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

Tag: Writing

  • Prompt 206 on mind boggling

    What bothers you and why?

    I am bothered by people and their hypocrisy. Injustice, Avarice, Cruelty, and Ignorance. A lack of charity and understanding. Weakness to all that glitters, power to all that pleads. Aristoteles said we can’t live alone unless we are beasts or gods. But I tell you, humans are angels and demons, the children of Janus with two faces of light and darkness.

    People can move heaven and earth, making a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, so much so that we can make a criminal of an innocent man like a human sacrifice to idols or false deities. For example, I watched a Netflix documentary about Henry Lee Lucas on Friday. He was known as a “Confession Killer,” who claimed to have murdered 600 victims all over the U.S. But did he kill them all? He killed his mother for sure because she was atrociously violent toward her son, beating his head so severely that the portion of his frontal lobe was permanently damaged, let alone his right eyeball that burst out, which was later replaced by a false prosthetic eye. Lucas was said to have an IQ of 87, but he could read, write, speak clearly, and draw quite beautifully. It was his social IQ that put him on a pedestal of the mentally inept.

    While watching the documentary, I could not help but think that Lucas was a victim of circumstances and prejudices. He was coerced into confessing falsely to the killings that he had not committed because the sheriff under whose custody Lucas was fatherly to him with warmth and kindness that he had seldom received. It was painful to see Lucas pleading not guilty to the falsely confessed murders through the cell in front of the hordes of reporters and camerapersons as if he were a freak in the circus. He was crying, and even if he might have lied, you could not/should not bear false witness.

    Nevertheless, those who chanted vehement epithets with no mercy but spite for the murders that he had not committed did not apologize to him as if doing it would be an immoral thing to do. And people continue to be merciless to those lowly in social status or need care out of collective neglect. We champion human rights, equality, and justice while doing the opposite things to those who need the championed values. It’s sickening, and that is what bothers me.

  • Prompt 205 on what I am most worried

    What are you most worried about for the future?

    I am most worried about my future. And my future is not left much enough for me to be fancy-free and footless any longer.

    I am worried about how long I will keep the things I want to stay as long as possible. Or will I ever? If I vocalize what I like, it seems to disappear into the ether. Call it an illusion or hallucination even, but it’s only valid. If it is true, when will it end? Why is it always that my simplest wish is considered luxurious vanity? For example, I am worried about how long I will last at my present job. Will I survive another year here where people lose their jobs at the whims and caprice of the Big, middle, and small bosses?

    Especially to a person like me who is not gregarious about those I don’t feel comfortable with or relate to, surviving in such a work environment is uncertain, threatening the safety and security of my life.

  • 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.