the love story

The longer I stay on the this earth the more I am convinced that love is a choice. Maybe not consciously when we have that initial spark of attraction, but definitely the perpetuation of it. I have had feelings of what I regard as intense love be replaced with something weaker because of a re-conditioning of my mind. I have also had feelings of love for a situation or person that was created in my mind but did not exist in actuality. If I can do that, then I can love practically anyone. The reality of the situation simply is that I don't want to.

There are certain characteristics that draw me, and I respond in like manner by dwelling on them. I think that what happens when I see these traits coming out in someone is a sparking of my mind to tell the rest of me that I love this experience. I love it, and I want more of it. And the more I indulge myself in the presence of the traits I love, the more I embody and thus love the person from which the traits flow. Now I may be the one who chooses the traits, but what I can't choose is who will have them.

Whose characteristics have you chosen to love? Can you love them all?

a heavy dose of Stu

Sometimes things happen that really make you stop and question. Why?

Fascinatingly, that question never entered my mind in this case. After the initial shock wore off, I was just grateful to have had the pleasure of knowing him. I always thought he had accomplished so much more than the average person in a short space of time. Even the Gleaner acknowledged this at the age of seventeen. I wrote about him in the R-lot as one of my 'other brothers' and I meant that. I grew up with him, watched him from tummy to diapers, played together constantly as children and teens and kept close as adults. I can't walk out on my balcony without thinking of him, or look at a string of Christmas lights and not feel something move in the pit of my stomach.

My reaction was severely delayed. It occurred just last night, and I suppose that release is the reason I am able to write it here this morning. I can't put into words how I feel, and in this rare instance, I'm not interested in trying.

My Stu Peas and Rice: Super-Nes, toy trains, hot wheels, bicycles, the little blue toy truck and Aunty Jeanie's grassy hill, karaoke, movie nights, Christmas lights, satellite sharing, the swing, the dogs, lizard eggs, the 'club house', home videos, baby keyboards, resident modeling announcer, surround sound systems, plane watching, morphing childhood dreams into realities: Concerts, Musicals, Crew, Choirs, Breighton Street, NJTM, EDI, Stage Manager, Lighting Manager, Technical Director, Actor, Writer, Producer, Composer, Pilot, Instructor. You did it all my friend, and the world will miss you.

Love you always
"Rae Rae... from fores' way"
aka "Aisharay"

Stuart Gordon Brown
July 3, 1983 - December 6, 2008
The world would not have been ready for his greatness.

responsibility-free

There's a little toy lying in the middle of the room that everyone likes to play with, but no one wants to own.

more

Weak and trembling, she slowly unfolds from that huddled position in the dark corner and, gaining more energy and stature with each slow and deliberate step, walks tentatively until her entire being has been illuminated.

Lifting her head to reveal glistening eyes, she speaks the words softly but confidently, 'I'm ready for more'.

minute

it's amazing that you can live with someone for so long and not know the simplest little details about them

on edge

sitting on the top of potential
pregnant, ripe and bursting
unsure of what direction to go
feeling very apprehensive
wanting to leap off the high edge
make a rash decision
change the equation in a split second
and feel the rush of an adrenaline release

stole the words right out...

I can be a wreck of the grandest kind
I can withhold like it’s going out of style
I have the craziest heart that you’ve ever seen
And you’ve never met anyone who's as positive as I am sometimes
And you’ve never met anyone who's as everything as I am sometimes

You see everything, you see every part
You see all my light and you love my dark
You dig everything of which I'm ashamed
There's not anything to which you can’t relate
And you’re still here

What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know
What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go
And you're still here...

Adapted from Alanis Morissette's 'Everything'

life's little irony

We want to be undauntedly close and connected; to throw ourselves deep into someone else and yet we are steadfast in our ability to preserve our own selves with distance.

actions betray desire
until both are unified
by the hero of trust

literary attraction

I want to dive into your head and be drowned in the sea of words that float in your mind. I want to be lost with every letter and be found deep inside the thoughts expressed by their joining. I want to hang long and slow on every feeling and be punctuated with emotional eruptions of all my senses. I want to drink in the flowing bittersweet moments that form in abstract from your release. I want to squeeze into the hidden dark spaces between the lines and be pressed against the invisible words too far in to be formed in the light. I want to feel and to know the essence of you.

arm's length

I've practiced the art of creating distance until it is now what I am most comfortable with. I sense a problem brewing.