On the Subject (Of Love)

The lesson we should get from the concept of love is not to go out and find it, but to be taught to recognize it.

Some people think love should be taught or one should be exposed to it lightly. That love is almost like lemonade that's too strong and has got too much flavor. So you water it down. But I think that's what is so wonderful about love. It's supposed to jolt your senses and you're suppose to experience something completely different. Taste something you've never tasted before. Something both sweet and sour. But you love it just the same.

It's not a waste of time talking to you, but you don't know that it'd be time better spent if we were together.

Marcus (Excerpt)

Don was smitten with her--overwhelmed by her never failing charm and not just that, but he was mesmerized by her heart. She seemed to the right things and he was more than flattered when he became one of them. he was, in fact, astonished that such a seemingly flawless person could invite him into her shower of endearment and affection.
She was his junior by six years, mature yet constantly full of an innocent energy, a youthful eagerness to live in motion. His own mother was that way, acting out of the innocence she had hidden from the thieves of adolescence. Sydney, too, had this ability: to draw the freshness of life, the youthfulness of growing up, out of thin air. Don was taken on a journey with her. While the rest of the population experienced bridge burning years during the shift from childhood to adulthood, Sydney had kept the fire from destroying her path back to those figment-filled days. Imagination still intact, she traveled with Don through the portal to the beautiful world of a passionate girl, touched, but untainted by the grown-up one.
They became almost inseparable--making sure they didn't go on for too long without being in each other's arms. She insisted to her family that he was the one and he made no indication that he felt differently. He was devoted to this beautiful woman, full of endless spark. Behind his eyes, replete with adoration, everyone guessed thoughts of an endless future with her were floating about. At least, they hoped to God this was true.
Don was that one exception to the theory that nice guys finish last. He was always fussed over, either by the girls, hopeful for his tenderness, or the boys, anxious to befriend him. He was a genius in that he was a remarkably good person with high standards, but not too high hopes.

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Yore Days (Excerpt One)

They say a person's eyes are the windows to their soul. My mother's eyes used to be the color of the sea, vigorously alive with their sparks of green, gray, and those marine blue streaks. Now, they are simply gray, giving one the perception that her soul is battered and tired, much like the abandoned dinghies along the shore outside my home in Magnolia, Massachusetts.
Kodie Glouster, I am known as and I find it rather ironic given that my last name is pronounced the same as the vacation spot for Bostonians, Gloucester (a few minutes north of Magnolia). It is not, in fact, pronounced as "chester" or "cester". For a time, that was uncanny and incomprehensible to my mother who insisted in pronouncing it glawh-seh-ster. Mind you, that phonetic translation is probably incorrect.
My mother, Coral, was, as a young woman, a natural and pure beauty. Her name seemed to reflect her look and heart as though she were the sister of a goddess born from the ocean, perhaps Aphrodite. It was predestined that the sailors of Uncle Sam's navy would fall for her. They clamored for her affections and treasured as much as a moment of her attention. She was the ocean in human form--sometimes pacific and other times, outraged and invulnerable, yet always possessing that magnificent feminine beauty and majesty.

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