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

Tag: literature

  • Prompt 6

    Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

    Hello Stephanie,

    You used to wonder what and where you would arrive in each age of life: at 13 you would count the years when you became 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on. Then all of sudden, you are pitchfolked forward, leaping two bridges of 20th and 21st centuries. Still, it all seems like yesterday, and you never changed at heart.

    Who would have known that you will adopt cats and love them to the bargain? Who would have guessed your letters to the editor of your favorite British history magazine have been printed several times? And who would have doubted that your age could not wither you away, nor custom would stale your resistant spirit and hunger for knowledge? 100 years of time in evolutionary scale does sound antiquated or anachronistic, but in truth it amounts to a millionsecond on our 24 biological clock, an amount so infinitesimal that such difference of time is ludicriously insignificant. So don’t sigh but sing that you just hit the centanarian chart. Awesome.

    FRancis Bacon assured us that we don’t have to be anxious about how we should prepare for the end of life because nature will do the job for us. It will let us know at that time when a psychopomp will appear to bring your soul to the beyond. Or in your case, it will be Mothe Mary to whom you used to pray a rosary when you were little. Wouldn’t it be nice for you to meet Mother Mary rather than some scary-looking death angel? I know you have come a long way alone, but this is not the end. Nobody but your fate knows where you go or will go. Yet it would be best if you lived like you are living the second time to keep your youthful spirit.

    All the best,

    Stepheni from the Past

  • Prompt 5

    What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

    Sometimes I wonder what if I had a different middle name. Would I have been living a different life – for brighter and better? Nominative determinism is not entirely superstitious because your name gives you an identity, an existence. My middle name is Joori, the first name used in Korea, while my first name Stephanie is my baptized Christian name, used in the church community.

    Korean is a unique phonetic language of the Ural-Altaic linguistic family, which includes Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish. “Joo” means red, and “ri” means beneficial. My paternal grandmother named me after the family tradition of using the same first letter of the name according to the gender of the progeny. For instance, my cousin’s name, the daughter of my father’s elder brother, was “Joohyun,” meaning red wisdom. Then the grandmother was then in a cult of an angel called “Chulrikyo,” from which the word “ri” originated. Hence my name is a work of a family tradition and angelic cult.

    My mother has recently revealed that I had no name for a year after the birth for reasons unknown. During the unnamed time, I was called “the baby.” A fortuneteller once told me that I should change my Korean name because it would bring no happiness to my life. Whether or not it is true, I don’t want to dwell on it because, anyway, I am not in Korea, where the spirits of the land may not/will not exert their supernatural concoction to frustrate my life to the extent possible.

  • Prompt 4

    What is the last thing you learned?

    When good things happen to me, I should not speak about it but lock it in my heart’s cabinet because otherwise, luck will soon be frustrated by jinx. Silly or superstitious as it may sound, but that is my empirical fact of life. I can write about good things happening to me but not manifest them in spoken words. For instance, if I say one of my co-workers at a workplace is pleasant, then all of sudden, the next day, that person’s attitude toward me betrays my trust in humanity beyond foreseeable and unforeseeable reason. Methinks there are evil spirits who swore a generational curse on my well-being because of unknown umbrage at my ancestors in the foregone times. So I have to keep good news or fortunate events sealed until such things actually bring me good results with long favorable effects that stay with me for a long time. This truth is the truth to the end of reckoning.

  • Prompt 3

    How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

    Truthfully, in every mistake I am making and have been making and will make, I am yet to learn. Perhaps, such a cycle of faux-pas will continue until I meet a psychopomp on my final day on earth. Yet, I move on and march forward to whatever my destiny is. I will most likely be making the same mistakes over and over, falling again and again. Yet the resilient spirit is indomitable, and even fate cannot destroy it unless I voluntarily abandon it to the force of darkness. And I think it is this spirit of resistance against a series of failures that strengthens my will to stand on my feet even after the losses, which makes all my attempts all the more sublime in triumph over despair like Santiago uttering, “Man can be destroyed, but cannot be conquered,” in Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea.

  • Prompt 2

    You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

    In the beginning, there was chaos out of silence between the earth and the sky. The Three Sisters of destiny were in a pickle because they ran short of the thread. So they were in haste without their lapidary meticulousness by allotting such hastily weaved fate to the new little star that traveled all the milky way from the celestial palace to be transformed into a girl at a cold snowy January night with the fire from the starlight still kept within her, glowing in her heart’s chamber.

  • Prompt 1

    What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

    Okay, this will be my first prompt blogging recommended by WordPress after I changed to Jetpack. I am glad that something inspiring will help me spark my spirit to write. Hence here it goes.

    1. My iPhone: Let’s be honest. Who wouldn’t these days? Forget a Galaxy phone, which I hate simply because it’s not user-friendly, as I have been an iPhone user since its genesis. All my information is in my palm: from the bank account to books on hold in an online public library to my shopping cart on Pandora.

    2. My Kindle (3rd generation): I am an ardent Kindle reader. Physical books may have that quaint charm that makes readers look intellectually distinguished from the mass. Still, Kindle is much more convenient to read in the dark, especially in bed, on the subway, on the bus, and almost everywhere. With my weakened eyesight, Kindle has been kinder than an actual book. Besides, I can always move from one reading to another, depending on my mood.

    3. My traveler’s notebook: I like writing short entries in my journal as well as jotting down my mind notes and reading points, so it is my writing companion I carry about. Of all the traveler’s notebooks, my favorite is Midori Traveler’s Notebook because of its smooth suede-like cover and slim size fit in my hand.

    So this is my first prompt. That’s it all, folks!