Something More Important
Somewhere Else
Dear Friend,
It’s a grey drizzly day. I’ve put the central heating on. The pipes are humming in the walls. The builders in the street are hammering away putting the finishing touches to our neighbour’s roof. Inside it’s quiet as long as I stay still. I’m looking after two dogs this week. Our latest house guest is the dog of another friend. My friend called me on Sunday, he’d decided to take his family on a road trip to Scotland, would I look after their dog while they’re away?
I wasn’t so keen but it was a case of if I say no, they don’t go so I said yes.
The dog is elderly and a unit. He’s fifteen years plus and just under forty kilos. A working Labrador, chocolate brown with two grey eyebrows. He’s an incredible energy for a dog of his age. Like a puppy.
If I get up now, he’ll follow me and badger for my attention.
I’ve Zara with me for the week too, so it’s me and the dogs. Thankfully they get along fine, although Zara was less than happy about losing her day bed to our new visitor.
He’s a lovely boy to be around, and coping well with being in a new environment and away from his family. At first I found it uncomfortable to have him stuck to me like glue, his great big tail knocking over the vase in the hall. Thankfully the vase just rolled around a bit and was fine.
I fed them both this morning and standing at the sink had this feeling of the day crowding into my mind. The calls, the editing, the writing, house maintenance - an upcoming trip to Italy. Doesn’t sound so bad when you say it like that.
A question formed in my mind “what’s more important than what you’re doing right now?”
I was standing by the sink sipping an espresso. The dogs excited by the filling of their bowls making little whimpers and the old boy panting and pacing. I’m not using his given name because it’s an unusual one and probably not the wisest choice my friend ever made. Let’s rename him Strength. Dogs respond to the sound of their names.
Strength just got told off by Zara, plonked himself with a thud at my feet.
The question brought me back out of the stream of my mind into the moment. That’s when I decided today would be a cosy home day. When we give the world our attention, in a loving way, the love is returned to us magnified.
It’s all an energy form.
Our emotions are energy. Our bodies. Our souls.
Soul energy is a higher frequency than solid matter. The higher the frequency the closer we come to the energy of peace and love and wisdom.
“What’s more important than what you’re doing right now?”
When I’m working on something it can take all of my focus, to the point where the environment around me becomes almost irrelevant. The thing is taking birth through me and I have to remind myself to come back to the world.
I’m talking about song writing, which I’ve so far not mentioned. I started writing songs when I was a pre-teen. It’s never left me. They come to you. Sometimes they come fully formed and that’s it. The song just needs to meet other musicians to find its resting form. Others come in fragments and over time they collect other fragments until they are whole.
This particular song came in fragments. A few lyrical phrases first, then a few days later an irresistible urge to thrash out some noisy electric guitar. It’s like the song is coaching you along. Switching over to acoustic guitar, playing a softer stripped down version the lyrics offer up more of themselves and the dynamics of the song emerge. My fingers start playing a new chord sequence that takes the song somewhere different before dropping back into the verse.
It’s like a riddle you’re making sense of.
When you think the song is as it is to be, the next phase is to work on it with a partner. They’ll pull it to pieces and then you put it back together again. Songs just keep evolving and their meanings change over time. I’m not sure there’s ever a definitive version, at least for the ones that come through me.
When I was in my twenties, they would be prophetic. Signalling a change I wasn’t aware of. The end of a relationship on a horizon I just couldn’t face.
Apart from the mess two dogs make and having my attention on something other than work, the thing that made me hesitant about looking after Strength is that Santy was his age when she became poorly and died.
Towards the end she would get restless, especially around 8pm in the evenings. I prefer not to revisit those days in my mind. We go through experiences and we learn from them. The lesson, over and over and over again is to love. Forgive and love. Forgive and love. Forgive and love and accept what is now as what is.
Everything changes.
“What’s more important than what you’re doing right now?”
Strength has climbed up onto the couch now and is sleeping.
I feel so much love for him and Zara and myself and you.
It’s a messy life. Things rarely go to plan. We’re all nursing disappointments and hurts, and today the weather is more like the herald of winter than spring.
And yet all around us is the energy of love.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey