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

Tag: reading

  • 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 16

    What’s something most people don’t understand?

    Oscar Wilde admired beauty. So much so that he proudly proclaimed that he chose his friends for their good looks, his acquaintances for their characters, and his enemies for their intellect. But at least he’s honest about it, vocalizing what most people do when judging one another based on what the eyes, not the minds, see for the instant recognition of optical illusion morphed into reality.

    Our society favors gregarious extroverts, not reticent introverts nestled in the shade of anonymity, not because they are antisocial but simply because that’s how they are. Not everyone is uniformly outgoing. Nobody is impossibly happy go lucky. I always find it scary that having a happy face all the time is a specialty of a psychopath in disguise. But people do not usually warm to those who are lonely, quiet, or not so attractive, instead pinning them down as anti-social, incompetent, or negative to stay away from them. It amazes me to see people gossip about or ostracize unpopular, reticent people the way people falsely accused innocent women of practicing witchcraft in the past because they were in their selves. Or are they still? Come to think of it; if I had been born during the days of heightened witch-hunting, I would have been burned at the stake.

    I feel that people do not like to talk to me because I don’t have the face of Helen of Troy to launch a thousand ships or do not open up a conversation first, or because of my race being Asian, a race stereotyped as being docile, if not submissive, to voice out what’s kept inside. Notwithstanding the account above, I do not want to force myself to become someone I am not, cannot, and will not because, as Wilde pinpointed, I am myself since others are already taken. I am not a negative person who always accounts for a litany of woes. Instead, I can see people’s ills in the swing of things around me and how they affect me. If discussing the malaise of what’s happening in my life when I need a company to share grief in halves, I call it cruelly erroneous and unjust.

  • Prompt 9

    What activities do you lose yourself in?

    Although I am not an addict, I lose myself in online shopping for clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics. Thanks to the advent of the Internet, now I don’t have to go to an actual store to buy the stuff of my interest without being self-conscious of spending too long a time debating what to purchase or what to give up for the sake of a rental fee.

    My usual online shopping stores are Amazon, Macy’s, and Sephora. Recently, I have been browsing Pandora for my newly budded interest in their signature DIY charmed bracelet. But since the charms are ridiculously overpriced, I buy the imitation charms from Amazon. Macy’s online platform is paramount in a gorgeous panoply of women’s clothing and cosmetic items that usually come with lovey freebies.

    Oftentimes, I wonder if my shopping habit is a symtom of mental defect, say Affection Deficiency Syndrom, Post-adolecent Pent-up Trauma, or Insatiable Desire for Beauty. Perhaps I am all above or none, but the desire to obtain pretty things is only a instinct for humans, especially women. After all, what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, as Osacar Wilde said.

  • Prompt 7

    Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?

    When I look at my two cats, Toro and Nero, I am reminded that pets reflect the personality of their owners. My cats and I have lots of things in common, and I was also born in the year of the tiger, which makes me a little more than kin to the feline family.

    My cats and I are creatures of habit, not readily adept at familiarizing ourselves with changes in the environment. We like the comfort of tranquility, the solace of romantic solitude, and the occasional entertainment of visual and auditory excitement, such as watching movies and listening to music. We are so used to routine activities at home that an iota of deviation feels like the earth moving under our feet. But that doesn’t mean we are peevish curmudgeons sulking and skulking in the background of joy and laughter. We do things on our own, keeping things to ourselves, yet we need each other when we are alone. For example, when I feel down and out, my cats come next to me, especially in bed, and console me with their soft furry, puffy cheeks against mine with purring, which
    also puts me into a sound slumber soon. It’s incredible to realize that my cats know how I feel.

    They say when you love someone, you become one. Or am I already onne?

  • 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

  • ‘Courtiers’, by Valentine Low


    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    When Queen Elizabeth II left this world, she left the palace door open from upstairs and downstairs. And it’s not a Downtown Abby because it’s not a palace, and we are talking about King, Queen’s Consort, Prince and Princess, Duke and Dutches, and the people who serve them of all levels. Indeed, the Royals do not manage their affairs without their helpers. This is a book about those helpers, especially the upper ranks called “Courtiers,” who have existed since the days of yore. Glamorous and fanciful as they may sound, the courtiers are the royal equivalent of assistants and secretaries in bureaucratic and industrial organizations. This book is about these helpers who deserve to be cast spotlights for their physical and mental hard work.


    Working with the royals, as it were, is not much different from working with lawyers or any corporate heads or any paying masters who are at the helm of your livelihood in the real world. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of your bosses for fear of rage-firing or losing their favor for your financial security, which will affect your and your family’s welfare. When I learned that King Charles III sacked his long-term employees in Clarance House who had been loyal in their service to him and his family before the coronation, I was immediately on the side of the forlorn subjects whose lives were now upended with the loss of their steady income. Indeed, some of them might have received compensation that would give them enough not to worry about their future. Still, losing a job is undoubtedly a blow to mental equanimity, let alone material necessities. According to the narrative, the royal temper is a legacy of Elizabeth I to his son Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Harry is notorious for his tempestuous tendencies that have made the courtiers disaffected and displeased with the person. His precarious and unpredictable behaviors and inconsiderate remarks towards people who assist him contribute to the criticism of his wife Megan, who is also infamous for arrogant and unthoughtful deportment. The couple might have won the public’s sympathy, not in the least thanks to the power of Oprah, who took them under her aegis against the racist royal family and the British general, who discriminated against Megan for her being “exotic.” Stephen King once said that if you want to know what kind of person they are, you must go backstage with them. I am not hell-bent on slandering the duke and dutchess. Still, it will be an injustice, discrimination even, to forego or ignore what the courtiers witness and think about the famous glittering couple who has become one of the most scintillating Tinsletown couples in the world.

    It seems to me that this book wants to give a fair chance to the people who rendered their services to these whimsical and capricious royal families, given that the courtiers have become targets of criticism for discrimination against Harry and Megan. Charles’s infamous temper is comparingly forgivable because that’s what kings and queens have been like, as it is their blood-blood characteristic. But Harry is a proud prince who champions equality on the one hand and hypocrisy on the other hand. If he really cares about his wife’s privacy and respectful treatment against racial discrimination that the couple so always clamoursuly voices about, then they should also equally care about those of the people who work for and under them, no matter how different opinions they may have. People who believe Harry and Megan deserve sympathy should look closely around them because there should be those who really deserve sympathy and understanding in situations far worse than the rich and famous duke and dutchess. In light of the above, I like reading this book that draws the curtains behind the royal stages where the courtiers busy themselves pleasing the spoiled royals. By the way, Princes William and Harry lounge around the palace in flip-flops and treat their guests or interview their employees at interviews to tea in a nondescript mug, not a royal china teacup.



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