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

Tag: stories

  • prompt 103

    Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

    The Accused 😅

    Breaking the law springs up a grim faced judge with a wig with a gavel prone to sentence: “Death by hanging.” But no one is immaculately clean, and to err is a human. I broke the following laws, but I am not a hypocrite, as supported by Robert Frost: “Far more violence has been done in obeying the law than in breaking the law.”

    1. Diatary Law – I enacted this law on the first day of 2024 to return to the disciplined dieting I used to keep five years ago. I broke the sections of eating after 6:00 pm, indulging in carb-enriched food articles at home, and consuming a load of junk food. Now that my doctor has ordered me to lose weight until a follow-up visit in three months, I shall abide by the law in full force and effect.

    2. Law of Affirmation – I have violated all of the sections of the law: Imagination, Visualization, and Manifestation, all of which unintentionally – and intentionally. It is unintentional because when things do not go well as I expect them to or life seems unkind to me, my eyes become blind, my ears mute, and my head blank. I become comatose, thus violating the law. Intentional in the sense that when I am lost of all, including the will to live, the law seems needless, just as I am not here.

    The consequences of the violation come not in they do a single spy but in a battalion. Health risks, such as high cholesterol and diabetes, may be foreseeable. Mental health will be put in critical care if they do not adhere to the above laws. Give me a month as a corrective period, and I will reinvent myself.

  • prompt 96

    Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

    I want to say my ideal whole day is traveling, hiking, getting together with families or writing and reading profusely. That’s what people think the ideal response should be, or it may seem so. But my ideal day is anything but the ideal, far from glamorous, but existential and small.

    My ideal day would be free from duties and obligations as a Daughter and an Employee at home with my cats. That said, my ideal day lasts from Friday evening till Saturday evening, during which I don’t have to do anything but watch movie after movie with intermissions of playing with my babies. It will be perfect if it is raining during the pleasure time, but it has to be when I am home, not outside.

    Ancient Germanic tribes would drink barrels of beer during the lull in battles with the Romans, according to Tacitus. So, this is my way of unwinding the overdosed adrenaline in the mind and spirit.

  • prompt 93

    What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

    Illustration from Google

    I’d be the one who is scared of the stars falling from the sky and the sky ceiling collapsing on the earth. I am also afraid of losing eyesight overnight if my eyes are not adequately moisturized as instucted by my ophatomologist. And what if I take a plane that will crash? Most of all, what if the world I am in now is a make-belive world, something similar to one of the Backrooms? Will all my fearsome misgivings materialize because the curse is not lifted? Are my present fears are indeed less than horrible imagings? These are my litany of fears, full of sound and fury, trying to make sense of them – in vain.

  • prompt 85

    Bloganuary writing prompt
    Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
    View all responses

    I have two first names: one is given by my paternal grandmother according to our centuries-old family tradition, which is Joori (주리). The other is by the centuries-old Church, Stephanie. Both names rhyme well, like eurythmics of serendipity, and they are originally Asian.

    Joori (주리) combines two words, Joo, (주), meaning Red, and ri (리), meaning Beneficial. According to the book of the family tree, the children of our clan must have the same characters as their first names. My cousin, the daughter of my father’s older brother, is named Joohyun (주현) and bears the character Joo (주). Hence, my first name also has Joo (주). It used to be quite a unique Korean name when I was little, considered exotic compared to other Korean names for girls. However, a soothsayer once told me that it’s not a good name for me because it obstructed any fortune ahead of me, and I should consider it for another. Nominative determinism, I call it. But I am too lazy to go through all the seismic name-changing procedures in two countries.

    Stephanie is my Christian name. My maternal family has been Catholic for three generations in Korea, so baptism was the beginning of a rite of passage to be received in the Church. The original version of Stephanie is Stephania, a feminine form of Stepehn or Stephano (Hebrew: סטפנוס, Greek: Στέφανος Stéphanos, meaning ‘wreath or crown.’ Mom once told me that a religious sister at a parochial church we used to go to when I was tiny looked at me and told her to name me Stephania. So, there’s nominative determinism with this name as well. I was named after St. Stephen, the protomartyr of Christianity whose feast day is December 26th in the liturgical calendar. He was a Hellenistic jew, a decon, and a Jewish community leader in Greece, who was not afraid of holding his fatih high and facing stoning to death by exclaiming, “Lo, the door of heaven is opening now!” Hence, he was crowned with the wreath of faith.

    Names are what endows people with presence. We are no longer immaterial spirits but materialize as corporeal individuals once the names are given and called. My first names, Stephanie Joori, constitute what I am. And to the people who ask me why I use a Western name, such as Stephanie, hark! The etymology of the name Stephanie is derived from Hebrew סטפנוס, and Israel is located not in Europe but Asia. And just like my patron saint, I am a Korean diaspora living in the States, speaking both Korean and English and helping those in both communities. So, nominative determinism seems to work on my names. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

  • prompt 83

    What makes a good leader?

    A good leader is not only knowledgeable but also patient and understanding. The Homerian virtue of Arete was a combination of military finesse with personal integrity, which applies to today’s prompt topic.

    But in reality, there are a few good men and women in leadership. Many women on the leadership level are afraid of showing traits of feminity and behave overtly professionally, berating other women whom they regard as too gentle or quiet. It is not an overtly manipulated air of aggressiveness that commands respect or attention, which the pretenders mistake.

    It reminds me of Queen Elizabeth I’s Tilbury Address: “I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” You can be both gentle and firm, and that’s called wisdom. It makes a good leader.

  • prompt 82

    Bloganuary writing prompt
    If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
    View all responses

    Daylight Saving Time. Puritanical and Calvinistic. I see no absolute necessity in going against the law of nature to disturb our biological rhythms that work differently on individuals by forwarding an hour to work all day as long as the Sun Chariot is racing around the celestial hippodrome. Why not let the time alone and accept the things of nature in summertime? I attribute it to puritanical ethics that waking up early in the morning constitutes an ethical code of a “healthy, wealthy, and wise” individual, as campaigned by Benjamin Franklin. While it has some truth, everyone has different mental and biological dispositions. Sleep deprivation causes loss of memories, anxiousness, nervousness, and attention deficiency. It has to go.