About Those Rapids

Dear friend,

What I thought I might do today was walk the dogs and keep reading Nexus. But that changed when I saw a message on my phone from Pablo.

I’d agreed to help him with the scaffolding. We’re only halfway through it.

I wanted to get out of it.

I wanted to read.

Loving the worlds spun by great authors—you learn as much, maybe more, than you would if all you had was your own world to rattle around in.
But we do have our worlds. And a promise is a promise.

I swore a bit. Turned over a few potential sods in my mind. Nothing but worms and bottle caps—not even a decent half-truth.

So that’s it. A new direction for the day, decided.

We walked Zara and Dippa. This time of year, both dogs need toweling clean afterward—Dippa more so, with his curly fur. He’s a mud sponge.

I had to give him a hose down in the garden. He’s so sweet and patient, drinking from the hose and hopping from one paw to the other, trying to dodge the cold spray.

With the dogs taken care of, I sat with a cup of tea, then pulled on my blue boiler suit and knackered work trainers. It was cold today, so I layered my Irish wool cardigan under a padded shirt, tugged on my watch cap, and speed-walked over to Pablo’s.

He was up on the scaffolding. Grey metal tubes against a grey London sky.

We warmed up with a coffee and took our time taking down the high tubes. Pablo is recovering from the flu, and the cold was getting to him more than usual. We called time when he could no longer feel his fingers.

There was more going on, though.

His chocolate lab is unwell and had developed a huge cyst on his jaw that had ballooned up over the last few weeks. Antibiotics hadn’t helped, and it was clear the dog needed urgent attention.

We tried a few different vet options and finally settled on a vet that had saved Santy’s life one time when she got really sick and had to stay in the hospital for ten days.

I left Pablo as he and his family piled into the car for the thirty-minute drive to the vet’s.

I could stop here.

Isn’t it enough for one day?

But our lives are so full, so rich.

Each individual moment, lived by each one of us—when you multiply it by the number of lives on earth—it’s so abundantly rich your mind can’t process that order of information.

And then we went to the Harold Pinter Theatre to see Slava’s Snow Show,
a piece the great Russian clown has been refining and reworking since 1993.

We laughed with delight.

A lovely moment was when a little kid started to get the show—laughing and clapping; the energy caught like a bushfire, lighting up the audience. It was beautiful, poignant, and playful.

On the way home, I spoke with Pablo, and the dog was home and recovering from a general anaesthetic. He’s been operated on and is woozy but eating.

Now I’m racing the clock to get this to you before the clock chimes midnight.

Those rapids.

The fast, choppy waters.

The rocks that look like you won’t make it—but you do.

The only thing is to accept that the waters are rough.

Things are moving fast.

Faster than I can recall.

Hang on in there, and make up reasons to love the people around you.

Love is the energy that transforms us.

That’s another way of saying, Love will see us through.

Imperfectly.

Messily.

Humanely.

Till Tomorrow

Love

Mikey