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

Tag: essay

  • prompt 204 on three books of life

    List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

    Three books that have planted Tree of Golden Apples in my mind’s garden are the following elementals:

    1. Recollections: An Autobiography by Viktor Frankl – Dr. Frankl was the father of Logotherapy, one of the three Viennese Schools of Psychotherapies, who practiced what he believed and experienced. Far from an armchair scholar in the Ivory Tower out of touch with the crowd, Dr. Frankl gave hope, not as a delusional escape from the burdens of reality or dangerous daydream, such as Thuclides defined as the nature of hope, but as a beacon of light in the darkness of the soul crying for help. It’s because he was a survivor of the hell on earth, called Auschwitz, and other circles of hell under Nazi-ruled Austria. He wrote other books, which I have read, but this book pales others because it shows him not as a scholar but as a human soul whose spirit we all possess and, therefore, can relate to.

    2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – This is the book I can never get bored with. Since I received the book at the tender age of twelve in Korea, I have always loved it and returned to it when I feel lonely, very lonely, and lonely in this big, wide, cold world. Jane is my soul sister, and we have things in common. And I see what kind of woman Charlott Bronte was different from many people who like to claim. I like her works more than her contemporary peer, Jane Austen.

    3. Why I Write by George Orwell – This is a small pamphlet-like book. I carry it around when I feel like doing nothing, yet doing something resourceful and thoughtful to keep myself from mentally procrastinating. People tend to think writing belongs to intellectuals when it isn’t. It’s a record of personal existence through written communication to express one’s inner world within the outer world. But many people, including professionally established writers, like to think that writing is a form of art that belongs to the ether. It’s not, and the purpose of writing is simple. Orwell’s points of view agree with mine.

    These are the books that I always come back like trusty bosom friends who can keep secrets besides my two cats.

  • Prompt 203 on practicing my religion

    Do you practice religion?

    I hear every Sunday morning Mass at 7:00 with my mom, a paragon of a medieval pious Catholic woman who thinks not praying daily will not save a soul from disgrace. But I have not confessed since God knows when because I would feel more comfortable confiding in a paid listener with life experience than an unmarried man.

    To put more weight on blasphemy, I have paid more attention to daily fortune-telling according to my Zodiac animal sign. The amber of faith is still flickering in me, but the spirit revolts against no feedback from the most incredible man above. Sometimes, I wonder how many lives I have lived before being what and who I am when things are not going well. Will I step on a picture of Mother Mary if Christian persecution rises again?

    Amid waves of doubt and amiss, sometimes I am surprised to see myself sending a letter to God, pleading, complaining, demanding, requesting, and hardly thanking. And what about my exclamatory recourse to God when I feel scared after watching horror movies?

    So, does it evidence I still practice Catholicism?

  • 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 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 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.