Note by JRW: The following is an extract from a handwritten letter by Myatt, addressed to me. He dated it The Last Week of March.
The work of the day having ended, I sit against a fence a little sheltered from the cooling wind. It has been a day of rain, then sun, and it is ending with clearing skies. There is time now to reflect on various things as I drink what remains of the green tea in my flask. I can hear the road - one stream, three hedges and two fields distant - and I do not envy the people speeding along in their vehicles from somewhere, to somewhere else. For I can sit with a notebook balanced on my knee and write another letter. I see things they cannot; I hear what they miss; I feel the weather. I feel the coolness of the wind, and the warmth of the sun on my hands and face; I see that the hawthorn buds have burst, and soon the slight pale green of leaves which shows will grow to deepen in colour; I watch the clouds as they move and change; I hear the song of many birds: Robin; Blackbird; Sparrow...
It is good to rest, like this, after a day of work. There is a definite satisfaction, for there will be money in exchange for the toil, and with the money comes not only a self-respect but also a certain security of time and place: food, a place to stay; maybe even a little self-indulgence, such as a pint of the local cider. And perhaps a little saved for the time when a new pair of boots, or a shirt or trousers, will be needed. So I am fortunate indeed. For there are millions in the world hungry, homeless, unable to afford new clothes.
There really is very little needed if we are to live, happy, without causing undue suffering to others. Somewhere to dwell; hopefully someone to share that dwelling with, to love and give love; work enough to buy the food, the clothes, needed; a certain time - but not too much - to reflect, and watch the sky, the clouds, the stars; perhaps some children to raise and teach in a slow natural way, through example.
Who - apart from you, perhaps - would have thought I would write words such as this? Yes, I have changed, grown, these last years, as once you hoped when I turned again back to those other political things you then, in our Summer of knowing, knew nothing about. Changed, but too late, now, to change what was: to change how that Summer ended.... I am now, in one way, returned to the person you knew all those years ago; the person you remembered. Yet the calm, the inner peace, known then, shared, is deeper, born from so many diverse experiences, so much sorrow seen, known, in the years that have passed since then. And also because of the past years of hard, outdoor work of the kind there is, it seems, little of, these days. Such work has rooted me; slowed down my thoughts, given me the perspective of Nature. Not the unreal, romantic kind of perspective - some artist observing from his window or out on a ramble - but the close contact that each day brings when one is out in all weathers for eight, nine or ten hours or more hours a day, working with one's hands.
This rooting, this slowness of being, means that I have very little desire to travel again; to even stray from this one rural area. Most of what I need is here, within walking distance; a world within the world.
Thus, I know certain fields near where I live in great detail. The soil; the hedges; the trees; the life that lives within or passes through or overhead. I see, hear, experience, feel, this small part of the Earth change with each passing month, and because I see and feel this, and live within the time of such small changes, I am at home where my feet can take me. The hedge, the tree, the forgotten pond, the neglected one acre strip, the sky above, are like friends, a secret world.
Yet there is still that unfulfilled, often sad, longing for someone, who understands, to share what has become my simple life. Recently, I believed - hoped - I had found her..... But poems, words, could not change things. I respected her choice, made before we got to know each other, but her decision to remain with the person who was her choice was, and is, hard for me. Should I have strived, passionate, and rent them asunder? No, for I felt that would have been dishonourable. There is some solace, for the moment at least, in work, in more work. How many millions of people have felt like this, thousand year upon thousand year? Have we learnt anything?
But what still greatly surprises me - apart from my own foolish innocent hope in matters of love - is that things in the world are as they are; that a lot people are as they are. Things and people do not have to be what they are. We can control ourselves; we can empathize. We can do the honourable thing. But most of all we can will to be more than we are: we can consciously continue our evolution in a positive way, which means striving to avoid harming other people and the other life with which we share this planet. We can and could create a noble, free society, based as such a society must be on the concept, the ideal, of personal honour. Instead of evolving ourselves, and our societies, we have regressed, creating impersonal modern States. We have lost, it seems, the slow rooted being, the natural thinking, that comes from staying, dwelling, toiling with our hands and ignoring what is beyond where we cannot walk in one day of walking.
But I have digressed - or rather, regressed, to old, worn, polemics. Must be the lack of cider.....
DW Myatt