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

Tag: Writing

  • Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (Netflix- Manga and Live-Action film) – 1-minute Film review

    Zombie flicks are in vogue. From Netflix to Hulu and others, they are roaming across the boundaries of the digital world, hungry for popularity and craving high ratings. But none of them is ingeniously fresh, and all are infallibly doomed. If you hold on to it, apocalypse doesn’t necessarily kill off a human spirit. A dystopian world may overwhelm your sensory perception, but it won’t kill you if you don’t dwell on it with humor, a handmaid to strength and hope. That is what this film is about.

    The story develops around Akira Tendo, a young office worker fresh out of college, who soon becomes disenchanted with his innocent vision of the work he does because of the unreasonably demanding high workload and gaslighting of his boss. So, when he wakes up the next day and finds himself living among zombies because of an unexpected bio-weaponry disaster, Tendo becomes ecstatic, lest he should go to work any longer. The optimism galvanizes him to pen a bucket list of 100 things to do before he succumbs to the pandemic. What a jolt to live!

    The film stands out from all other dystopian worlds of zombies with humor, hope, and hooray. It weaves a unique perspective to a heartfelt story about a man finding meaning to live amid hopeless situations and ways to huddle through life’s challenging moments, which we can all relate to daily. Nietzsche was right. “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

  • Prompt 28

    What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

    Hello there,

    So, I am finally back to my blog after a long suspension of the magical practice of writing. Blame the daily duty of earning bread outside the home, but most of it was a low level of will to write. Thus, I was happy to see today’s prompt topic that caught my immediate attention and galvanized my vapid spirit to put pen to paper.

    When I see people who ingratiate themselves with those in power or popularity, I am disgusted with the preponderance of the absurdity of humanity. The sight lays bare the Darwinian law of the Survival of the Fittest, the Victory of the Strongest at the expense of the Weakest Link. William Golding must have kept such unpleasant human characteristics in mind when writing Lord of the Flies. And I see the tribes of the id-driven adult children (or incalcitrant adolescents) ubiquitously, especially at work. They curry the favor of those who are outwardly meritorious and dominantly overpowering. And if you are out of their clique, you are invisible and ignorable. It doesn’t matter your depth of erudition is unfathomably deeper than theirs, for seeing is believing. It’s a tribal mentality still and always practiced across the strata of class, race, and gender. And I can always see it, but I can’t do about it.

    Be it ever so pessimistic, it is the most displeasing sight of the rudely annoying red herrings in the body of humans. They remind me of Yahoos from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Aristotle said human beings can’t live alone, and it’s true, but that doesn’t mean I have to supress my innate dislike of such ugly trait and accomodate my nature to the animalistic practice. Joan of Arc, Thomas More, and Socrates were never part of those syncopants.

  • Prompt 27

    What motivates you?

    Motivations are instant energizers that galvanize me to do things I highly wish but least actualize. They come from within and outside, but more often from the in-between of the consciousness and sub-consciousness of my mental realm, where the Muses perambulate around from their regular offices.

    Grand and pompous, though it may sound, motivations are of quite a common stock. For instance, I am motivated by good feedback on my work performance, whether for monetary purposes or personal interest. I am also highly motivated by the books that are relatable to me. Furthermore, I am strongly motivated by the stories of those who pull through despite the weakness of characters to whom I can relate because it gives me relief that my problems are not unique and that I am not flawed; thus, I can hope that the wishes are fathers to the actions.

    When motivated, I am highly delightfully productive with a high level of invincible confidence from within. Nothing frightens me, and nothing stops me. I am like a runway fashion model who swans around in a garb of confidence on the figure of art. Why would you want an illegal substance when all you need is a small dose of motivation that keeps you in high spirit?

  • prompt 26

    What is a word you feel that too many people use?

    There isn’t one but too many words I find too many people use, and they are all about one’s mental state, often over-generalized either by sheer prejudice or highfalutin malice against the subject of the remark. Here is a list of the words that prick my high-strung sense.

    Weird is considered charming, compared to psychopathic. Anti-social is a new parlance for a witch or a woman who appears socially adroit in public. Depression is an overused excuse for being fashionably morose or rude among peers. And what about bipolar for anyone whose emotional continuum is conspicuously distinctive among melees? But the basest and vilest word is “MAD.” It’s a most convenient word to accuse someone getting on your nerve with a not-so-pleasing face or personal charms that purchase indemnity for arrogance or incivility. Simply artless and innocent it may seem, the word underlines the most acrimonious intention to call someone whom you don’t take a liking to for whatever reason. Forget the key to open your storage of vocabulary in the mind. You use the word like a hidden dagger to do harm on the spirit of the other, and the effect is often long-lastingly advsere and deeply indelible.

    Indeed, you can be mad about your lover without reason, but you can’t call someone mad just because their faces always look agelast. There may be a mad scientist but never a mad, lonely person. If all of this makes no sense, let it be a tale told by an author, full of fury and sound, signifying something.

  • Words

    The soul in exile
    it seems as it were,
    keeps no friends or foes
    but a myriad of words
    weaved into a tapestry
    of stories live to tell
    with a spark of spirit
    at the thrilled touch
    thrust in passion’s flame
    aroused from the buried
    detritus of memories bygone
    and the fire that has gone
    ablaze with the delirium
    of delight in the magic
    of the words she has found
    keeps burning the dark
    reigning in her glass castle.

  • Prompt 25

    Describe one habit that brings you joy.

    Writing is a magical portal for me to escape from reality, a sort of near-astral body experience Dr. Strange does so effortlessly. It is a particular alchemy of literature where thoughts become images and then come alive, flitting in the garden of senses. Or I can fly across the blue firmament chasing the Sun Chariot and riding on the Moon Chariot and glide on the first ray of sunrise.

    Although these days I haven’t written as much as I used to because of work and other matters, a desire for writing always stays as an undying ember glowing in a phosphorous blue diamond so rare and beautiful in the abyss of malaise. I don’t believe that writing is not a prerogative of elites, nor a status symbol of the perfect grammarians. As long as you can communicate your spirits and souls in words and strike the chords of readers, that makes you a good writer, and that’s a joy to see your magic working.

    Writers- I mean whoever writes, not just professional writers- possess a spirit of poetic madness or a gift of seeing spirits in every living thing in this universe, akin to a Sybil or a Sherman. Therefore, anyone possessed with a desire for writing can see things that others can’t see and, what’s more, begin to form the shapes of the unseen. For these reasons, writing to me brings me the joy of being a wonderful white witch of beauty.