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

Tag: storyteller

  • prompt 86

    If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be?

    Camille and Toro from L to R

    Dear Toro and Camille,

    You may not understand human letters, but I know you understand my heart because when I write, it is my spirit addressing the world, and now you, even though I am writing this letter to you during my lunch in the office now.

    I always tell you I love you, and I do mean it, and I am thankful for you choosing to live with me when I saw you for the first time at the orphanage. I am sorry for not being able to provide us with a pleasant home environment in all aspects – from our tiny one-bedroom apartment to living with a mom who is sensitive because of her highly acute sensory system, which prevents me from letting you roam around. I feel like I am a terrible guardian who inhibits your instincts. But I also think there’s light ahead of us, a light that will lead us to a brighter future, which includes our living in a lovely house or an apartment commanding a great view so that you can see me coming from work through the windows. How about that?

    We rode the same galaxy train to a star across the rainbows, where we will live together forever. I know you guys all go to Cat’s Star later, but we will bypass there for a groovier kind of star. So, I will not let you go of – in any manner. We will stay together no matter what. Someday, we will travel together and see the world. I love you so much in every universe.

    With All My Loving,

    Stephanie

  • 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 80

    Bloganuary writing prompt
    Where can you reduce clutter in your life?
    View all responses

    I am a person of paradox. I like decorating my tiny room, but I also like it minimal to make it spacious. And there are piles of books to read that I haven’t read yet. I am a vain reader who wants to read a lot but also wants to read only the ones I feel strongly about. Like the faces of Janus, Frivolity and Austerity, Comedy and Tragedy. Very human.


    I rearrange things and organize the room when I am either under dark clouds of mood or the weight of the narrowness of the space. I do not hesitate to throw things that I no longer need because those things are like trendy guests hurriedly leaving the host’s house when feeling no need to stay long. Since my cats’ tower and hammock are the mainstays of our room, creating maximum effect for the minimum capacity is my responsibility and mission to keep our den as enjoyable and livable as possible.


    I wish I could reduce the clutter in my mind’s space that Lord Byron called “the palace of the soul, the dome of thought.” There are so many things occupying it; honestly, I don’t think I will miss them if wiped out. That will be my cleaning Aegean stable. Hercules cleaned it with streams of the river. Of course, he got help from his godly side, but that’s cheating, not by himself alone. Hence I am doing it myway with the habit of writing be the fresh streams of the river to clean my Aegean stable.

  • prompt 74

    Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

    Image credit from Google

    I still remember when my father bought me a pretty red-colored Sanyo Walkman as a birthday present in middle school. It was in 1986 when the Norwegian pop band A-HA was my idol – or some call it Puppy Love-. So, my walkman, which became a unique noun for any portable stereo cassette tape player back then, was my most precious possession for listening to my favorite band’s music. It was equivalent to today’s iPhone. So we’re my music cassette tapes.

    I used to tape off many pop songs from radio shows: Duran Duran, Madonna, Wham, Tears for Tears, Cindy Lauper, Sandra, etc. It was when MTV was in its prime, so it was all about their looks and gestures, not to mention easy, bubbly music tunes. I loved it all, and although my musical taste is quite eclectic, the 80s music is the best of all, unlike these days. (Already! LOL). Since then, my musical horizon has widened, but the first impression is the most indelible. By the way, Duran Duran is still alive and kicking, so it’s good to see them, especially to their loyal adoring fans.

    Come to think of it, I feel privileged to have lived two centuries, having witnessed the advent of the Digital Age and enjoyed its bells and whistles. I wonder if this is what it was like to live between the Bronze Age and the Metal Age at the Fall of Troy. I wonder if Aaenas escaping from the burning Troy into the Great Era of Rome would have felt the same? 🤓

  • prompt 73

    What is your mission?

    Image from Google

    Sometimes, I just want to call it a day in my life. Blue or Black, Low or Dark. You call it depression, but I call it existential despair, which is not clinical but – well – existential that empirical situations shape the way I look at the world, not knowing what the purposes of my life are.

    I’ve read Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s books about logotherapy, including his memoir because he is someone I could associate with in terms of his remarkable resilience and mind power to overcome his horrific experiences at the death camps during WWII. He said three values help us to find the purposes of life, which are Creative Value, Experiential Value, and Attitudinal Value. Of these values, I am practicing the Creative and Experiential Values by reading and writing because these are something I have been doing well since my childhood. Or I should think so.

    That said, my immediate mission is to finish the books I have downloaded on my Kindle, such as Think Again by Adam Grant and The Greeks by Philip Matyszak, to write book reviews on them. Writing book reviews is another habit I have been doing since the beginning of my nine-year-old blog. But these days, under the pretext of exhaustion from the job, I haven’t done it, so this will be my immediate mission.

    Another mission is to keep living a life, even if I don’t know what it leads me to. These days, I frequently contemplate why I should continue to live. But those who come back from near-death experiences or death said living is much better than death. Since I have not been dead yet, I can only believe them. After all, you must believe someone who has gone through such an ordeal, right? Like Dr. Frankl, who survived the Auschwitz.

    I think of the motto I created, which will be my credo for missions in life: “There’s Hope, There’s Light. Clear Mind, Open Heart. Keep Calm, Always Write.”

    Peace. 🌼💫🧚‍♀️🌍

    My motto created by me⭐️

  • Smell the Coffee and Smile

    photo (1)

    “Holiday~ Celebrate~” with Madonna singing ebulliently in celebration of her holiday from the radio, Sally woke up to the tune and stepped into a hello brand new day. It was also a beginning of a three-day long Labor Day holiday weekend, and Sally was only glad to stay away from the city chockablock with rushing cars and the usually slightly ireful and forever impatient drivers as well as lumpish pedestrians with luggage, perambulators, shopping bags, and suitcases. So she decided to opt for a quiet leisure of her own comprising reading books she had ordered at the recommendation of the last week’s The Avonlean Book Review. But first, Sally had to have her morning coffee with a nice breakfast meal at Hush Puppy’s. Otherwise, she would be grumpy all day long, and that would certainly not be a way to make her day pleasant.

    IMG_3993

    Her favorite coffee of a day was always hot hazelnut-flavored with half-and-half because it tasted very smoothly sweet without sugar. She thought that Hush Puppy’s hazelnut coffee was the best in town. But Ms. Long, the proprietor of the establishment had recently been worried about a low sales net of her famous coffee because the city council egged on by a group of hypochondriacs was going to put soon warning labels on coffee cups that would say “Acrylamide contained in this coffee may cause a risk of cancer.” Sally knew it from the articles in the Times and thought it was always the people like Ms. Long whose honest-to-goodness way of running business consorting with her moral character and faith that suffered the waves of unfair backlash from the public. Indignant at such injustice, Sally wanted to cheer up Ms. Long in any way she could do within her ability and measure.

    IMG_3995“Ms. Long, your hazelnut coffee is one of the best in the town, and I told it to all my friends and colleagues at work and suggested them they come by here.They are not hypochondriacs or bombastic health freaks at all. I mean what can coffee possibly do harm on people? The eminent Baroque composer Bach once said without a cup of hot coffee, he would be like a grilled goat. and as far as I am concerned, I have never heard of any one who has died from drinking too much coffee.” There was a flicker of smile flitting in the gracefully aged face that shinned with her incorruptible beauty from within. Ms. Long had never felt more comforted and warm than ever in her long life as a spinster. “Thank you, Sally, for your caring words. I will continue to make the best hazelnut coffee just for you.” There was in the air something that filled the whole of Hush Puppy’s at the moment. It was wonderfully conflated with the aroma of Sally’s hazelnut coffee that Ms. Long had just finished brewing. Sally’s spirit was flitting in the loveliness of the ambience, soaking herself in the moment of happiness coming from within. It sure was a pleasant morning for Sally.

    thanks-for-reading-Rok-Hardware