What I want to have is who I want to be. Who I want to be is what I want to have. Some people have a bucket list of exciting things they want to do or try before they die, sky diving, traveling, all that expensive stuff. Turning 48, I'm thinking about what kind of life I want for the second half of it. I have no bucket list, that's for sure. The bucket is empty, should I suddenly kick. But the things I would do, want to do, am trying to do, are things that make me want to live: Fascination with compost and soil. Continue to compost in the backyard over the poor soil, smothering the poison ivy, picking out plastic where I find it, letting my dog piss on it for nitrogen, and it's a wreck, it's wild, but I finally put a chair out there in the backyard, under the evergreen tree, looking at the piles of dead trees, ivy, and random life and growth around the rusty gate. Someday cut through it, to the rusty gate, and remove it. Remove the stacks of roofing squares staked along it. Save the evergreen tree. I started this campaign a couple years ago by giving my (summer) life to kill the ivy (before I knew about the poison, I ripped that furry vine down—which damaged the tree to allow in some kind of mildew parasite. Putting competing molds against the tree mold (experimental). Watch the falling cement walls come down, the dirt spread across the cracked driveway, take the garage down, create wildlife spaces. Plant Paw Paw trees. No lawn. Spend most of my time out there, sitting in the chair, smoking weed. I sat out there the night before last, listening to the crickets, smelling the wet green growth and soil, looking for the bats to come out, and that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. Not plant a productive garden. Create a wildlife space that no one can pave over with cement (in my lifetime). Allow butterflies and bees. Dandelions. Mint. Wild onions. Save that soil (10x20 yards of it), that's all I want. With compost. No, I also want to repair this house. Find someone who wants to do that. Find someone who prefers me to cook for them every night, whatever I make (is good). Find someone who doesn't respond quickly, someone thoughtful, not reactive, who encourages me to talk even more. To help me fix up the house. To move my roommate downstairs. To live up here alone. To set up a sewing room and a “make-supplies” room. In the supplies room, it would be like Wall-E the trash collector's garage— all the little plastic and metal parts of things, the squares they use to close plastic bags on loafs of bread, plastic caps of all colors, bubble wrap, a million plastic bottles of various sizes, parts of fans, machines, batteries, old technology, dissasembled. And in a secret room under this basement room, will be a secret supply of medicine like pencillin and first aid supplies, with a sick bed, and a doctor I know for people needing help outside hospitals. And I will 10x what I know now about computers and software. I will know things. They say witches are old and ugly, but we're really just old. It's our culture that equates old with ugly. Witches aren't ugly, they're just old, and old women have power. This is the power that I want. A whole apartment full of crystals and light, wood floors, a clean kitchen, sinks that are always clean, a clothesline outside, a bicycle, an e-bike, more pets. These are the things I want to do and make and draw towards me. When I'm not in the backyard, sitting in my chair, I want to be scavenging for things for my “parts” shop in the basement. Finding stuff people lost or tossed.