Sevierville

Already I feel as if my soul is being sucked out. This place does that to a person. I feel as if I’ve been placed in purgatory with every piece of my car I unload and job application I fill out. It is so much more than hate I have for this place—it’s fear. As I listen to a neighbor’s morning alarm go off (at 10AM, I may add), I realize that I’ve been up for a few hours and done nothing. That’s what my life will be like if I stay in this place. I keep telling myself that this is just another summer break, that I’m biding my time till August, but the truth is that it’s not. College is done. I won’t return to Lee in the fall. While I plan to move to Atlanta and live with Dana, I’m afraid of what this place does to a person. I saw my brother yesterday, and it appears as if he’s given up. He told me that he’s realized that it doesn’t matter where you are because it’s all the same. I don’t want that to happen to me. He used to want to get out of here. I don’t want that to happen to me. I can’t let that happen to me. If it does, my art is lost—the loss of that would be too much. All these telephone wires and cars and apartments—they offend my sense of purpose. Such destruction and death we have wrought for the sake of money. Such an evil thing. A piece of paper or cloth and people murder for it. It is ridiculous the emphasis put on possessions. Watching a mother finch teach her baby finches to hunt for food, I realize how much of joke humans are. So much potential destroyed by greed. Tis disheartening.