Shredded fingers, achey back

I'm working on a new mosaic project. It's part one of a four-part larger project, actually. I got it in my head to do several small panels featuring skulls... sort of cartoony skulls... in various situations. I made one for Bob at Christmas featuring a skull over a color-bar test pattern on a TV. Now I've decided to make four 12-inch square pieces, each with a skull and one of the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. I'm starting with Earth. It's a skull lying on the ground, with vines growing around it.

These small projects are nice because they don't take FOREVER to complete. Several weeks, but not months. It's a huge mess, so you want to either be able to pack it away fairly easily or be able and willing to just keep it out all the time and live with the mess. There are little flakes of vitreous glass tile all over my dining table, as well as the surrounding carpet, chairs, and anything that gets left on or near the table. You dare not lean your elbows on my table right now...for any reason, for fear of getting glass embedded in them. I do vacuum the bits up regularly, but they fly a long way when I'm cutting tile. My fingers are covered of little cuts, as well, from handling the glass. Mostly they don't bother me, but Saturday night Bob and I had tacos and I got pico de gallo on my hands and became painfully aware of every scratch and nick!

It's worth it, though. There's something satisfying to me about the close, bit-by-bit work of mosaic. You have to focus just on this piece, this section... right here, right now. You can't get impatient and you can't hurry. Tearing something out is even more of a pain in the ass than it is in knitting, so you want to be pretty sure before you apply the glue. At the same time, it's a picture made of broken glass. You learn to accept and love imperfection. Not that I'm a perfectionist, far from it! But, like knittng, mosaic has its own lessons to teach. Be. Here. Now.

Here's a lesson I learned recently, and it really made me think. I was talking with my dad, who is in his mid-60s now. That's still, to my mind, quite middle-aged. But he's beginning to think in terms of Time Left. He told me he has come to realize lately that if he wants to do certain things, he'd better do them now... bump them to the top of the list. He said he's been talking about covering the patio, talking about re-wiring the sound system in the living room... and he needs to do those things and stop talking about them.

I hate to hear him talk that way for a couple of reasons: One, I'm not ready to think about losing my parents any time soon, and Two: it makes me think of all the things I have been saying forever that I was going to do that aren't done yet. Like finish that novel I started work on again so ambitiously in November and dropped again two weeks into the month. Like travel to the places I want to see while I'm still flexible enough to see them without a wheelchair and oxygen tank. Like buy my own house and pay off those credit cards and get back in shape.

How can I decide which of those dreams are important and which of them I will have to let go of? When do I have to begin to let go? Is it too late to find the Love of my Life? Too late to see Machu Pichu? I don't want to live in a panic of lost opportunity, but maybe I need to start parsing my Time Left a little bit, as well.

I talked to someone recently who told me he thought a "bucket list" was "morbid." I don't think it's morbid. I've never really thought about it before, though... things I really, seriously, want to do before I leave this planet. (in this form, anyway). But talking with my dad made me wonder: in 23 years, when I'm 67... what might I still be saying I would do "someday," that I might regret not getting started on?

So here are a few of the things I want to do.

Publish a book

Own a home with maybe a little land

Travel

Learn to make pie crust and bread

Be debt free

Volunteer somewhere regularly

Be strong and healthy enough to live long enough to see my grandchild

It's funny, there aren't that many things. There are a lot of places I'd like to go. Galapagos, Machu Pichu, Hawaii, Alaska, India, Ireland. Really, just about anywhere. But I guess that's a list of its own. That book thing... I think that's the one really serious onee. That's the thing I would regret most, except for not living to see Grayson grow up. But the list is more about getting on the stick and doing what you love, not about how long you live. There's not really much you can do about that, short of Not Swimming in Shark Infested Water, or Not Driving Drunk, or Not Taking Up Extreme Volcano Sky Diving.

In all honesty, I don't think it will matter. I believe that the "me" in me will snuff out like a candle, and I'll cease to exist as a consciousness. I'll live on in the memories of people who love me. That's enough. I think my energy will get poured back into the big pool, to be recycled, like my physical self. (like my skull mosaic, with new life rising from the loam) That's not disturbing to me. I won't be there to be bothered by it! But I only get one time to go around as this me. I suppose I should make the most of it.

I'll get started on that...

tomorrow. Tomorrow for sure.