age: 34 (Feb 11, 1979)
MEMBER SINCE: August 2012
occupation: IT Monkey
sign: keep left -->
gets me hot: Sitting in an oven
makes me sad: Having Migraines.
heroes: Nicola Tesla, Richard Feynman, B.F.Skinner, The Dalai Llama....
body mods: Shoulder tat (never finished, artist designing it died) Barcode tat on wrist... Various piercings from yesteryear which have either healed up, been bitten out, forgotten about or generally consigned to the mists of time.
into: I'm an astrophysicist and psychologist that works in computing, used to be a professional gamer and developer, with a penchant for scribbling stuff in such a way that it can sometimes be accused of literature or art... Basically, if it's geeky, I'm probably all over it.
My grandfather died yesterday. We kinda knew it was on the cards over the last few weeks, so it doesn't come as any surprise but it did get me thinking about him a bit, as I last saw him around 20 yrs ago.
My childhood, as with many, i suspect, was a pretty frantic mess at the best of times, but I remember that visits to his house came like oasis of calm and serenity in an otherwise chaotic mix.
I remember his little chair, in the corner, next to a lamp and his books of stamps. I remember being confused, as a kid, as to why anyone would collect them. Little bits of paper from far away sounding places, it made no sense to a kid who's world didn't extend much beyond the little burb in london they were then living in. Now I'm older, I'm still not sure, but knowing of his love for some of the places they came from, I like to believe each one represented an idea, a dream, an imagined adventure in some far off clime, and that he kept them there, to look at, to remember, and to day dream.
I also remember his garden, and all the plants and things he grew. The little greenhouse of which he was so proud, with its boxes of wine, shelves of plants, and the smell of growing things. Again, never understood the effort he went to out there. As a child I couldn't comprehend of waiting for something to grow, if it wasn't immediate, or at least something you could watch develop over a short period, it seemed weird. 2 years ago I planted my first edible plants, and whilst they weren't a patch on his, I kind of understood this other thing about him too, and how it felt to make something grow, with your own hands, out of the ground.
Kind of gutted that things being as they were, I never really got to know him any better, especially as I usually claim in being a great believer in not...
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Krito