Note by JRW: The
following is an
extract from a handwritten letter by Myatt, addressed to me. He dated
it One Day in Early Spring.
A Simple Pleasure
There is a lovely, simple, pleasure here in this field. Spring is most
certainly here - in the meadow fields, seedlings of the late Spring
flowers push up through the tufts of grass whose frost-bitten ends are
joined by shoots of new growth. Already some flowers bloom in the
grass: there, a Dandelion; there: almost two circles of Daisies. And,
to compliment the calls and songs of other birds, the loud repeating
call of the Parus major.
It is good to be here, with an unobstructed view of the sky, and I
watch the clouds, borne as they are on a still cool breeze that begins
to chill my hands, a little. But there is Sun, warm, when the
altocumulus breaks. On the horizon in the North, beyond the tall old
Oak, small Cumulus clouds drift toward the hills, ten miles distant.
Thus am I again - for these moments - at peace with myself, this world,
listening as I do to a large flock of Starlings who chatter among
themselves in the trees across from the drainage ditch, there by the
copse of Ash, Oak, and a few young Beech.
It has been a long journey, to reach here - sitting peaceful in a
field, aware of the life that lives around me and of which I am but one
small, causal, mortal part. A journey through many lands, cultures and
faiths; through deserts, over hills and mountains; across seas and
lakes; along rivers and many, many paths. A long journey which I do not
even now know if it has ended, or even if all of me desires it to end.
For yes there is peace, stillness, here, and I am briefly one, sitting,
standing, leaning, and balanced between land, clouds and sky, knowing
the sadness that kept me plodding on often against what seemed my own
will. A sadness born of mistakes; of seeing, experiencing, causing,
suffering, breaking down as that suffering did my own arrogance until
the half-remembered often suppressed empathic truths came forcibly
back, unable to be forgotten or covered-up again. No lies to save me.
Work, yes there must be work: toil enough to keep that balance. And
work with these my hands, outdoors where lives the silence that I love
as I feel the weather, changing, bringing thus an empathic living for
me, in me, and for this life that lives around, emanating as it does in
this grass, those trees, the clouds, the soil, the water, those
flowers, the very sky itself.
But I fear for this world I have found - for fields such as this with
their sights and sounds brought by their smallness bounded only by
hedge and tree. For there is noise, around, encroaching; human-made,
machine, noise; there is development, around, encroaching, destroying
the life that is this life, this being, this living and this peace. And
there is thus even more sadness, within me, because of such things.
So far - to find so little so great in its living. So far - to find so
much being destroyed.