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

Tag: short story

  • prompt 67

    What colleges have you attended?

    Those were my green salad days on the following Sylvan campuses with pleasantness on memory lanes.

    Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey– It was more of a preparatory school for me to prepare for a four-year university. English is my second language (“ESL”) – and the most beloved-and the college had an excellent ESL program equivalent for TOFEL or CELT. I was enrolled in an Honor Program, which helped me to transfer to the higher-level of university.

    Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey – I lived in the dorm and loved everything about the school. My major was English, so you can guess my initial intimidation of the subject as an ESL competing with native speakers. But I was on a Dean’s List in my senior year, and I am very proud of it. I loved reading Renaissance and Victorian literature classes in their original forms, which were exhilarating. I joined Army ROTC as a student cadet and the NJ Army National Guard at Rutgers. I also joined the Color Guard and Scabbard & Blade, a military honor society. I was a very active student and miss those days.

    New York University, New York, New York – While working as a legal secretary at Dorsey & Witney in New York, I attended evening classes for a certificate in Paralegal Studies at NYU. The instructors were all practicing NYC lawyers passionate about sharing their practical knowledge with us. I graduated from the six-month program with good grades, and it was an enriching experience.

    Looking back under ever foreign palm trees in California, I miss the east coast where all my college years and my prime times are buried.

  • Happy World Introvert Day⭐️🍀🧚‍♀️

    Alone but Curious🧚‍♀️

    Without my subscription to the newsletter “Letters of Note” by Shaun Usher, I would not have known that today was “World Introvert Day.” In celebration of the Feast of Introverts, I want to share some of the scintillating comments on the solace of solitude relished by the great writers of all time, which are selected by Usher, the founder of the Letters of Notes series, now also presented as in live shows where famous thespians – primarily British – including the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch, narrate many of the great letters from the series.

    Elizabeth Bishop must have felt the same as I do many times when I am forced to be in situations where I must pretend to be outgoing and all-around friendly to be with, joking and laughing in nonstop chattering: “After being so social… I don’t feel like myself at all. I’m exhausted all over but particularly the dace, which I suppose comes from wearing a horrible fixed grin for so long.” From her letter written on November 10th, 1948.

    But Sylvia Townsend Warner’s letter to David Garnett, written on September 2nd, 1970, won the olive wreath with a gold medal: “I live in a house too large for me, with three cats, and when the telephone rings and it is a wrong number, I feel a rush of thankfulness.” It’s a witty felicity of comfort in the company of romantic solitude. No, it doesn’t mean she is antisocial, but not everyone is outgoing, and outgoing people are not always positive, adept, or healthy. You can’t put people on the polar ends of the continuum of personalities and see them only in black and white.
    Surrounded by the crowds of vocal extroverts at work, where quiet is synonymous with sullen and too severe, I cannot help but agree with the writers mentioned earlier, for my sentiment shares with theirs. Perhaps it’s because we write, and writers are different tribes of people who hear and see things not recognized by those who are not.

    But for what’s worth, it doesn’t matter if you call yourself an Introvert or not because, as Ernest Hemingway chipped, just be content with what you are and how you are: “I don’t know what an introvert is, but if that is what you are may all my children be then.” Ditto.

    For your eyes only ✨

  • Prompt 66

    Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

    Toro the General and Camille the Puss in the Black Boots 😄

    I never get bored with my two cats, Toro and Camille, at home. Although my playtime is either in the Witching Hour or before dawn, I love our playtime together.

    If I lose myself in reading or writing, they jump so agilely like Olympic athletes on my lap, bed, or desk to attract my attention that instead of feeling annoyed, I am amazed by their humanlike need for attention and care and thus drop what I am doing and play with them. Camille, the Puss in the Black Boots, is the most elegantly athletic cat I have ever seen; he flies in alwhither when we play, whereas General Tabby Toro prefers playing hide and seek with a toy bite.

    Sigmund Freud said that times playing with cats are never wasted. Indeed so. Each time I play with my cats, I feel warmth and affection. The feelings I contemplate are what a mother might think of her children because sometimes when I awake in the middle of the night, I see my cats sleep in my arms or lie at my feet.

  • “Drag Me to Hell” (2009 Film) – movie review

    Image credit: Google

    At first, I didn’t like the movie poster, which was too screaming of “HORROR” aimed at the teenage audience. So, I avoided watching it for over a decade since its release in 2009. But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, the movie advertisement kept popping up on Amazon Prime and NetFlix until I clicked on it last week out of curiosity blended with 90% boredom and 10% of my brother’s words to try it. I know I was destined to watch it now that I have watched it.


    The movie’s protagonist is Christine, a relatable character, a young woman from a country to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, who wants to build her own life as a successful career woman so that nobody will look down upon her. She is more naive than innocent, with a good heart, if not golden. Nevertheless, she cares about people’s feelings and does not have the iron will to harbor her vengeance against those who insulted her. But sometimes, it’s those little people who get the biggest shoutout. She meets her Waterloo and literally crosses the Rubicon to face the demon. Still, the question echoes: did she deserve the curse? Why is it always that the ones who are good ninety-nine times get picked on and punished without mercy for a one-time fault? What makes them scapegoats for an offense in the eye of the beholder?


    The movie’s director is heartless and sarcastic about human nature in the face of reality by being merciless to the protagonist as if he were trying to play God, who he appears to think is remote and unsympathetic to the plight of his children. Otherwise, why does he let things happen to her and do nothing to protect her from evil? Christine might be nervously anxious to prove herself worthy of better opportunities as a single woman away from her not-so-pleasant past, but that cannot be the cause of sinister consequences. She could have loved herself the way she was, and all would have been well. Indeed, we should be kind and attentive to those in need. Still, the politicians and the celebrities with money are evasive of punishments for their wrongdoings because they know they can get away with anything, even from the curse. And I do not pity the spiteful Gypsy woman who drags the meek, not the powerful, to hell.

    Christine deserves no place in hell.

  • Prompt 59

    How are you creative?

    It’s the stars that made me. Image from Google

    The stars met in the celestial jar and made me of Fire, Dew, and Spirit. From the jug pours the streams of ideas into the palace of the heart and the dome of the mind. I am Aquarius, whose inspirations from the outside invoke the creative spirit from within. The impulses are like flashes of fancies in a frenzy of visions springing from the mind’s spring as though to be possessed by a jolt of magical madness like the ancient sybil or oracle of Delphi.

    Writing is my hobby, and I write best when I feel like doing it without the restraint of perfect grammar or fear of infelicities of expression. Freedom and individuality are the Aquarius, and so I am. I write for leisure, which applies to three facts of Why I Write by George Orwell: (1) Sheer Egotism– I want to let the world know that I am also a practitioner of the witchcraft of writing – particularly in English – that is not a prerogative of the professional writer; (2) Aesthetic Value – The words always fascinate me, and the English language is the most excellent of all because of its richness in vocabulary and diversity in meaning. I want to write English as beautifully as Charlotte Brontë as creative as Wistawa Szymborska, or as heartfelt as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and (3) Historical Impulse – Writing on my blog and my other off-line writing will be a record of someone who lived this contemporary era that I lived and wrote something which could be attributed to archeological and anthological artifact. Who knows?

    Some say depression is their Muse who awakens their creative sphere from within. David Lynch, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries believed so. But mine is pleasantness. I don’t want to make a Mephisolean pact to be the most adored writer. I may not be the best or even famous writer or blogger, but I write on my blog because writing as a creative value is the best way to actualize the purpose of living in search of finding who I am. When I am on the ridge, looking over the Pacific Ocean from the top of the Canyon, or watching big airplanes flying the skyways, the Muses whisper in the ear, awakening the dormant spirit yearning for the pep of creative stimulation. Also, my cats Toro and Camille are reliable and the best natural Muses who invoke the creative spirit within me. One day I want to write a short story based on them.

    My Muses: Toro and Camille from L to R

  • Prompt 46

    What are your favorite physical activities or exercises?

    On the top of the world

    My favorite physical exercise is hiking on the top of the hill, and I love looking at the world down under and the skies high above, to which I feel closer with a touch of my hand.

    The pleasure is watching the wind from faraway seas herd a flock of clouds like a celestial shepherd. And an eagle breasting the never-ending abundance of air follows a trail of the Sun Chariot to return to the castle east of the sun, west of the moon.

    The delight is listening to the sussurs of the trees. It’s the wind speaking through the leaves, carrying the messages from my guardian angel I long to hear.

    Hiking is not only a physical exercise but also a mental refreshment that nourishes your holistic wellness free of charge in the luxuriant Nature’s Spa. ❤️🌸✨🧚‍♀️