i went to the bookstore the other day and was searching through the books, getting ready to settle on a few that sounded kinda sorta interesting, but not really, when i found a book called The Realm of Possibility. i read the excerpt and found that it had a mix of gay and straight characters, so obviously i HAD to get it. the my dad read the back and noticed that the author David Levithan wrote another book called Boy Meets Boy. he found it on the shelf and handed it to me. i bought them both and was amazed when i started reading Boy Meets Boy (i have a thing about reading books by the same author in the order they were written :-P ).

this author's words pulled at my heartstrings, made me laugh and cry. i found so many quotes that i could put as my signature, i just couldn't decide which one. i am now about halfway through The Realm of Possibility and it is absolutely enchanting. its hard to understand at first; its not like other books. its not just simply a story in full sentences and paragraphs with all the correct punctuation and capitalization. its a "series of interconnected free-verse stories". for example *ahem*:

O N E

Daniel

Mary

Diana

Megan

(page 1) smoking (Daniel)

i've never smoked a cigarrette
with anyone but jed.
senior year, driver's licenses,
our town is so many miles
with nowhere to go.
nowhere but the woods,
where leaves block out the haze of the city
blocking out the stars.
we pass the cigarrette hand to hand, and
somehow i can see the trail of smoke in the
darkness. the way i can see jed's eyes
even when there isn't any light.

it would never have occurred to me to smoke.
but one day we're at the 7-11 and jed says "buy a pack."
we have been in the 7-11 for twenty minutes
reading newsprint about bat boy and the
shocking! gay! love! affair! of someone
in hollywood, and jed jokes that if our local
paper was like that, we'd certainly be
headline news.

(page 11)
once time is lit, it will burn
whether or not you're breathing it in.
even after smoke becomes air
there is the memory of smoke.

i am seeing, as if by the light of a match,
a glimpse of my life
and having it feel right.

this will linger.

and then it moves on to another "chapter" type section called "tinder heart" about Mary, and so on and so forth. there are different types of verse writing style for each person, and i find this very creative on David Levithan's part. the stories also interconnect as all the characters mention the others in their stories.

i know this entry is probably unnecessarily long, but i just felt that i had to share these amazing pieces of writing with people like you who would appreciate it as much as i do.

Love Love,
Jae Jae