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

Tag: essay

  • Letters of Note: Cats by Shaun Usher

    Letters of Note: Cats is an adoringly compiled individual narrative about their cats in an epistolary form by famous people, ranging from Nikola Testa, the Romanian prodigy of the electrical invention, to the unforgettable actress of the 20th century Elizabeth Taylor, and so on whose affection for their feline babies is universally communicable across time and space.

    Of all those words from the hearts, Elizabeth Taylor’s letter to her dear cat, who went missing after being moved to a new Californian home from their Welsh home, profoundly touches my heart. Those loves, those memories, those longings all flow from artless words written in tears and project how much she misses her flurry child without florid elaboration. Her cat is not just a “pet” but a “companion” who has seen her in the saddest moment under the darkest sky without make-up. Reading her letter, I felt like I knew the actress personally, as she shared her insecurity without such a dear friend who used to stay by her side. How would I live without my two cats by my side? I would have written a similar letter to Toro and Camille.

    The creator of this lovely anthology of letters, Shaun Usher, never seems to cease his creativity, zeal, and humanity after his first publication of Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience in 2013, resulting in a decade-long successful Letters series. I have seen musicians exhausted with their creative flairs for making new albums, either by adhering to their prior hit album music style or morphing into a different avant-garde-styled musical experiment, but not Shaun Usher, whose fountain of creativity is welled from faith in humaneness universal in all humankind. It is not to lionize or canonize Usher for the Letters series, nor to idolize him mindlessly in the heat of instant adulation as a gullible reader, whom Edgar Allen Poe might have frowned upon, but as a reader of the unique third eye that can see a writer’s true colors. So, if you love cats with hearts and like to read and write letters – okay, I will also include emails for MZ generation readers – reading Letters of Cats will be a pleasure.

  • Prompt 24

    What are the most important things needed to live a good life?

    The three most important things for a good life are made of these: good stable employment, love of self, and a sense of humor. As we are both social and individual beings, the aforesaid are the essence of happiness in life that would provide me with a sense of security and a healthy environment in which I can find my inner potential creative power without worrying about the ills of reality.

    While money isn’t everything, anyone must sustain a livelihood, such as clothing, food, and housing. Without it, the deprivation of material necessity will impede a creative, lively spirit’s yearning and opportunity to express under the burden of life. Which will also lead to a despaire of oneself. IT is not to say that only those with secure jobs are self-confident, but it is also challenging to maintain a level of confidence when you are down and out, moving from one job to another, like a wandering nomad. True that even a panhandler can be content with himself, but then it must be he transacendes the ways of this world, completely detached from the needs of this world into his own earthly nirvana. Lastly but not leastly, a sense of humor is a handmaid to goodness that will change a heaven hell and a hell heaven. At the moement of despair, any humorous dialogue or scene from a comedy movie or a funny moment of life will moementarily take off the clouds of disappointment or depression.

    You and I deserve happiness and the good life because we are such starstuff as dreams are made of, harvesting sunlight from the heavens excellently brilliant. I hope my reader will have good lives because we are worth it.

  • Prompt 23

    How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?

    When a toy is wound up, it has to be released to get it moved, or it will be broken without performing its feat of vitality. Likewise, when stress is raised to the highest on a mercury thermometer, my body shudders in a quiver, and my hand turns to a white slate, inhibiting my speech faculty, which results in murderous migraines. It’s a genuinely psychosomatic experience, which makes me dumbfounded and speechless by a poisoned arrow to the heart.

    Such is my present status of mind. The stress from working under a manager who lacks experience in leadership, patience, understanding, and knowledge is so high that going to work every morning feels like a daily ritual of torment. She belittles my ability by magnifying the mistakes I make. She constantly intimidates me in such a toxic environment that I see no point in demonstrating my capabilities to the extent possible. However, this ordeal of mental torture can’t go on any longer because it affects my physical and mental health. I deserve respect and recognition. So, I have decided to bring this issue to my supervising attorney, as encouraged by my colleagues at work, who have also witnessed the mistreatment by my manager. I will tell him on Monday that we are incompatible with working because of personality issues, which prevent me from performing my work to the extent possible. Even if my voicing out will bring about a counteractive result, I must tell it to him in defense of my abused spirit.

    Shakespeare said, “We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.” That is what I am experiencing, and because of it, I have lost my motivation to do things I used to love doing, such as writing and reading. Even if I lose a job, I want to let my crying soul be heard and protect myself from her ongoing raving rants like a foaming rabid dog.

  • Prompt 19

    If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

    I am one of those sentimental folks who tend to make a parallel with themselves to the characters of a story in a book or film due to an uncanny spiritual ability to channel into the psyche of another. Methinks this could be something of an ancient Greek or Roman Sybil, who foretold the prophecies at holy places in ecstatic mania. Accordingly, my choice of avatars is of independent, strong-willed, but mistaken women whom people could not fail to notice out of the melee: Cassandra and Ariadne.

    Cassandra, the daughter of the last king of Troy Priam and his wife Hecuba, was a priestess of the god Apollo, who bestowed the gift of prophecy on her. However, when she refused the god’s amorous advance, the cruel god fated her not to be believed in her predictions. So when Cassandra warned her people of the fall of Troy, they didn’t deign to acknowledge her but to scorn her for such hokum. Alas, poor Cassandra! I knew him, Ariadne, for your beautiful deed and heart was betrayed by Theseus, whom you helped kill Minotaur and save the Athenian youths from the labyrinth! Theseus abandoned his beautiful savior on the island of the Naxos and sailed on to Athens. Why did he forsake her? It’s because the goddess Athena told him that Ariadne would be nothing but a nuisance in his way of constructing her namesake city-state! Before being the sacred and immortal goddess, Athena was also a woman, but how could she force Theseus to bloodlessly forsake the poor Ariadne, whose benevolence saved the youths of Athens?

    Both Cassandra and Ariadne’s benevolence and strong will were not appreciated by those whom they helped or tried to help. What a tragedy it was! Likewise, my heartfelt intention and humanity meet with cold shoulders or the least respect from the people I help and have helped. Sometimes I wonder if nature bestowed beauty on me, would they be unkind or appreciate who I am? Then I think of Cassandra and Ariadne and cannot help but feel for what they had been through.

  • Prompt 18

    What job would you do for free?

    I would work for something attending to the welfare of cats pro bono. With All My Soul, All My Might, and All My Spirit. The best place for me to do this is probably in a shelter or a rescue center where I can devote myself to cats needing help with my undivided love for man’s best consort.

    Being a cat person not made of the crude materials of this world, I feel most comfortable with my two cats, Toro and Nero, at home. Who says that cats are aloof and egoistic? Hardly so. Cats are so affectionate and kind and beautiful both externally and internally. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables, was a cat lover who averred the beauty of the feline folk: “I love them. They are so nice and selfish. Dogs are TOO good and unselfish. They make me feel uncomfortable. But cats are gloriously human.” Indeed so, for when I am crestfallen because of the woes of daily life in this world, my cats come next to me and nestle their little furry body and soft head under my arms, purring, consoling, and allaying my fury and disappointment and sadness. Unlike my fellow human species, my cats know me well and accept me for who I am. They say animals can see the true colors of our characters. True, especially in the case of cats who can see spirits.

    I have noticed that people dislike cats with a sense of pride as if there were some peculiar virtue in expressing such shameless disapproval of cats. So be it because cat people are a particular tribe whose sensitive nature and delicate sensibility fit those of cats. Edgar Allen Poe and the Brontë Sisters would ditto in the constellation of literary stars excellently bright in heaven with their cats in their arms, purring and meowing. Therefore, in light of those mentioned above, why wouldn’t I willingly work tending cats free of charge?

  • Prompt 17

    Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

    Oscar Wilde was right in saying, “Be yourself; everyone is taken.” A person’s uniqueness results from the courage to express oneself, confidence in being oneself, and love of oneself without making oneself parallel to the outlook of others for their beauty or power.

    Nowadays, women’s beauty has never been so outrageously uninformed than before, thanks to social media, where famous or not pretentiously show off their surgically created beauties to mold into a standard beauty manufactured and advertised by the media in the form of celebrities. As Edgar Allan Poe averred, “There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in proportion,” no beauty is perfect, no one is perfectly beautiful as Plato confirmed we live in the imperfect world, where no perfect beauty exists. I think everyone of us in this world has one thing or more beautiful internally as well as externally if each of us looks into the eye of one another, whether it is a stranger or acquaintance. But in this millennials, Generations Z and Alpha dominated 21st century, my talk of the simple and sophisticated beauty at once is only an outcry of a madwoman, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    As times go by with the leaves of my tree falling off in my season of life, I am disheartened by people’s comments about the years passed manifesting on the external castle of my soul, which I always retort with a quick denial because age cannot wither me away, nor custom can stale my unique character reflecting on the windows of my soul! I would rather be a lonely beautiful witch than a cantankerous woman complacent with her stage of life, always gossiping and crude.