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

Tag: writer

  • prompt 204 on three books of life

    List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

    Three books that have planted Tree of Golden Apples in my mind’s garden are the following elementals:

    1. Recollections: An Autobiography by Viktor Frankl – Dr. Frankl was the father of Logotherapy, one of the three Viennese Schools of Psychotherapies, who practiced what he believed and experienced. Far from an armchair scholar in the Ivory Tower out of touch with the crowd, Dr. Frankl gave hope, not as a delusional escape from the burdens of reality or dangerous daydream, such as Thuclides defined as the nature of hope, but as a beacon of light in the darkness of the soul crying for help. It’s because he was a survivor of the hell on earth, called Auschwitz, and other circles of hell under Nazi-ruled Austria. He wrote other books, which I have read, but this book pales others because it shows him not as a scholar but as a human soul whose spirit we all possess and, therefore, can relate to.

    2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – This is the book I can never get bored with. Since I received the book at the tender age of twelve in Korea, I have always loved it and returned to it when I feel lonely, very lonely, and lonely in this big, wide, cold world. Jane is my soul sister, and we have things in common. And I see what kind of woman Charlott Bronte was different from many people who like to claim. I like her works more than her contemporary peer, Jane Austen.

    3. Why I Write by George Orwell – This is a small pamphlet-like book. I carry it around when I feel like doing nothing, yet doing something resourceful and thoughtful to keep myself from mentally procrastinating. People tend to think writing belongs to intellectuals when it isn’t. It’s a record of personal existence through written communication to express one’s inner world within the outer world. But many people, including professionally established writers, like to think that writing is a form of art that belongs to the ether. It’s not, and the purpose of writing is simple. Orwell’s points of view agree with mine.

    These are the books that I always come back like trusty bosom friends who can keep secrets besides my two cats.

  • Prompt 203 on practicing my religion

    Do you practice religion?

    I hear every Sunday morning Mass at 7:00 with my mom, a paragon of a medieval pious Catholic woman who thinks not praying daily will not save a soul from disgrace. But I have not confessed since God knows when because I would feel more comfortable confiding in a paid listener with life experience than an unmarried man.

    To put more weight on blasphemy, I have paid more attention to daily fortune-telling according to my Zodiac animal sign. The amber of faith is still flickering in me, but the spirit revolts against no feedback from the most incredible man above. Sometimes, I wonder how many lives I have lived before being what and who I am when things are not going well. Will I step on a picture of Mother Mary if Christian persecution rises again?

    Amid waves of doubt and amiss, sometimes I am surprised to see myself sending a letter to God, pleading, complaining, demanding, requesting, and hardly thanking. And what about my exclamatory recourse to God when I feel scared after watching horror movies?

    So, does it evidence I still practice Catholicism?

  • Prompt 202 on pre-internet age, aka the 1980s

    Do you remember life before the internet?

    It was neither the Stone Age nor the Iron Age, for sure. Life before the Internet was livable, just like any other age humans have lived. Yes, landline phones were ubiquitous – rotary and touch-tone, as were LP, Cassette tapes, CDs, VHS, Walkman, and a Dolby System. And remember those great movie posters for promotions? The magazines were big, and so was MTV. People wrote letters, not emails. We thought it was the Age of Science, the more civilized than the generations behind, just as the MZ Generation and those wanting to be one of them so like to think about this as their age.

  • Prompt 201 on small improvement

    What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

    all the heartaches give me headaches.

    I try not to overthink about things I can’t change or control. I care too much about people’s reactions and feelings at work and home because, as someone with acute sensory perceptions, all my nerves are tuned to the reception, making them exhausted and pained.

    For example, I get very agitated by the total silence created by the other in a room. I have a co-worker who says nothing all day, as if I were invisible in the same office. It bothers me and makes me uncomfortable. I then try to analyze and reason for such behavior, always finding faults in me for being introverted. It only makes my already complex psyche intricated like Gordion’s Knot that only can be let loose by one fell swoop of Alenxader’s sword.

    Alexander and the Gordion’s Knot

    But I don’t need Alxander’s help to cut the Gordian’s Knot because I have the sword. It is Excaliber in my mind that is waiting for me to wield it. With one fell swoop of the blade, I will be able to cut the intricate knot of wrecked nerves, troubled neurons, and interrupted connections between the sparks of the thoughts that will clear away the impurities on the mind so that I can have a clear mind and lively spirit.

  • prompt 200 on last live show

    What was the last live performance you saw?

    It was an A-ha concert on April 8th, 2022, at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, California, which was in my town. It was my second time seeing them in concert since I attended their New York City concert in 2012.

    I went there alone, but many came alone to see their first puppy loves or idols in real life. As the band became old, so did their fans, which proved that time was non-discriminating, visiting the doors of huts, villas, and palaces. Here they were, my old hot flames, once so young and dashing, now ripened with the years of experience, seasoned with the echelon of exercises. A-ha indeed grew mature, but they were more relaxed and confident, which endowed them with a different sensuality that the green salad days of youth can never have.

    The most interesting thing I noticed at the concert was that fans brought their young and grown children with their spouses to see their old loves. Although their children didn’t quite seem to enjoy the same level of pleasure that their parents were having, it was an excellent concert where people had a good time returning to the days of their begone youth by the witchcraft of music taking all of us to that time.

  • The Housemaid by Freida McFadden – Book Review


    Being a housemaid is no easy job. Apart from daily chores, one has to ensure that one is not on the wrong side of one’s employer and family for job security. Who says it’s a lowly job for little women with no or little education when it requires guts and wits to endure all of these and those that will jeopardize her sense of existence? It would be best if you did not make your maid angry because once she is exposed to the unkindness of her employer, her ire becomes Rage, which will turn her into something of a she-hulk.

    Here comes Mille (Wilhelmina) Calloway in the house with a secret past, trying to pretend to be someone she isn’t. Never will she be the one she wants to be because normal is not normal for her. Security is insecurity, and love is betrayal, or is it ever such? That doesn’t mean she’s Devil incarnate, but a being between an angel and a human, something of a Valkyrie, trumpeting one’s death, bringing the soul to the Underworld. In this book, you will find it hard to dislike her because she will not harm you if you do not betray and hurt her. The plot is intriguing in how you see what she is and why she is the way she is. That is not to justify any wrongdoings, but the motive is free from guilt, like Robin Hood stealing treasure from the arrogant rich or, shall I say, Incredible Hulk helping the good against the wicked? You will want to know more about her and the characters who are not dull from the beginning to the end. What a twist of fate!

    A few books are written about protagonists whose livelihoods are not as glamorous or glossy as many featuring women or men with high incomes and fanciful lifestyles because being common is a trifle and, therefore, not worth writing about. But that’s a lack of imagination and creative resourcefulness, which inhibits creating a world beyond reality in the likeness of truth. In that regard, this book is a fresh breath out of stuffy air. It is a thrilling admixture of Harrison Ford’s The Fugitive, Bill Bixby’s The Incredible Hulk, and Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter wrapt up in a maid’s hide.