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

Tag: journal

  • Prompt 111 on TV Series

    What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?

    I like movies or TV dramas with interesting characters known and unknown, modern and classic, and stories with universal themes that citizens of the world can associate with. That said, these are my all-time TV dramas I have watched more than 5 times:

    1. Jane Eyre (1983 BBC Miniseries) – This 1983 BBC miniseries of Jane Eyre always arrests my full attention to every scene of the episodes without the infelicity and pomposity that classical period dramas sometimes tend to produce on account of obsolete diction and rude gestures that look incongruously emphatic to our modern senses and sensibilities. It is a quaintly gorgeous drama without the ostentatious glamor of television drama exhibiting luminous Vanity Fair; it shows that just simple good scripts based on the loyal adaptation of the original novel and excellent performance of the fine cast that seems to be destined for the roles can translate the imaginative world of the author into the visual firmament of television drama this beautifully and realistically.

    Mosss (L) and Lewis (R)

    2. Inspector Moss – I first came to know Moss when I lived in a dorm during my college years. Inspector Moss is cranky, uptight, and stubborn, but he is wonderfully intelligent and surprisingly good-hearted when you come to know him. His sidekick, Sergent Lewis, is a perfect partner for his boss because of his mild manner and street-smart sense that complements Moss’s lack of touch with the real world. Each episode has characters we can see every day, and the stories are connected with dots and lines like a tessera put together by Moss aided by Lewis.

    My favorite travel show and dream destination

    3. Other travel-related YouTube programs – I love watching travel shows or travel stories on YouTube when I work from home or do not feel well to clear away the clouds in my mind. As John Steinbeck said, sometimes it’s better to experience the joy of seeing the world by book or any other visual aids than actual traveling because of the hectic schedules and pesky arrangements of lodging. I agree with him.

    For someone who gets easily bored with repeition, the aforesaid television dramas are worth watching repeats because they do not present overtly paid celebrities with freakilsy good looks or presposterous story lines that many people do not feel related.

  • prompt 110 on question

    What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

    A seemingly innocent question can be out of the question depending upon time and place. I have two such questions I hate being asked:

    1. How old are you? – I don’t see the importance of knowing one’s age unless I am in a doctor’s office. Oscar Wilde said a woman revealing her age will tell almost everything. I am not that woman, and I think age should not matter, especially for a woman’s nature to be beautiful.

    2. Can you do me a [big] favor? – The question itself is arbitrarily imposed upon the asked. How dare the other be! Why do I have to perform something that satisfies the id or ego of the other? It is a blatant expression of a market bargaining of human relationships.

    I am easily moved into tears when I see a person in need or watch sad movies. I also forgive people who broke my heart if they apologize to me or treat me nicely later – without asking for a [big] favor. So, the questions mentioned above trouble me extensively with pain, knowing that I have to answer them reluctantly against my true self.

  • Hidden secrets of houses

    Being a homeowner is being a master or mistress of your castle. You can fashion it in whatever style you prefer without thinking about posterior owners who would be new rulers. What if the previous owners of your houses were occultists, Satanists, spiritualists, or criminals of the worst kind? – I mean psychotic murderers who kill people for pleasure or displeasure. Some of them build secret passages or rooms that homeowners accidentally discover, as seen on some YouTube programs filmed mainly by the owners. Naturally, they piqued my curiosity for all things uncanny.

    Imagine there is a hidden basement with a single bed (yes, really so!) whose purpose is terrifyingly mysterious with sinister presumptions. There is also a hidden room in the basement, assumingly a panic room. But these are not figments of imagination but truth. People find them within their houses while renovating the interiors or cleaning them. Because homes were built hundreds of years ago, there have been many homeowners in many cases, and you never know who they were or what they did behind the doors. One spectacular example is an Ohio couple in a relatively recent year who discovered millions of dollars in suitcases hidden in different places and one full of VHS tapes. When the couple reported such findings to the FBI, they must have watched the contents of the recordings because they made sure that the couple would not say a word about their existence as if they never existed. I would not watch them, although I am a curious person by nature, because I feel that they contain abominable acts of unspeakable nature. Even an old convent is not an exception in harboring such a secret place because, in England, the maintenance specialists working on a derelict convent found it, which is quite eerily inquisitive. Why did the religious sisters have it concealed? For what purpose? Did the demons collectively possess the nuns?

    I have always known that these things are possible because old houses have unknown histories with place memories that still linger in the places and are kept in there. Besides, unlike apartments, homes have accessible entrances from downstairs to upstairs. It is said that most psychotic killers reveal that they randomly go about houses, and if the doors are unlocked, they go in and commit atrocious murders or rapes. Apartments are not always wholly safe but comparatively safe and relatively secure. If I had a choice of being the owner of the two premises, it would be an apartment with a nice view, needless to say.

  • The Ghost Generation

    Flashback to 1974 – Celebrating the pop culture, people, politics, and places.: From the original Time-Traveler Flashback Series of Yearbooks ― news … 1974. (A Time-Traveler’s Guide - Flashback)

    Flashback to 1974 – Celebrating the pop culture, people, politics, and places.: From the original Time-Traveler Flashback Series of Yearbooks ― news … 1974. by B. Bradforsand-Tyler

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    I always think that people born in the 1970s are in-betweeners. Visible, yes, but not conspicuous. It’s the transitional generation, crossing over the boundaries of the 21st and 20th centuries like faerie children, hybrids of yesterday and today. The last generation of the 20th century fully lived and ended in the new era. And it’s hard to encounter them in reality for some mysterious reasons. It makes one feel like a changeling among new and newer waves of generations.

    The choice of this book is, therefore, something akin to encountering an acquaintance among total strangers in a strange land, even if such excitement is not reciprocated. The 1970s was when the world we know now began to form its familiar landscape with the birth of new words as society became more technologically advanced and culturally enhanced. Here is a list of the terms we use, like commodities born in 1974: Touchscreen, telecommute, supermom, CT Scan, memory card, transgender, wake-up call and GOTCHA.

    It’s not about being proud of my generation or criticizing their generations. It’s about the generation I see as half visible and half invisible, especially in the current workforce, from law firms to the entertainment industry dominated by millennial babies. Of course, Watergate and the inflations from the oil shock imprinted on the generational pictures, but those born in the 70s grew up to enjoy the privilege of fully appreciating the digital age and its conveniences in every aspect of life. The Who’s “My Generation” should be the soundtrack of my generation.

    People try to put us down (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
    Just because we get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
    Things they do look awful cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
    This is my generation
    This is my generation, baby

    GOTCHA.



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  • prompt 100

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about your dream home.
    View all responses

    I prefer the sea to the mountains. The sea opens my heart to infinite possibilities, imbued with mysterious hopes and yearnings. Accordingly, my dream home is an apartment with a view of the sea, preferably the Mediterranean Sea, whose image is always the Sun, the Azure Skies, and the vibrant ambiance that speaks PLESANTNESS.

    I will decorate my balcony with pretty flowers and a table with a parasol to have breakfast or read books with a glass of iced coffee. My bedroom will also view the ocean from the sizeable sun-filled window. I prefer one bedroom, which is large enough to be both a home office and a bedroom. Of course, there will be plenty of space for my cats, Toro and Camille. Because of my fur babies, I dream of my dream apartment where they can roam around, run around, and play around.

    There are lovely apartments with such ocean views here in Southern California, but they don’t have the same ambiance as their counterparts on the Amalfi Coast. Something about that place captures my heart, so it will be my dream to live there in my dream home with my cats. That will be lovely.

  • Weekely Movies Digest

    Ad Astra (2019) and The MArtian (2015) from L to R

    I know a thing about loneliness: willing and unwilling. It is lovely when it is mixed with white noise, like the sounds of raindrops or bells tolling afar. But too long quiet becoming dead silence unwanted is dreadful and miserable, as if I were forcibly cut off from the rest of humanity. That’s what happened to the spacemen on Neptune in Ad Astra (2019 film) or Mars in The Martian (2015 film) in their fated space odysseys.

    Fall from heaven and the man in search of life

    Ad Astra shows Major Roy McBride (played by Brad Pitt) is a cinematic version of Classical Greek drama. Roy is a hero because he has conquered his fear of not being true to his sensitive nature. It is also an epic tale of man’s voyage to the end of the world in the sense that he reaches his ideation of dream in truth. One of the most memorable scenes is when Roy falls from the ladders of the International Space Station’s spacecraft to the Earth, a spectacular rendering of the Fall of Man from high to low. Still, it also means an escape from darkness to light, which the Blue Marble symbolizes.

    Left Alone On Mars

    If Ad Astra is sentimental, the Martian is jovial in approaching a man in solitude. Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) is a resourceful botanist who makes the possible out of the impossible. His brilliant mind, blended with his adorable wit tipped in cheerful disposition, propels him to survive on Mars and never surrender to hopelessness. Watching Mark growing potatoes on Mars and telling jokes to the camera to cheer him up reminds me of Horace Walpole’s following quote: “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” Charlie Chaplin adapted thus: “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

    Miss Universe

    Man in space seems romanticly adventurous and mysteriously atmospheric. Still, it is a metaphor for being alone, the existential distress with no sense of direction in life with no one to speak to but the sound of silence that echoes loneliness aloud. Yet, those moments of darkness will pass if you let them go away with the will to live. Indeed, Matt Watney is brilliant in figuring out how to live in such an adverse environment, but he would perish soon without his will to live. So is Ron, who could have been lost in space had he given up to disappointment. They are Nietzschean superheroes who have whys to live and thus huddle through any hows. Also, nothing is more beautiful than Earth, sparkling like a gorgeous blue marble. Therefore, there is no point in war, conflict, or any unrest among ourselves because we are all family in Humankind in the universe.