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

Tag: thoughts

  • 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 64

    What makes you feel nostalgic

    Some say being nostalgic is a herald of reaching the age of Judge according to Shakespeare’s 7 Stages of Life. Still, I tend to feel nostalgic whenever I listen to the music I first heard and liked or watch the movies or shows popular in the era I grew up with.

    a scene from “Take On Me” by A-Ha. Image credit from Google

    Music is the food for moods and the excellent medium to pitchfork the listener to yesterdays and make them beautifully recollective. When I listen to my adolescent 80s pop music, the images and even the smells of the time creep into my mind and fill my eyes with the vistas of the memories unfolded like a film. The following songs are the instant time machine songs of the 80s: Take on Me” by A-ha, “Telefone” by Sheena Eastern, “Don’t Forget About Me” by Simple Minds, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” by Tears for Tears, and “The Reflex” by Duran Duran. When some people, especially those of the MZ Generation whom I am surrounded by at work, say they are ancient songs and ask about my age, I tell them there is no expiration date for the love of music by not testifying to my age. Instead, I feel sorry for the generation because they have no privilege of living two centuries in this digital age.

    Image Credit from Google

    For the 80’s movies and shows, I loved watching “McGyver” and “Knight Rider,” which I still watch on Apple TV whenever I feel like it. It’s so wonderful to travel back in one fell swoop through the media entertainment to the times when I was the merriest without having to worry about getting a job and caring for my elderly parents. My parents were young and beautiful, and my grandparents whom we lived with together in a house cared about me.

  • prompt 63

    What relationships have a positive impact on you?

    Little more than kin, and less than kind: Toro and Camille frm L to R

    Relationships are a web of connectivity that can be toxic or beneficial. Of my web of relationships, I treasure the ones connected to my team at work and my cats at home.

    My new team manager neither scolds me nor drives me to the highest level of stress, which is detrimental to my health, especially the neurological aspects. She gives me the autonomy to perform my tasks at my own pace and style, and I always get the jobs done on time or beforehand. Her liberal management style, blended with concise organizational skills and firm leadership, lets me utilize the best of me in performing my assignments efficiently.

    Also, my relationship with my cats Toro and Camille has provided me with emotional warmth and a sense of togetherness, which I find hard to receive from my fellow humans. Toro and Camille are transparent in expressing their emotions and unique in looking into my inner world. They know who I am and greet me when I return home as if they knew about my wrestling with the existential dilemmas and despair from working in the office packaged with favoritism, cliques, and discrimination. My cats are indeed little more than kin and less than kind.

    In conclusion, my relationships with the current team manager and my cats have felicitous effects on my continuous ebbs and flows of mood waves as kind nurses tell me that I am doing fine and will do fine.

  • “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 50

    What cities do you want to visit?

    Cities are a symbol of civilization and well of culture. It’s cosmopolitan and utilitarian in that all social classes mingle and become a parliament of humanity. I prefer cities to the lesser versions of human dwellings because of these reasons, and there are cities I want to visit on my bucket list.

    Rome – Built by the Rolumus and Lemus, bred by a wolf mother, Rome was an eternal city with boundaries stretching from the east and the west, the North and the south. All roads led to Rome, and I want to walk down the same streets that ancient Romans trod upon with their own stories. So much so that Edgar Allen Poe summarized Rome thus: “The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.” People say that today’s Rome is nothing like ancient Rome, but they don’t see that the place memories enveloping the city’s aura are lingering, affecting the minds of the people living or visiting there. Thousand years have passed, but the spirit of the place is immortal.

    Vatican City – My primary purpose will be seeing Michelangelo’s magnum opus on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. Reading Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King has egged me on to witness the magnum force of art as a manifestation of the ideal appreciated by the faculty of the mind affected by imagination. It would have been much more wonderful to visit Vatican City when Pope John Paul Second was the Bishop of Rome.

    Other cities have histories of millennium years, but Rome and Vatican City still exist with vivacity and alacrity. They may be crowded, expensive, and trivialized, but they were, have been, and will be so in posterity. This also makes me think that our posterity might feel the same way about the places where we live now. Hence are my wishful cities. 🧚‍♀️⭐️🌍

  • Prompt 48

    Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

    Toro Then 🌸

    I can never forget the first time I adopted my first cat, Toro, from an animal shelter when I moved from New Jersey to California in 2018.

    I still remember the first day I saw Toro, who was nine weeks old, at Ventura Animal Shelter in Camarillo, CA, where I lived for the first time in California. They say it’s not you who chooses your cat; your cat chooses you. It is only true because when my brother and I approached the sheltered cats, Toro came to us with his tiny paw, trying to touch our fingers through the compartment’s opening. He was playful, curious, and affectionate. While waiting for my brother to finish the adoption process inside, I could never forget Toro’s eyes becoming curiouser and curiouser at me from the cardboard carrier, full of wonder about the new world.

    I still treasure the first time I met Toro, now three years old. I feel his little heart when he climbs on my back and shoulder, and I am glad it’s not a dream. 🌻💕💫🧚‍♀️

    Toro Now 🌼

    P.S. Something went wrong with my prompt posted earlier today; it was uploaded but then disappeared 🤨 Hence, this is a repost of today’s daily prompt. Sorry for the readers whose likes went with the post🐱