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

Tag: Writing

  • Prompt 108 on Job

    Do you enjoy your job?

    I am grateful for my job which provides me with a steady income and decent benefits. Moreover, I am proficient at my work. Similar to Earl of Kent in Shakespeare’s King Lear, I am qualified in what an ordinary person is capable of. And the best quality in me is diligence.

    The only thing I am not content with within my current job is the company culture dominated by the employees, my so-called colleagues who like to form cliques, their clubs of buddies and gals sharing the same linguistic background, which I call cultural and ethnic affinities. Never have I experienced such a shocking sense of isolation. It never occurred to me in New York City or even New Jersey, where I spent 30 years of my younger self. This clique mentality is a thing of the West, especially in Los Angeles, CA. It’s like being surrounded by high school or teenage students whose mental ages stopped growing. Maybe I am getting old, but as a person of keen observation, it is a new type of discrimination. You are unwelcome in their circle if you are quiet and look very different. They will not even bother saying hello or hi and not even include you as an existing human being.

    When I was on the East Coast, where the history of cities is longer and the culture more civilized and cosmopolitan, such estrangement was hardly felt. But then, I can’t complain about my current job as long as it provides me with a livelihood to support my elderly mother, two cats, and my aging self. If the people at my work were kind, friendly, and mature, my current job would be the kind of business I love. I would rise and go to it with delight. But beggars can be choosers.

  • Hidden secrets of houses

    Being a homeowner is being a master or mistress of your castle. You can fashion it in whatever style you prefer without thinking about posterior owners who would be new rulers. What if the previous owners of your houses were occultists, Satanists, spiritualists, or criminals of the worst kind? – I mean psychotic murderers who kill people for pleasure or displeasure. Some of them build secret passages or rooms that homeowners accidentally discover, as seen on some YouTube programs filmed mainly by the owners. Naturally, they piqued my curiosity for all things uncanny.

    Imagine there is a hidden basement with a single bed (yes, really so!) whose purpose is terrifyingly mysterious with sinister presumptions. There is also a hidden room in the basement, assumingly a panic room. But these are not figments of imagination but truth. People find them within their houses while renovating the interiors or cleaning them. Because homes were built hundreds of years ago, there have been many homeowners in many cases, and you never know who they were or what they did behind the doors. One spectacular example is an Ohio couple in a relatively recent year who discovered millions of dollars in suitcases hidden in different places and one full of VHS tapes. When the couple reported such findings to the FBI, they must have watched the contents of the recordings because they made sure that the couple would not say a word about their existence as if they never existed. I would not watch them, although I am a curious person by nature, because I feel that they contain abominable acts of unspeakable nature. Even an old convent is not an exception in harboring such a secret place because, in England, the maintenance specialists working on a derelict convent found it, which is quite eerily inquisitive. Why did the religious sisters have it concealed? For what purpose? Did the demons collectively possess the nuns?

    I have always known that these things are possible because old houses have unknown histories with place memories that still linger in the places and are kept in there. Besides, unlike apartments, homes have accessible entrances from downstairs to upstairs. It is said that most psychotic killers reveal that they randomly go about houses, and if the doors are unlocked, they go in and commit atrocious murders or rapes. Apartments are not always wholly safe but comparatively safe and relatively secure. If I had a choice of being the owner of the two premises, it would be an apartment with a nice view, needless to say.

  • prompt 107 on word

    If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

    It’s Passive or Aggressive.

    Passive-aggressive. There is no such thing as being passive-aggressive. One can be one or another, but not both. It’s a fad psychoanalytical term that profilers, shrinks, and mobs like to call neurodivergent persons for convenience as a thoughtless, careless invective.

    The term passive-aggressive refers to a timidly introverted or neurodivergent person who is prone to a frenzy of ire or anxiousness. But who isn’t? One cannot be always happy, pleasant, and smiling in public, which I find creepy, reminding me of the clown from the movie “IT.” Introverts and Neurodivergent people are not accustomed to voicing out their feelings and emotions, such as disappointment, frustration, grief, or angst, in the way neurotypical persons do, so they tend to suppress them while also needing to make their voices heard in a way that is communicated less diplomatically or effectively than their counterparts.

    Mob psychology corrupts words because it is not the words that are harmful but the user of the words who breathes the evil spirit into them. People also like to label those different or distanced from them with malicious epithets. Also, the words like positive and negative are overtly used, and the meanings are bastardized. There are no negative people but disappointed, ignored, and misunderstood people. Do not use it for people just because you don’t bother to know or are not interested in learning. Therefore, Passive-aggressive is a gaslighting word, and it must be banned. If not, then separate them.

  • The Ghost Generation

    Flashback to 1974 – Celebrating the pop culture, people, politics, and places.: From the original Time-Traveler Flashback Series of Yearbooks ― news … 1974. (A Time-Traveler’s Guide - Flashback)

    Flashback to 1974 – Celebrating the pop culture, people, politics, and places.: From the original Time-Traveler Flashback Series of Yearbooks ― news … 1974. by B. Bradforsand-Tyler

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    I always think that people born in the 1970s are in-betweeners. Visible, yes, but not conspicuous. It’s the transitional generation, crossing over the boundaries of the 21st and 20th centuries like faerie children, hybrids of yesterday and today. The last generation of the 20th century fully lived and ended in the new era. And it’s hard to encounter them in reality for some mysterious reasons. It makes one feel like a changeling among new and newer waves of generations.

    The choice of this book is, therefore, something akin to encountering an acquaintance among total strangers in a strange land, even if such excitement is not reciprocated. The 1970s was when the world we know now began to form its familiar landscape with the birth of new words as society became more technologically advanced and culturally enhanced. Here is a list of the terms we use, like commodities born in 1974: Touchscreen, telecommute, supermom, CT Scan, memory card, transgender, wake-up call and GOTCHA.

    It’s not about being proud of my generation or criticizing their generations. It’s about the generation I see as half visible and half invisible, especially in the current workforce, from law firms to the entertainment industry dominated by millennial babies. Of course, Watergate and the inflations from the oil shock imprinted on the generational pictures, but those born in the 70s grew up to enjoy the privilege of fully appreciating the digital age and its conveniences in every aspect of life. The Who’s “My Generation” should be the soundtrack of my generation.

    People try to put us down (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
    Just because we get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
    Things they do look awful cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
    This is my generation
    This is my generation, baby

    GOTCHA.



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  • Prompt 106 on Drink

    What is your favorite drink?

    As some people go to bars to drink, I go to the Green Mermaid’s Coffee Tavern, aka Starbucks, for my favorite drinks with a Kindle and an iPad. Their menu is inventive and innovative, welcoming new additions. These drinks are my sprit drinks.

    My first favorite drink is Iced Hazelnut Oatmilk Shaken Espresso. Because of its oat milk, the flavor is wonderfully smooth, richly silky, and beneficially wholesome. It’s my comfort drink.

    My second favorite drink is Iced Caffe Americano, my staple morning must-have to perk me up. And it is always iced because I find Americano tastes better when cold.

    My third favorite drink is Iced Passion Tango Tea Lemonade. The color says it all about the prettiness of the flavor, which isn’t too sweet but refreshingly delicious and refreshing because it is added with lemonade. Without it, the tea will not be as lovely as it is.

    I believe we should all have favorite drinks because, without them, life would be all gray and grim. Mine happens to be the above-referenced drinks from Starbucks. I am not affiliated with Starbucks to write this column, but I read Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz (you are welcome to click and read on the link.) with relish.

  • prompt 105

    Who are your favorite people to be around?

    My Camille and Toro from left to right

    I don’t trust a man, a woman, the young, the old, the good or the bad. People are not to be trusted, as Albert Einstein himself observed it too. So, I don’t have favorite people, which is also meritocratic and egoistic. Loves, I have, and they are my cats who appraoch me and want to play with me, even if people don’t.

    People may be kind at first, but they change their feelings toward you depending on who and what you are. People talk of love as a gadget, such as a smartphone, when they do not realize what love is. So, I do not beg it and desperately seek a society of my favorite people because today’s favorite people may give you cold shoulders tomorrow.

    Yet my cats are different. They come to me when I go to bed at night or wherever I am at home. They bunt their little heads forcibly against my hands or legs as though to confirm I am loved. And they listen to me attentively when I talk to them. I know my cats have souls, and we will depart this world together for the distant star, our final destination. I don’t covet Goddess Freya with her chariot driven by the two cats, for my cats are not my subjects or pets but love.