Gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail, learn how to use my hands,

[genny-duvall.livejournal.com]

Wednesday, August 4
Afternoon

We're havin' a Summer Sun Day next week. Gotta do somethin' different, I guess, to keep people comin' in. So the gates're all draped in yellow and I'm makin' pictures of suns to put on all of the rides and booths. Some of 'em are just paint, and some of 'em I put tears in so they've got rays that glow and shimmer like the real sun.

It ain't enough. It ain't never enough.

I gotta do somethin'. I want to move is what I want. It ain't right that we're comin' on more'n a year here! It's summer, and we should be goin' north to them towns all full of pine trees where we set up on land that used to be farms next to lil white churches. Not everybody cares. Momma likes it here. She likes sittin' still.
But I feel like we should be goin' somewhere and we ain't.

I should be doin' somethin' big and I ain't.

Maybe it's because I ain't got nobody to be a priestess to no more. Maybe it's just that I want to move on.

Used to be that some nights I'd go to the corner of my room where I keep all the best pictures, the ones I made look the most real, and look at 'em. Now I don't 'cause lots of 'em just make me sad. That's where I put the pictures of Nu and Abzu - tore 'em right out of my sketchbook 'cause it hurt too much to look at 'em and put 'em way in the back. All the paintings I done while I was all wrong in the head are there, too. Don't wanna look at 'em.

Put the painting of Zann and the Carousel there too, 'cause it makes me sad to think 'bout her not bein' all the way right. I helped her, and I made it so's she didn't have to see the world wrong no more, but it still didn't fix it all, and it didn't make us right. We don't talk like we used to. We don't hardly talk at all, 'cause what'd we say? We smile and stuff, and say hey when we see each other in the cooktent, but that's it.

Still makes me happy to see her actin' all normal-like. She's still goin' into town to see all the friends she made there, 'cause it's Zann and she's got a hundred friends. She's still jokin' with all of the family folk and workin' on her machines, too.

I finish another sun, all shiny and flat, and grab my sketchbook. I gotta get out.

I go down to the river, down to my favorite spot, where I can see the river stretchin' far off into the distance, and I start to sketch.

[Open to Zann]