A flower blooms best in a happy pot.

After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding.

Mine are the deep-seated fears established when we are children, and they never quite go away: the fear of being helpless, the fear of being trapped, the fear of being out of control.

If you hold a bird too tightly, you'll crush its wings

Seek the tarnish and you shall find

Perhaps lovers aren't supposed to look down at the ground. That kind of story is told in symbols-and earth represents reality, and reality represents frustrations, chance illnesses, death, murder, and all kinds of other tragedies. Lovers are meant to look up at the sky, for up there no beautiful illusions can be trampled upon.

You can trust a few some of the time, and most none of the time. Feel lucky if you have even one to trust all of the time.