The Flour Factory on St. Clair

I do get so down on myself from time to time. And it's usually about what I'm doing, and how I feel that it somehow doesn't measure up. And to what, and it's like today when Lizzie and Asa's mom came in for some reason and part of the experience was her updating me with everything her kids are doing andwhydopeopledothat how Lizzie is a famous artist in LA and Asa is working for a paper in the United Arab Emirates and how all I can think is how lonely it would be to be in those places. But how there is money, and status, and how to make your parents proud. But how you would be there in the Emirates and you would be so far from your family and I remember looking at his FB pictures one day when I was trying to remember, remember the girl you once were, the liberal girl who believed in peace and equality and freedom and all that fun stuff and it seemed so much the same. And that was fifteen years ago! Still smoking cigarettes with long hair standing in a sparse room modern art aloof in the corner morning light fading on cold coffee.

I don't care about the pursuit of ideas anymore, beyond the walls of my skull. The main thing, I have come to realize, for me, is my family. That it means something here, and that I am here. That I don't need something fancy and exotic for my parents to tell their friends I'm doing, or the money that goes along with it; just to allow my hands to be the machines they are, for my mind to switch over the way it does when the sirens come on. For me, there is nothing more noble. And the love of a good man. All of these innumberable little things. I am the luckiest. Titles are bandied about, Claudine with her effing articles that only serve to make you feel smaller, we watched the movie about Collinwood last night and the very last line he says, I think, is the reason the entire thing was filmed:

"Money, the job, it's nothing. Listen to me, I'm an old man, I know. Money comes, money goes. But to have someone to walk with... to have love.... that's everything."