my grandmother died this morning.

Grace Geraldine van Dongen Darnell.

she is the only of my four grandparents that i felt more than a passing bond with. i loved her dearly. i am amazed at the woman she was despite the life she led. though in thinking back i don't have stories to tell about her. i don't know much about her life. i know the love she gave me and my family. and that is what i am going to miss.

at the moment i am having trouble being sad. i am definitely mournful, but i don't find sadness in her passing. her body was failing. her mind has been lost for awhile. it was time.

what i am finding sadness in are my father's loss of his mother and my daughter asking me about seeing Great-grandma in heaven.

my father's voice was so fragile this morning. he loved his mother dearly. they had a very good relationship. i am worried for him and i don't know how to comfort him in his loss. i want to be able to hold him and give him comfort.

my daughter's question brings to mind the fact that though my grandparents had their children at church every Sunday while they were at home, they themselves hadn't crossed the door of a church for as long as my father can remember. something had happened and Ed and Grace never again displayed a faith, except in their children. i don't know the answer to this but i wrestle with what i am taught and what i want to believe.

i do not know the mind of the almighty. i can only hold to my belief in a merciful creator that sees more than the pomp and circumstance of our poor human play, knowing the heart of his creation intimately.

i'll miss you grandma.

so overall i think i am a fairly reasonable person and rather easy to get along with. at work, i have never had a situation where i was told that my habits disrupted those around me or that i was becoming a problem. this being said i want to rant about a simple thing that is driving me absolutely crazy.

lunch at my desk.

i don't eat at my desk so that i can work. i don't eat at my desk so that i am here to answer your questions. generally i would rather be out eating in a restaurant or a park or anywhere. finances and economy of time push together and make eating at my desk an easy option. if you notice i am not working on the project and i am not making eye contact with you. so would you please for the love of God and all that is holy (or even for your own dear life) leave me alone between the hours of noon and one.

this rant is prompted by the fact that on any given day, while eating lunch and surfing the net or reading my latest book, i can be interrupted anywhere from 3 to twenty times with questions about my project or about the office.

please don't take too much offense from this post, and if you want to stop by on a social call i am all for it. but just because you don't eat, or you are fed on pure architecture with no need for food, doesn't mean we all are...

once upon a time we lived in a hobbit-hole.

it seems silly to say so, but if you had seen it you would understand that calling it such makes perfect sense. it was underground and warm and tidy and just big enough for the three of us to live in. i think in the rose-colored glasses of that time of our life that our hobbit-hole was one of the best places we have ever lived. if you ask my wife she will probably laugh and then reveal how much i carried on in displeasure while i was living there. but that is what memories are for, so that i can look at the pretty while ignoring the ugly...

anyway, yesterday L pointed me towards this:

now this is not a hobbit-hole, though you may suspect that it is. rather it is a home to a family of four that live in Wales. the house is the product of their hands and their lifestyle. take a minute and check out their website A Low Impact Woodland Home. reading about their life may stir something in you as it has in me. well aside from the grubs.

what i really want to bring up is not living in hobbit-holes or your feelings about that kind of dwelling. i am interested in whether i am the only one that frequently feels the need to thrown in the towel and run away to a simpler place. i won't lie and say i am at peace with my own desires for power or the modern world. rather i am as caught up in them as any other post-post-modern cold-war kid wrestling with his angst. there is however a frequent desire to turn in my capitalist membership and return all my consumerables. forget Marxism too. i'm talking about leaving the grid, removing myself from the machine and heading out onto paths unknown.

somewhere inside i crave to build my own house and grow my own food and live in a state long forgotten. am i alone here? or would i be alone there?

anyone else want to go?