Memory is very important,but its is not reliable.For some reason,i knew from being quite young that there is a connection between history and memory although that relationship will be complex and contested as history itself is and also so because memory is not reliable.
I suspect it is always selective.I note from even recent events that people who participate in something as simple as a meeting can come aware with radically different understandings of what has just happened. We forget,we mix,we muddle,we interpret and reinterpret and it will be affected by feelings and perspective.i used to think that until some time in the 1980s i had quite a strong hold on the detail and order of events that i myself had been involved in and that had occurred at varying distance from me.Since that time things have become much more foggy and unclear and i suspect more complex,as my head,like my house,fills with more stuff,and actually the stuff,some of which is kept as an aide memoire is nevertheless itself of limited value.
For the rest of this let me just try to focus on some observations about one thing.....bears.i will try to think chronologically,though i suspect my observations will probably appear somewhat random if not bizarre but never mind that.What provoked this line of thought,if it can be called that it that whilst making notes from my reading,i cam across a reference that pointed me in this direction,because i realise bears must be of some importance to me as they keep popping up,and sometimes indeed represent ideas and memories and perhaps other important things in my life.
One of the life-stories that my mother told me some years after the event was that i had taken over 53 hours to get born(she had been in labour all that time).This seems so much at variance with how things would be now that I'm not sure i believe it,but her point was something else:"slow then,and slow ever since!",although i am absolutely certain it was meant much more kindly than it reads now,or else why would i tell it!Eventually,this was one of the reasons i chose as a kind of nick name/nom de plume,"the bear"
Later i was given a"teddy bear",by my parents.i think before me it had been my mothers,so from the off,it was always battered and indeed bald-as the fur had been reduced back to the cloth,before e i ever got at it..i still have it,sitting in a bag hanging on a cupboard door.i don't actually remember what i ever called it,except in all my time as an adult-it has been and Edward.There seems to be a significance to this but i don't know what it is.
It does however remind me that there are psychological theories about this such bears in relation to child psychology and western culture,which partly involves that possessing and cuddling such a cuddly toy and perhaps bears or substitutes in particular is about how the toy substitutes for human contact,and might go some way to explain our"psychological"alienation and some of the oddities in"western"behaviours.This was highlighted for me,when i read a book by Morris Berman called "Coming to our Senses",which talks about a number of major shifts in attitudes to the human body at a number of key historical points.At some point the author observes that in some,indigenous/native cultures human contact is such that a child never touches the ground or leaves direct physical human contact until the child is at least 2 years old,and which has wider significance in creating a fully rounded human personality.
I was slow at picking the ability to read up too,i like to think because being introduced to reading via the Janet and John series of books,i was so bored,i wondered why i was bothering.Once i had"got it though"i remember reading every single Mary Plain book from the school library i could lay my hands on.Whilst i don't remember any of the actual stories what i do remember very strongly is that the main/leading character is(was?)a female,indeed mother bear.
I also remember from my childhood spending weekends with my grandmother,aunt and uncle.My aunt regularly played records on an old wind-up"gramophone"which included and introduction to Henry Halls "Teddy Bears Picnic".it remains imprinted on my memory,and brings tears of memory sometimes.Perhaps i would make it one of my 8 records to be taken to a desert island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZANKFxrcKU
Many years on,in my teens,i discovered first of all the attractions of the hippies,counterculture and alternative lifestyle.Amongst other things we published a duplicated magazine.One of the best covers of one issue featured the character who came to be known as "HARP bear"modelled onn the bears in the song"Teddy Bears Picnic"and framed from combining the name of our organisation,somewhat pretentiously called HARP/Havering Arts Research Project,quickly and later shortened to Harp 70 with the image from the song.
Later i spent a number of years trying to conduct a life living between the UK and USA.I had hoped to live over there continuously but life rarely runs in a straight line for me.the bears are in here somewhere too,because whilst i never saw one,i developed this idea that somehow or other,at least in a place like California,i would blunder into a"scrubby little bear".It never happened.
Once i had settled back in the UK,i returned amongst other things to involvement in the TGWU,primarily active in the National Voluntary sector Combine,as its national secretary for approximately 5 years.Once a month,i produced a mailing that went to about 50-100 people in and around the voluntary sector/white collar branches of the union.In this i would include minutes of and follow up on combine business,campaign pcampsin material,linked together with a kind of commentary writing as"the bear"
Over the years i have taken part in a number of guided meditations on courses or retreats.i have also undertaken self guided meditation alongside study and reading.some of these have explored either finding my own"questing beast"or familial beast.Sometimes this has related to Celtic or Arthurian themes/meditation practises.
In seeking what i will call a totemic or familial animal,what comes up repeatedly for me is the bear.one of the emblems of Arthur and the Pendragon family line is not just the red dragon,but also the bear!
What has interested me in this imagery is that the bear is an animal which appears to be slow in its movements,although that is not the case,and appears both cuddly,especially in the domesticated,child's cuddly toy,or in "cozy"pictures.This is far from the truth.The bear is not a good enemy to make-there have indeed been several incidents over recent years where having drifted into"bears territory"the bear asserts itself very much to human detriment,although this is not from a determination to attack,for most animals unless domesticated to the contrary seek to avoid human contact not least because neither our motives nor our habits are trustworthy,and we are indeed the most destructive creature on the planet.it simply reflects animals like bears seeking to protect either their young or their space,on which we as a species increasingly encroach.
d3/08072013
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