My first apartment in Germany was wrapped in freshly painted, blindingly white walls. That color — so painfully neutral — only came alive when touched by sunlight, but if I was lucky, my room received maybe thirty minutes of sun each day…

Sometimes, I look back on that winter. The wind was sharp enough to slice through skin, and the whole place felt like it had carved me out of reality and dropped me into another world. When I stepped out into the snowstorm at dawn to buy a parking ticket, I often felt as though I was standing at the end of the earth…

There are things in life we simply have to accept. Just as water doesn’t taste like wine, and straw can’t turn into gold, life flows with an unyielding gravity. Perhaps that’s why we bleed blood instead of wine. Instead of shedding gold, we shed tears. Because this paltry human body could never contain the fullness of a life…