Havilah Vashti

This summer I was healthy. I did a musical. I went to the beach. I ate out with friends. I cussed in the grocery store. I did everything you're supposed to do in a summer.  Most of it was new to me. I was really lucky I didn't get sick, because the musical I was in (The Wizard of Oz) was really demanding of my energy. Two-hour rehearsals three days a week, ten-o-clock bedtimes, and tech week. Phewww, tech week.  Practices lasted up to four hours, and my bedtime was consistently two hours later than normal.  Then were the shows. Went great, yada yada. Saw lots of friends, family and otherwise in the audience. It was great. We had our last set of shows. People cried. Next day was the cast party. I had a sore throat. Day after the cast party I woke up with a cold. I've hardly been off the couch in three days.

On July 8th, I went with a group from my church to North Carolina for Mennonite Convention.  While I was there I had a lot of fun exploring the expansive hotel/convention center with my friends. I rode the elevators and escalators everywhere, got lots of free stuff, and watched Bluey for the first time.  Plus there were seminars to go, and karaoke parties, and hymn-sings in the Imperial Ballroom. (Yes, it was called the Imperial Ballroom. There were actually multiple Imperial Ballrooms, plus Victoria Ballrooms A B and C, and Guilford Ballrooms A through F. Or something. As one of the speakers at MennoCon said, "Don't quote me.") There were so many things to do inside the convention center that I actually didn't go outside at all for almost three days. And another thing: While I was in North Carolina, I had a birthday! One of the younger kids in my church youth group got the entire lunch room to sing to me, which totally caught me off guard. You’d think I would be mort...

I was doing some collage journaling today and I came across this thing I wrote when I was maybe eleven or twelve:      Lost      but nonexistent      Found      but unclaimed      Freedom      imprisoned

Last night I dreamed my best friend ignored me. I dreamed a pretty boy took a strand of my shining yellow hair and told me I was beautiful.

In my first post I talked a little about clichés . . . Here's something suspicious I wrote in my room on one of my poetry breaks: White Nikes I'm counting every glance you’re eyes are so blue, like pieces of the sky maybe if I fell into them, gravity couldn’t bring me back and I would fly and I would fly and I would fly Um . . . ew. That's been said a BILLION times by EVERYBODY.  I have so much fun with how icky this sounds. Like old play-doh, it's all dried up and smelly.  Sigh. Don't you just love clichés?  Maybe this next one's better—it's not so mushy and weird: 109 When August’s damp hand falls we shelter behind our fans gasping for air under our flimsy roofs but soon the plywood will give will be ground into the dirt leaving only the bare, raw skin, blood-soaked soil all around.  The smell of sweat and rotting flesh, the things we’ve lost, the decay that surrounds us hold sleep just out of reach— but we must keep moving,  keep slowly killing ourselves ...

I write a lot of short stories. A lot. There's just something so yummy about a story you can write in a few days then be done with FOREVER. But I'm lugging this one out and dusting it off just for you. You're welcome. This is something I wrote over a weekend in eighth grade. It might not make much sense and it's on the outrageous side of things, but that's kinda part of the fun. Also, it's not actually that short. This story is completely fictional, except for the parts that actually happened — I almost never write stories that don't have little anecdotes sprinkled throughout. I'm writing what I know, I guess. Every Lie My name is Karlene Dixon-Jobe.  I am fourteen years old. My favorite color is purple. My favorite food is bacon.  I’m originally from Wyoming, but when I was four we moved to New York City. We lived there and homeschooled for six years.  Next we moved in with my great aunt Marcelle and her boyfriend Percy. They lived out in Nevada, in the...

I'm starting a blog because I have a lot of writing and not a lot of ways to share it. I don't know if anybody will read it, but if they do that's great!! I will be using my blog to share short stories or other little things that I write or have written. Writing is my favorite thing ever, other than singing and eating cake. I do write some poetry, but I like to call it "little thoughts" instead. "Poetry" sounds like what high schoolers scribble in the back of their spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks about that one hot guy on the football team, but then burn in their thirties because it's too cliché.  And I'm not saying I think my "little thoughts" are never cliché. I sometimes write a thought that I'll open on my laptop just to admire — then after a day or two of gazing lovingly at my creation, I'll begin to realize it's just a mashup of several Kate Baer poems (I love love love!!), and I'll kind of shrivel up inside...