Philadelphia is studded with mystifying mosaics. There’s history behind these famous displays of public art but I’m not that familiar with it. What I do know that one of the most prominent mosaicists in the city lives in my neighborhood. You can tell because his house is covered in…well, what would your house be covered in if you were a talented mosaicist?

The house is practically a museum. When the weather breaks, the bay doors of his garage open up to show the world a half-warehouse workshop– every square inch covered in colored glass.

I want to get to know him.

Did you ever wonder how the glass got there? What about before it was made into art? The glass probably served a purpose before being broken into pieces. Maybe it was a bottle, or a vase. Stained-glass window. And what about before that? Have you ever seen how glass is made?

We watched a documentary about glass making in Related Arts class freshman year of high school. It’s made by melting sand–imagine that, melting sand. How does sand even melt? Imagine being the first man to discover glass. Did they think they made diamonds? Anyways, in this documentary A William Shatner-esque character (or maybe it was him) inspired me to go find some glass in my neighborhood. I walked by a stream like he told me to (he said they would definitely be there) and one day I found about two dozen pieces of glass, just sitting in the stream, semi-smoothed but mostly still sharp. Probably Coors Light bottles, but still enthralling.

Okay, glass comes from sand. Where does sand come from? Broken down rocks and sea shells, you know, from mollusks. Rocks. And shells. Where do those rocks and shells come from? Well, the rocks are made of–what even are rocks? I know they come from the earth. They’re basically molten lava that mineralized in a specific form depending on the concentration of minerals present. And shells–well they grow from living things. They’re made of cells, the building blocks of all life. So sand is actually very complex, and different sands obviously contain different mineral contents.

So that’s what a mosaic is: melted sand, made into something useful that was once either purposefully or accidentally broken, pieced together with cement which is…sticky sand. Circle of life, I guess?

I used to think a human being couldn’t be “broken” per se. A chair can be broken. A broken chair can’t put itself back together. But broken bones heal. And broken hearts heal, too. What does it even mean to be a human? What part of you classifies you as being “broken?”

Mosaics are made of various pieces of intentionally, thoughtfully, artistically assorted broken glass, glass which was forged in a furnace, made into something beautiful or useful, then shattered into millions of pieces. Not to mention all the breaking and breaking down that rocks and shells had to undergo to make such minuscule grains of sand. Broken is the name of the game.

Maybe it isn’t so bad to think of humans as being broken. Maybe broken is actually more beautiful than whole–or maybe it’s all beautiful, or maybe it’s all broken, or maybe it’s all whole. Maybe we’re all a part of the same hole. Maybe those bits of glass that couldn’t look any more different contain pieces of the same minerals from the same shell, somewhere deep within them. Or maybe that’s never happened, not in any mosaic ever created ever.

I don’t know if there’s a message here. If there is, maybe it’s that you’re beautiful even if you’re broken. It’s just helpful to pick up the pieces of whatever part of you broke and make something out of it. If not, you might step on a shard of glass. Then you can’t walk anywhere or appreciate anything except the pain of the glass piercing your dermis, blood starting to drip out.

Or maybe that can be beautiful, too.