Note by JRW: The
following is an extract from a handwritten letter by Myatt, addressed to me.
By A Hedge One September
Here, in my rural home again, I both know and feel that it is all too
easy to preach, to assume, to be consumed by a passion for living that
detracts from the empathy I have learned. All too easy to preach far
too much. I certainly have in the long years of my preaching made many
many mistakes as I sometimes let that Faustian desire for living, that
intoxication by numinous life, lead me, too much, and occasionally, lead me too far.
So, to answer your question - no, I should not be some "guide", nor
even some type of teacher. Only one example, one possible example,
among
many; one small inspiration to begin what might be another's life-long
journey, to be inspired by and then discarded as personal learning
arises
from the worlds of experience which arise from that plunging into life
which all artists of a causal-presencing feel and perchance come to
understand...
For me in my own journey, honour has been both a liberation and at
times a difficult duty, especially in the last few years. For I have
sworn too many oaths on my honour these past seven years, making my
life complicated when it should have been simple given the knowledge,
the understanding, I had acquired, or believed I had acquired. But -
that damned Faustian feeling sometimes got in the way! Such oaths, of
personal allegiance, gave me a duty which led me to do some things
which others have seen as contradictory, but which on some other
non-causal level were or maybe part of one causal presencing in this
present Aeon. Such duties were born of honour, and in truth such duties
were not always what one feels in one's heart, one's very being.
Perhaps only the honourable, the really noble, will understand what I
mean here, and why I returned, again - and again after one leaving then
another - to that other world so distant from here.
How inconvenient it was to be reminded, sometimes, by a certain person
or persons, of such a duty which took me away, often in both body and
spirit, from these rural places that I love - at least for a while. But
now I have, at last, no such pledges, and so can just be that which I
became
through experience and error, a me which is now and hopefully will
remain private. So many times when I wished only to stay, to not to
say, or do; and so many times these last few years of a returning
contradicting some words of mine but yet fulfilling a pledge, of honour.
Here, the overgrown hedgerows are heavy again with their Autumnal fruit
such as berries and Damsons - food for birds, insects, small mammals,
and beings such as me. But already the machines and their servants are
out - cutting, flailing, the fruits, future buds, and destroying the
health, the very life, of these old living beings. Such excuses from
such servants; such a lack of empathy, every year, year following year,
in both the Spring and Autumn. What am I to do but feel and write words
such as these?
There were times, many times, when I was quite optimistic about our
human future; about people changing, evolving, being empathic, using
their will to change themselves through developing reason and being
honourable. But now? I am not so sure as I was. What good has all that
preaching done, what have all those words and deeds achieved? A
misunderstanding of me, by many - that is certain. But that, it seems,
is the nature of this living on this planet which is still our only
home. Thus I content myself with watching those clouds,
wind-rushed, on the horizon there which frame this almost equinoxal
September sky of Earth's life-giving blue. A feast of insects, in the
warm Sun, whose brief lives are Swallow-taken as those birds skim over
the meadows here, feeding, feeding, feeding before their late leaving.
And
I? I am still, sitting on the still damp grass: so still and downwind
that the dog Fox slinks by, unseeing, unknowing, of me. To where does
he go? Perhaps to lurk, to wait, to kill, again. Already these past
four months the Farm has lost four ducks, a dozen chickens, killed.
Shall I then shoot to slay to save such food-producing life? Or let
this one wild life to be?
Who am I to know, to answer? And yet the Sun is warm...
So I am reminded, once again, of how words so often fail - and how my
breathing, my being, my knowing, are only one part of that which is,
which in its own very being, lives. Hence the answer here to this is to simply sit,
in this warming Sun, by this centuries old hedge, while a fly lands
upon my arm - bare in this warmth - to clean itself and its wings.
Thus, and yet again, I am One, here, returned, at peace. Often, on a
returning to this place, there would be tears, burgeoning, as I walked
these fields, and I would know how foolish I had been to leave, albeit
briefly, exchanging this for some momentary Faustian desire, some duty
born of honour and allegiance. For I know every tree, every hedge,
every pattern and patina of every field, through every Season. So many
hours sitting on the meadow grass, on an old fallen branch, or by one
of these ponds. So many hours sleeping or just being warmed in the warm grass
while the causal world continued as it continued, often often bereft of
honour, of empathy, of reason: if so full of passion, often far beyond
one being's control. So many hours here transformed to so many words to
bring so little understanding, in me...
Will this really be the last missive, from me? I do not, in truth, know - knowing, or rather, feeling, that it should be.