It is 10:11. Poor Howard sits alone in the bed his father sleeps in when he comes back from his highway runs. The room is quiet, and somehow better than his desk, and yet he wonders why he sits here, in this town, in this bed, at this hour, writing about it.
His intention today was to get somewhere. Howard's destination was to finish his website (puke) and present himself gloriously to the world (here I am - Buy Me!) as a competent professional in his field, (which will be left out to protect his privacy. hah.) The problem is, Po' doesn't want to make television shows, even good ones. But he must make more money. Yes. More money. And the avenues he has chosen in the past year, oysterman, lawn care guy, low budget copywriter and low-paid municipal servant, well, these are not working. Po's wife is not impressed. And neither is Howard himself.
And yet Howard seems to have come to a pretty pass. And he has been here before. The pass is familiar, the path well-trodden, the obstacles the same. And though Howard has traveled many, many revolutions around the sun since he fist came to this pass, he knows now that he must traverse it, and do so boldly, or die here, metaphorically. What is Howard yammering about?
Well, art mainly. Howard wants nothing more than to wake in the morning, greet his yerba mate gourd, kiss his wife and son, and go out to his studio to play and sing to the world. He sees himself, this troubador, Howard SEES THE TROUBADOR, but he can't somehow become the TROUBADOR HE SEES. And somehow, the TROUBADOR HE SEES is confounded by the obstacle of filthy mammon. Money. Green. Bread. Scratch. Dough. Etc, Etc. And Howard has been here, in this god-forsaken pass one too many times.
Oh yes, he has read "The Power of Intention" and "Do what you love and the money will follow"
and seen the goldarned BIG GENIE in "The Secret." Yes, he has visualized himself as the TROUBADOR, he has made little pictures of the house he will have when he is the TROUBADOR, and he has prayed for help to become the TROUBADOR, and he knows he actually is the......... But always, just when conditions seem ripe, a big fat bill comes knocking on the door and says, "HEY HOWARD! PAY ME! I'M HUNGRY HOWARD!"
It's funny, in a very sad way, how this happens. Howard wonders if it is sometimes simply a wall that must be broken down, a psychological disease that must be healed, a childhood wound on the psyche which must be overcome. Howard doesn't know. He feels it unfair. It chides him and angers him and galls him and embitters him and then he says, "now stop it Howard, breathe, be grateful, give thanks, accept your life as it is, and so forth." Yes. Howard talks to himself in soothing tones very often, to calm the other voices which compete for the stage in his head. He does, and then he looks around him and realizes he is not in a war zone and says, okay, chill out Howard. You are pretty lucky. But this doesn't last long.
Howard's computer is running down. It is 10:39. Tomorrow he will go to his municipal job and do his best to mend fences, avoid rattlesnakes, dig holes and wear his Carharts. He will survive to fight another day. He will keep alive THE TROUBADOR HE SEES. He will sing, in his soul, what song he can, and look up at the blue colorado sky when he is not looking down at the red earth and he will wonder at the magnificence and absurdity of it all. Selah.
