I paint flowers to prevent them from dying
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.
Gather the flowers, but spare the buds.
When I was little, I'd pick flowers wherever I traveled with my mom, then dry them, cover them with resin, and turn them into paperweights.
I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.
Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional flowers.
