Holly's Secret Garden

Prologue

In the play Blue Bird, each person is said to be born with a gift from their previous life. A pair of lovers are unwilling to be separated from each other when their life comes to an end. Before they embark on the journey for next life, they are anxious to know how they can recognize each other in afterlife. The woman says, “I’ll take the gift of ‘sadness’to my next life so that you can recognize me easily.” So, from generation to generation, “sadness” becomes a distinguishing mark of lovers. The couple without true love have no such privilege! And happy is the man who can do without love all his life, for he carries no such gift as “sadness” from his previous life. 

Hunchbacked and stammering on the outside

He had lost all sense of human warmth and coldness

Since childhood when his loving mother

Departed for Heaven and left him

To an unfeeling stepmother

With hard blows struck on his naughty head

Tenderness had become as foreign to him as enmity

Joy as strange as despair

He did not grieve over those that died

His father, step-mother and son-in-law

Nor rejoice over those that remained

His wife, son and daughter

The only sensation that he feels now is

The discomfort at the sight of his family

Otherwise

This callous man feels nothing

Blessed is this numbness

That protects him from

The seizure of Pain and Pleasure