Note by JRW, July 2003 AD: The following is an extract from a handwritten letter by Myatt, addressed to me. He dated it One Hot Sunny Day, Almost Mid-July.
One Hot Sunny Day, Almost Mid-July
A beautiful, hot, sunny day and only a few wisps of high white cirrus cloud lie below the blue dome of sky. There is no more work, today, now, and I have spent about an hour lazy - my flask of cider empty - lying in the shade of an Oak in this field of freshly cut hay, no breeze to even rustle the leaves above me; no roads - except two miles distant - and no people to assail me with their sounds, their feelings: to en-press upon me the patterns, the ways, the life, the harm, of that other un-wise world.
Thus, here, I am calm, able to be the belonging which I, we, are, should be, and thus it is that I, smiling, walk the short distance to where there is a small pond, down in a hollow by a hedge and shaded only in one part of one corner by one small Hawthorn bush. Behind the larger, blue, Dragonfly, the Ruddy Darter clings to a small half-submerged blade of grass. But the blue has the better perch - a tall Bull-rush, one among a group of three two-thirds towards the centre of this pond, and every few minutes, the blue flies up, to briefly circle a part of the water before returning to its bull-rush rest. Damsel-flies - a scintillating light-blue - circle, land, join together, land, around this water's edge.
There is a reason for the blue's wait. A smaller, darker, female arrives and with a loud buzzing of wings, they join to tumble, spin, fly until they break when she hovers toward one edge of the pond, dipping her lower abdomen into the water, again, again, again, there near where stems of grass rise, curved, up toward the Sun, breaking the surface tension of the water. The male blue circles, briefly hovers - as if watching, waiting - and she is gone, back into cover of bush, tree, long grass. He returns then to his perch, but only for a while. He, too is soon gone - where I cannot see - and it is not long before the female returns to perch, almost exactly - perhaps exactly - where he perched.
The Ruddy Darter has flown away, somewhere, and I wait, wait, wait until my legs become numb from the sitting-stillness and sweat falls down, many times, from my forehead to my face. For this July Sun is hot. Now, the she-blue circles, alighting from time to time on water-edge grass, before returning to her perch.
On the pond, a black whirly-gig beetle sails over the greeny surface - while, beneath, near where I sit, perched, watching, a myriad of small grey-things, with two front legs like paddles, dart, here, there, following, tussling with each other among some fallen dead twigs. Something, jet-black, oval and small - a beetle perhaps - briefly breaks the surface before swimming back down into the murky depths of the middle as a Water-boatman glides by atop the surface.
I wait, but still do not see the rare Ruddy Darter. It must have gone while I waited, distracted by the blue. The myriad small grey-things - twenty, thirty, more - have become ten as the Earth turned to move the Sun across my sky. Then only a few remain where I can see them.
There is a slight breeze, now, to break this silence brought by the few calling birds, so hot is the heat of this Sun. And it is the Sun - and thirst, hunger, numbness of limbs - which makes me to rise, pond-ripple slowly, to turn to walk with reluctance back toward that other world.
Having harmed nothing - except two stalks of grass, chewed - I sigh. There are no humans harming things, here: but for how much longer?
DW Myatt