let me be clear about one or two things:
first of all,i am nothing special,except in the sense that ALL life is precious and that we all tread a unique path,a unique journey from which we gather experiences and hopefully a little wisdom,and a few other important things too.none of this,i hope is false modesty,but i hope is a rational realism.i am just a"bloke",a man.One amongst billions of other people,most of whom i believe are trying to get on as best they can,doing the best they can to lead a decent life,help each other when we can and"live and let live".i hope i am humble in that,not least in placing some controls on my ability to be arrogant,which i hope is one of the things about me that may have mellowed as i have got older.
there is nothing intrinsically important or special about my opinions either.i am not a genius,i am not even clever.i hope it has the value of experience in which we can all and any of us learn from each other,not least how similar and different we are to each other-a confirmation of just how much we have in common,whilst confirming that your and my road or pilgrimage through life cannot,as material beings-having some kind of solidity about us,i suppose,cannot be exactly the same.
at the risk of contradicting myself,it does have value as experience and hopefully some wisdom-not my own but learned and collected from life or those genuinely greater than me-and i don't mean names or celebrities,stars or intellects necessarily.at another level,it seems to me we live such atomised,alienated and often isolated lives that it is easy to be both intimidated and silenced by that wider life.it too has ben privatised,even from ourselves.it reduces us to lacking self confidence and daring not to speak at least in this culture.working class people in particular seem to learn what is not true,that they have no voice,no opinion,no talent-that we are reduced to our labour.i do not believe nor accept that to be the case,though for me"evidence"that we are social beings is inherent in the reality that we need each other to encourage each other to be confident.i speak,i write in that effort and that belief.in addition,as a man(i do't like the dichotomy,i prefer a spectrum or continuity of gender identity,but that is another issue)i feel men do not speak out or share enough of ourselves or some of the issues that confront or affect us.so i speak out on that too.
i learned a long time ago,that sometimes,i suspect quite often,in situations where change is potentially quite limited it might be enough to learn that our neighbour,friend,comrade,even the stranger next to us shares some of the experience we are going through is if not enough,then at least a good start.despite some of us being still in control of much of the world,that has a price for us,and especially those exerting less rather than more power and control(i do not deny that most if not all men will have some power and greater in relation to other human beings).some of us feel uncomfortable with that power.many of us are socialised in particular ways which render us silent or at least inarticulate about our situation.some are silenced partially or entirely.we also self censor.i write,comment,speak in that context.
the rest,i hope will speak for itself...
d1/16092013
Monday, 16 September 2013
Sunday, 8 September 2013
Fraternal Greetings to the Revolutionary Socialists Students Societies and their National Conference
i regret that i am now where i wanted and intended to be today,especially following my particular invitation.i will not bore comrades with a detailed explanation;suffice to say deteriorating health and disability,combined with it being"just one of those weekends"contributed.
i was only aware at all that the Conference was about to take place a few days ago,although i have been aware for some months of the existence of the Revolutionary Socialist Students,at least since i learned,that they were the phoenix that arose from the fire of the crisis inside the SWP in late 2012-early 2013.I also detect that there are students from other revolutionary socialist currents along with their might i call tem parent organisations too.For what my opinion is worth,i think this is entirely healthy and hope that the organisation will continue to involve and actively organise many from a variety of revolutionary socialist traditions.I consider it is not just necessary that socialists talk to each other in such difficult times,because i really do believe that if we do not then,if we do not stand together,we will fall apart.Not that unity or working together should be at any price,but i have begun to think that a multi-thread organisation is to be positively welcomed,and that we must seek new or at least renewed ways to talk to and work together.
i cannot know if there is anything special or particular to my invitation to attend,which makes my regret particular as i have been unable to attend.i want to note the welcoming and open attitude of whoever is behind the page/invitation of facebook and the website,as well as to particular comrades who contacted me to reinforce that welcome and to provide further information.
i think the invitation arose out of some comments i made that i intended to write a piece on what i see and experience as a deep-laid and indeed increasing level of disrespect in the media,in what passes for public debate and i'm almost certain amongst our so-called political class,and particularly unfortunately amongst too many older people.
i feel particularly strongly about this.i had a"good",though i do not mean privileged upbringing,and grew up feeling that i wanted to both share and spread that experience,as i saw from quite young that mine was not the sort of experience i saw or learned about happening around me.All of that was one influence which led me to spend around 40 years as a social worker.i like to think i have always continued and developed an at least open attitude to young people.i became a student at a polytechnic when i was 19 years old and undertook a degree alongside a professional qualification over 4 years.Whilst the experience was not perfect,both at the time and particularly now i look back and consider it to have been a fantastic experience,during the better time of the post-war "social contract"which might be said to have been overarched by the "welfare state"-with all its very real faults and problems,but which for too many years now,is not being renegotiated-but is being emptied,thrown away and destroyed.
i am now approaching 60 years old,and have been early medically retired for some 18 months.i like to
think i am still i touch with m open attitude,if not with the minutiae and detail of their lives,although i am also the father of two young daughters both of whom have or are about to enter tertiary education,with all its problems for them and indeed for us.
we have struggled together with the variety of complexities around student finance.i watch my eldest daughter deal with both having to work whilst undertaking study at a level well beyond what was required of me some 40 years ago.
These are all things i can write about in more detail and effect,i hope at another time.
Now my youngest is about to start,but her difficulties are not just repeats of earlier experience,nor a reflection that the two of them are undertaking very different courses.
My youngest daughter is going to her second choice university.As results came out,i heard not just the usual stories,more of which in a moment but several other,frankly disturbing accounts.These include that having had the"opportunity"to resit,to improve grades over their A level and other course programmes,"the regime"(i refuse to call it a government)had used the opportunity,in fact to further downgrade where retakes on say one paper/course allowed/instructed exam boards to remark and regrade and prior achievement by a student.Where instructions specifically to mark down some courses,this effectively makes any retake or further effort counterproductive.i also heard of occassions when students had surpassed grades required only to find offers of places withdrawn.
When my daughter visited a certain university,prospective new students were given promise of accommodation.That promise was repeated in several places and forms.Until the place had actually been offered!The promise has been broken,which has caused my daughter considerable distress and anxiety,and us as a family a whole range of further difficulties.Whilst we think we have resolved this it leads me to ask and surmise
*.How much of this is going on?
*.The university will still charge its full fees,and it has broken its contract/promise!It seems we live even more in a society where the ordinary amongst us have less recourse set against a greater expectation of our own compliance alongside the reality that"they"make the laws/rules,change them whenever and as they wish and both without penalty let alone expectation that they comply or even that the law applies to them.
*.This also leaves students,families and carers even more powerless.The students themselves are being further marginalised and discounted,and rendered even more precarious(as per precariat).This is before they actually start their courses or studentships?So where is the NUS or the NUSS or indeed any campaign in this?
For what it is worth,our family have started talking about militant action and occupation to make its stick!
Last but not least,is the general issue that every year when results come out,whatever school and other students do they face negative press for not working hard enough or for exams being too easy,so that students can never see themselves as a group in a positive light,even if their individual performance is excellent.This to me,is shameful.To this add,the more recent coverage of"grade inflation",although i am certain the issue may or may ot have been present for longer.
i do not know whether any of this is within the compass of concerns of the wider student body,let alone in the mix of campaigns of the student bodies union(the NUS).i intend to explore further,so would welcome any help or comments.i am particularly exercised by the disrespect shown to young people which clearly has material consequences.
To return to wider issues;simply to say,i honour the initiative of the Revolutionary Socialist Students.In so far as the initiative has come from SWSS members who either resigned or were expelled from the SWP,it is impressive that they have not simply at least partially recovered from that damaging experience but have gone on,i am sure with others to establish a new ititiative it seems virtually without the support of a wider,parent body eg SP and Socialist Students,labour Party and what in my day was NOLS/National Organisation of Labour Students,Communist Students or indeed SWSS!i cannot pass up the opportuntity to make the jibe that SWSS has indeed shown itself to be a"swizz",in which many must feel cheated by being treated as a stage army who count for nothing.
That is neither my experience nor my attitude.Whilst students because of their role and place in the wider society may not be able to be the motor and determinant of either class warfare or socialist society,they can certainly be the detonators as they showed once more in 2010,and being realistic about the possibilities is no reflection on the talent or energies that any successful road to socialism needs.
It is is that context,that i,just one of many committed both to my class and to a revolutionary socialist future both greet the Conference and the life of the Revolutionary Socialist Students but offer whatever limited help and support i can give.
Fraternally
paul summers
(member of ISN/international Socialist Network,and writer,LOSTbutnotreturning)
d1/08092013
i was only aware at all that the Conference was about to take place a few days ago,although i have been aware for some months of the existence of the Revolutionary Socialist Students,at least since i learned,that they were the phoenix that arose from the fire of the crisis inside the SWP in late 2012-early 2013.I also detect that there are students from other revolutionary socialist currents along with their might i call tem parent organisations too.For what my opinion is worth,i think this is entirely healthy and hope that the organisation will continue to involve and actively organise many from a variety of revolutionary socialist traditions.I consider it is not just necessary that socialists talk to each other in such difficult times,because i really do believe that if we do not then,if we do not stand together,we will fall apart.Not that unity or working together should be at any price,but i have begun to think that a multi-thread organisation is to be positively welcomed,and that we must seek new or at least renewed ways to talk to and work together.
i cannot know if there is anything special or particular to my invitation to attend,which makes my regret particular as i have been unable to attend.i want to note the welcoming and open attitude of whoever is behind the page/invitation of facebook and the website,as well as to particular comrades who contacted me to reinforce that welcome and to provide further information.
i think the invitation arose out of some comments i made that i intended to write a piece on what i see and experience as a deep-laid and indeed increasing level of disrespect in the media,in what passes for public debate and i'm almost certain amongst our so-called political class,and particularly unfortunately amongst too many older people.
i feel particularly strongly about this.i had a"good",though i do not mean privileged upbringing,and grew up feeling that i wanted to both share and spread that experience,as i saw from quite young that mine was not the sort of experience i saw or learned about happening around me.All of that was one influence which led me to spend around 40 years as a social worker.i like to think i have always continued and developed an at least open attitude to young people.i became a student at a polytechnic when i was 19 years old and undertook a degree alongside a professional qualification over 4 years.Whilst the experience was not perfect,both at the time and particularly now i look back and consider it to have been a fantastic experience,during the better time of the post-war "social contract"which might be said to have been overarched by the "welfare state"-with all its very real faults and problems,but which for too many years now,is not being renegotiated-but is being emptied,thrown away and destroyed.
i am now approaching 60 years old,and have been early medically retired for some 18 months.i like to
think i am still i touch with m open attitude,if not with the minutiae and detail of their lives,although i am also the father of two young daughters both of whom have or are about to enter tertiary education,with all its problems for them and indeed for us.
we have struggled together with the variety of complexities around student finance.i watch my eldest daughter deal with both having to work whilst undertaking study at a level well beyond what was required of me some 40 years ago.
These are all things i can write about in more detail and effect,i hope at another time.
Now my youngest is about to start,but her difficulties are not just repeats of earlier experience,nor a reflection that the two of them are undertaking very different courses.
My youngest daughter is going to her second choice university.As results came out,i heard not just the usual stories,more of which in a moment but several other,frankly disturbing accounts.These include that having had the"opportunity"to resit,to improve grades over their A level and other course programmes,"the regime"(i refuse to call it a government)had used the opportunity,in fact to further downgrade where retakes on say one paper/course allowed/instructed exam boards to remark and regrade and prior achievement by a student.Where instructions specifically to mark down some courses,this effectively makes any retake or further effort counterproductive.i also heard of occassions when students had surpassed grades required only to find offers of places withdrawn.
When my daughter visited a certain university,prospective new students were given promise of accommodation.That promise was repeated in several places and forms.Until the place had actually been offered!The promise has been broken,which has caused my daughter considerable distress and anxiety,and us as a family a whole range of further difficulties.Whilst we think we have resolved this it leads me to ask and surmise
*.How much of this is going on?
*.The university will still charge its full fees,and it has broken its contract/promise!It seems we live even more in a society where the ordinary amongst us have less recourse set against a greater expectation of our own compliance alongside the reality that"they"make the laws/rules,change them whenever and as they wish and both without penalty let alone expectation that they comply or even that the law applies to them.
*.This also leaves students,families and carers even more powerless.The students themselves are being further marginalised and discounted,and rendered even more precarious(as per precariat).This is before they actually start their courses or studentships?So where is the NUS or the NUSS or indeed any campaign in this?
For what it is worth,our family have started talking about militant action and occupation to make its stick!
Last but not least,is the general issue that every year when results come out,whatever school and other students do they face negative press for not working hard enough or for exams being too easy,so that students can never see themselves as a group in a positive light,even if their individual performance is excellent.This to me,is shameful.To this add,the more recent coverage of"grade inflation",although i am certain the issue may or may ot have been present for longer.
i do not know whether any of this is within the compass of concerns of the wider student body,let alone in the mix of campaigns of the student bodies union(the NUS).i intend to explore further,so would welcome any help or comments.i am particularly exercised by the disrespect shown to young people which clearly has material consequences.
To return to wider issues;simply to say,i honour the initiative of the Revolutionary Socialist Students.In so far as the initiative has come from SWSS members who either resigned or were expelled from the SWP,it is impressive that they have not simply at least partially recovered from that damaging experience but have gone on,i am sure with others to establish a new ititiative it seems virtually without the support of a wider,parent body eg SP and Socialist Students,labour Party and what in my day was NOLS/National Organisation of Labour Students,Communist Students or indeed SWSS!i cannot pass up the opportuntity to make the jibe that SWSS has indeed shown itself to be a"swizz",in which many must feel cheated by being treated as a stage army who count for nothing.
That is neither my experience nor my attitude.Whilst students because of their role and place in the wider society may not be able to be the motor and determinant of either class warfare or socialist society,they can certainly be the detonators as they showed once more in 2010,and being realistic about the possibilities is no reflection on the talent or energies that any successful road to socialism needs.
It is is that context,that i,just one of many committed both to my class and to a revolutionary socialist future both greet the Conference and the life of the Revolutionary Socialist Students but offer whatever limited help and support i can give.
Fraternally
paul summers
(member of ISN/international Socialist Network,and writer,LOSTbutnotreturning)
d1/08092013
Friday, 23 August 2013
Sad Old Tree
A few weeks ago,possibly months i wrote about our old plum tree.....
I am reminded about it by several things today.Although the connections are not always direct,let alone obvious,this is the way the subconscious,maybe the unconscious works.....
I have also written several,maybe many times,that whilst not a musician,i think musically.As i write i still have a hazy recolection of a refrain in a song,that i cannt pin down.I remember the line,probably wrongly as"...sad old tree".One of the things it makes me think is that i have done accidental harm to our sad old tree.
The harvest was late and poor this year,and in addition i have neglected it.It usually fruits in july,but when we left for afamiky break in early August the fruit remained unripe,and indeed was only just ripening when we returned.There was much less than usual and much of it was also much smaller tha usual.My declining health also made it more diffcilt to harvest and left it quickly ferments and rots.caught on time the taste varies,pleasantly from mildly sharp and sweet to drunkenly sweet like it insists onfermenting.ther have been times when i have found the occassional bird,zonked on the grass beneath the tree.
Today i harvested the few remaining plums that were left,and felt sad that i have neglected it....though i cannot work out quite while i feel so bad.
Over the years,one of the joys has been the sharing of the fruit,some of which has sometimes also come full circle as jam or filling or topping for cakes....Linda has given some away>i am pleased about that,but there feels to be something missing in that i have myself not been able either to harvest much or to give it away.i was indeed hoping and looking forward to sharing that harvest with the friends and comrades i have been working with over this last year or so,which could have been another opportunity to be together.But then perhaps this is an occassion when i just have to buck up,pull myself together and look for another opportunity.There are of course apples and pears next in our own and my childrens grandmothers garden.......
Meantime,can i drag the memory of the song from the recesses of memory.
d1/230813
I am reminded about it by several things today.Although the connections are not always direct,let alone obvious,this is the way the subconscious,maybe the unconscious works.....
I have also written several,maybe many times,that whilst not a musician,i think musically.As i write i still have a hazy recolection of a refrain in a song,that i cannt pin down.I remember the line,probably wrongly as"...sad old tree".One of the things it makes me think is that i have done accidental harm to our sad old tree.
The harvest was late and poor this year,and in addition i have neglected it.It usually fruits in july,but when we left for afamiky break in early August the fruit remained unripe,and indeed was only just ripening when we returned.There was much less than usual and much of it was also much smaller tha usual.My declining health also made it more diffcilt to harvest and left it quickly ferments and rots.caught on time the taste varies,pleasantly from mildly sharp and sweet to drunkenly sweet like it insists onfermenting.ther have been times when i have found the occassional bird,zonked on the grass beneath the tree.
Today i harvested the few remaining plums that were left,and felt sad that i have neglected it....though i cannot work out quite while i feel so bad.
Over the years,one of the joys has been the sharing of the fruit,some of which has sometimes also come full circle as jam or filling or topping for cakes....Linda has given some away>i am pleased about that,but there feels to be something missing in that i have myself not been able either to harvest much or to give it away.i was indeed hoping and looking forward to sharing that harvest with the friends and comrades i have been working with over this last year or so,which could have been another opportunity to be together.But then perhaps this is an occassion when i just have to buck up,pull myself together and look for another opportunity.There are of course apples and pears next in our own and my childrens grandmothers garden.......
Meantime,can i drag the memory of the song from the recesses of memory.
d1/230813
Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Wise Words-I
it strange sometimes where wise words can be found-in the script of a USA detective series,amongst other places:
"For a person of principle,caught between a rock and a hard place-chooses the hard place"
d1/07082013
"For a person of principle,caught between a rock and a hard place-chooses the hard place"
d1/07082013
Monday, 8 July 2013
In Brief-Question?(2)
Does anyone know anything about or remember ZG magazine?
The issue i have is from 1981,and is in folded A3 format(approximately)
d1/09072013
The issue i have is from 1981,and is in folded A3 format(approximately)
d1/09072013
In Brief-Question?(1)
Does anyone know who was poetry editor of The Tablet,a catholic magazine between say 1977-1981?
i know his first name was John and his surname double-barrelled(had 2 parts)but for the life of me i cannot recall his name either by internet search or from my own clouded memory?
d1/09072013
i know his first name was John and his surname double-barrelled(had 2 parts)but for the life of me i cannot recall his name either by internet search or from my own clouded memory?
d1/09072013
Memories of Bears
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
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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