My Own Almost Impossibly Unattainable Bucket List

This is the kind of thing that happens to me during a prolonged bout with the flu/pneumonia. Written within a couple minutes, as fast as I could type.

BUCKET LIST

Be healthy enough to hike Machu Picchu.

Spend three nonconsecutive days inside the Louvre with a sketchbook and my old 35mm camera with TMAX film. Every other day, visit the rest of Paris.

Create a sketchbook of my friends and family portraits with notes on my good memories of them.

Drive through Germany’s Romantic Road in a Maserati Quattroporte.

Discuss Buddhism with Jet Li while walking the compound of the Forbidden City.

Give a million dollars to a charity.

Convince a small restaurant owner in Venice to let me pay for my meal by writing a song for his family. Learn the language so the lyrics could be in Italian.

Have breakfast at Cancale in Brittany, then walk the lowered tide to the castle at Mont Saint Michel with some friends, pretending that we are the cast of the movie Mindwalk.

Walk the rest of Descanso Gardens when the flowers are in full bloom.

Have dim sum at a crowded, sweaty restaurant in Beijing.

Watch a Boston Red sox game with Stephen King.

Walk through Chicago with a Carl Sandburg historian.

Read the poem on Raymond Carver’s tombstone with a loved one.