled the inaccessibility of the worldly sensuousness that even not so pretty or homely women were allowed as their feminine rights.

    Judy was sitting like a pillar of melancholy at the dinner table embarrassed by the ordinariness of her appearance in the presence of handsome Fred who made Judy feel like an awkward wallflower that nobody would pay attention to. You would say she obviously lacked self-confidence, but self-confidence is also built upon the kind of feedback you get from others. Judy was a firm believer of existentialism which says that experience exceeds essence and of Robert Cooley’s sociological theory of “Looking Glassed Self” that you become the way how others treat you. Or you might say what she lacked in appearance could be compensated by her intelligence, wits, or those other “inner” qualities, all of which she did possess. But let’s be honest, my dear readers. Beauty is the power and the wisdom of women regardless of leaps of times, distances of places, and differences of races. Any man- rich or poor, bigoted or liberal, young or old- loves a pretty woman and will act on his best behavior with kindness. Likewise, Judy, who was not drop-dead gorgeous, always kept herself guarded with a stern look at the sight of a man who might be unkind or curt. However, Fred was different. He was being very affable to her with a genuine smile. This time Judy wanted to claim her right of happiness and make her existence visible to her figure of love, so she secretly wished for a glamour spell to change herself from an insignificant wallflower to a beautiful rose that would make Fred crazy about her.

     

  • Fairy gold

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    A little green man with a beard was hiding

    A pot of gold coins at the end of the rainbow

    Not knowing that a man was approaching

    From behind the oak tree with his face aglow

    with the sign of fortune wheeled in his favor.

    “Gotcha! You mischievous Leprechaun!”

    The triumphant man held the fairy in terror

    And stole the pot of gold coins and ran.

    But the little green sprite had the last laugh

    For when the man arrived at his hut,

    The treasure turned into bread dough

    And the man fell aback into an old rut.

     

    Author’s Note: It’s sad that St. Patrick’s Day parades have been canceled all over the world due to the outbreak of the insidious Corona virus pandemic. Although I am not Irish, St. Patrick’s Day is my favorite feast day when I feel truly festive and jovial for reasons unknown. The Irish, I think, know how to have fun in a way that embraces and welcomes all with warmth and friendliness wherever they are based on my personal experience. So, I am celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with this little poem, wearing a green shirt. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

     

  • Life goes on

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    Grandparents Mary and Hans Bovine are all properly concerned about the newest alert for the Kina-13 virus that the town’s mayoral government has addressed to its citizens on T.V., radio, Twitter, Facebook, and newspapers. Now a gathering of 200 or more people is recommended to be canceled or postponed to an indefinite date, including religious services and business conferences. Never did the power of a government feel so assuredly authoritative and legally bounding as now, and it has imposed on every one of them. 

    Mary: I can’t believe that it’s really happening now. When this pandemic panic arose at the beginning elsewhere, I thought that it would not come to our land. But now look at this commotion in our town. Masses are also suspended for three weeks from now following an announcement from the archdioceses of Sylvania. It’s unbelievable! 

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    Hans: Yeah, can’t believe it myself, either. I went to the Pellmart right by the Chico’s this morning to get toothpaste and a roll of paper towel, and most of the shelves were empty! Besides, I had to get toilet tissues from Me-Bay online last night! What’s more, I must close my restaurant starting from tomorrow until the Mayor lifts the proscription. What a mess! Things are abnormal now. The panic reactions from the rabble remind me of the scenes from the movie “The Last Man on Earth.” 

    The grandparents think that the onset of the pandemic elsewhere in the world was really the baby figure of the giant mass of things according to the butterfly effect: the small falling of a butterfly’s wings can bring a hurricane on the other side of the world. However, nothing will break their resilient spirits united in humor, a handmaid to hope and courage.”Once more unto the breach, dear friends because though it is madness, yet there is a method in it. So take heart, and be brave – with a smirk against the fear. 

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  • Spellbound

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    When they got to a ranch below Santo Christo Mountain, the golden chariot of Apollo was about to finish its daily race in the sky hippodrome, making a way for the staging of the nocturnal goddesses in Moon and Evening Star dresses. The earth was changing its mood from vivaciousness of a pretty young starlet to sensuousness of a beautiful mature actress with sultry duskiness of impending sunset. The wild plain looked as if it were waiting for the sensual pleasure that the goddesses would bring to the rough and tough arms of the ruggedly handsome wilderness for their nightly play of love when the celestial blanket of Uranos, the god of the sky, softly covered the body of Gaia, the goddess of the earth, to ravish her divine being all night long. As a constellation of stars was starting to appear in the heavenly vault, the tribe of adventure was also starting to call it a day’s journey and hurrying their horses to the gate of the ranch. They were all hungry and tired, but the spirits were still resisting saying good night to the world. What they really wanted at that time was a sumptuous repast, consisting of fresh fruits, hot meals, and warm bread with butter and jams. Soup and drinks would complete the repast if the host would turn out to be a generous one. Raphael, who was the hungriest of all, knocked on the door and waited for a welcome response. A high hope for blissful heaven, indeed.

    “I am coming!” answered the voice from the other side of the door with the playfulness of an adultescent grown man, which might sound impish to the quiet ears of those who fiercely protective of privacy. That’s how it sounded to Judy and her canine companion Nena who started barking as the footsteps from the other side were coming closer to the wandering tribe. Looking at Nena incredulously, Judy began to feel nervous about who would open the door because Judy had an acute sense of detecting any sign of supernatural and natural beings from this world and the world beyond; it was an uncanny ability that she inherited from her also unusual mother estranged from her own family for the unreasonable reason. For they had persecuted her for being a witch, condemned to eternal damnation, because it was against their Catholicism they believed in a medieval fashion, and even put her in a mental ward for being crazy. Yet Judy knew that her mother was from a long and mysterious line of ancient sibyls existent in all cultures even before the birth of Christ and believed that the reason she and her mother had been born into such scurrilous, Scythian family of hypocrites was a mysterious reason she had to figure out by herself. And she believed that this adventure with the offbeat trio was part of this mystery. What’s more, the irritably vivacious man’s voice from the inside must be a tessera that the Fates had intentionally put in an inscrutable puzzle that had challenged Judy to solve – all alone.

    The wooden door was opened when Judy fell into the moments of mental vertigo, and there appeared a tall, good-looking man with blond hair and very pale blue eyes that sparkled even in darkness like the fluorescent lights on the deck of Flying Dutchman. Judy was properly aghast at the extraordinary sight of the beauty and instantly forgot all, including Rufus, Ben, and Raphael who were not as surprised as the lass by the sight the comely fella. But Nena was still barking at him more fiercely than before as if the man had been a malevolent spirit in a handsome actor’s hide. Nena was barking harder and longer as though to wake up Judy from a portent evil spell. The beautiful man, the mysterious owner of the ranch, looked at the scene in silence and smiled at them like a spectator of an amateur comedy on stage. The night was still very young.