Clouds before sunshine

Quite often as I traverse a month, the money we receive in payment for services is hard to assess on a daily basis. You have a day like today where the only thing you receive is a check for $27.00 and you wonder if you will be able to meet all of your obligations. Everything looks dark and stormy and dreary. You sit in your chair and consider pitching it all to become a cowboy or a fisherman or an itinerant musician playing for change in the underground hallways of a subway station. You go home and mope around the house and your wife and child wonder what the hell you want to continue doing the things you do to make a living. The dog hides in the kennel cage, trying to avoid your wrath. Usually, the dog will lay a tender pile of poop or a warm pond of urine somewhere to acknowledge that the man in charge is in need of something. That something is questionable and especially so when you consider the fevered mind of the dog cogitating in the dark cage. Why would he do such a thing? Is it a sign of confirmation that you are in charge or is it just a reflex response to the situation? Who knows? Do I need to take him to a dog psychologist? Would it matter?

The nice thing about it is that if you keep plodding along and try to make it work, the money will usually dribble in. Maybe not in a way that meets your complete satisfaction, but at least complete enough to keep the ball rolling. It reminds me of the wisdom of Beowulf: if a man's courage is good he will survive the struggles of life. It makes me think of The Thirteenth Warrior, the movie made out of the Ken Follett Book which retold the Beowulf story. I remember the scene at the end when the dying Beowulf sits and waits for death, after destroying the army of the bear people. He looks so resigned and satisfied with his fate.

Perhaps, I will leave this afternoon, open a cool beer, and bask in the cool, air-conditioned darkness of the living room. I will contemplate the things that went wrong and the things that worked right and close my eyes in the resignation which will settle my beating heart.