Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1294 - I remember you
Hi Mom, This is a special edition of HEY MOM because Sunday's usual HEY MOM reprint was a T-shirt reprint that I published under the SENSE OF DOUBT label alone.
This entry has been under development a long time.
I am publishing it on the day I usually do a Throwback Thursday because this entry is ready and the Throwback one is not. In fact, to stay on schedule Throwback may happen Saturday, which may mean two HEY MOMs in a row. In a sense, this is a Throwback post, though I wish I could find a picture of me with my Pooh bear from my childhood.
I just want to say, before we begin that
I REMEMBER YOU.
Like I could ever forget.
On the afternoon of Saturday August 18th, I went to see the film Christopher Robin.
I knew it was going to be an intense emotional experience for me.
It was.
I don't believe in giving up "childish" things. Who is to say what constitutes a childish thing? Most of the things I love best are considered "childish" by some, and I would characterize those who think so as small-minded, close-minded, and very limited in their sad, meager existences. I know that's judgemental. But it's also true.
And so, I have kept a place in my heart, always, for the "childish" things. I still have my childhood teddy bears. I still have toys, comic books, and a connection to the animistic universe. I don't believe that the heart should die when one "matures." Instead, I keep a flame in my heart for the love born in childhood for someone like Winnie the Pooh.
An aside: It is possible to be adult and shoulder adult responsibilities and have a mature outlook and be a grown up and still have a love of and an engagement with those things some small minded people consider to be the things of childhood that should be abandoned when one becomes adult.
I do not believe in that abandoning.
Abandoning those things is to abandon love and that is something I cannot abide.
One of my favorite moments, the image above.
When an adult Christopher Robin encounters Pooh once again, he believes he is hallucinating.
"It's stress," Christopher Robin says.
"It's not stress; it's Pooh," Pooh says.
Here's the real Christopher Robin of AA Milne's life and the real Pooh.
I am no stranger to this subject.
I wrote about it on my T-shirts blog. Here's a but of it. See the full entry at the link.
FROM - http://365-tshirts.blogspot.com/2013/11/t-shirt-250-winnie-pooh-teaching.html
T-shirt #250 - Winnie the Pooh & Teaching
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- On Jungian Thought, Poohism, and TeachingI started this entry back in July, and it's been sitting on my computer ever since. This is why I am in shorts in the pictures.
I love Winnie the Pooh. Disney Pooh. Milne Pooh. Doesn't matter.
I love POOH.
I did discuss this affection some in T-shirt #166.
I feel that Today is somewhat of a milestone as the number 250 has some significance.
So, today, I wish to share a few thoughts on intersections between Jungian thought, Tao te Ching, and Winnie the Pooh.Somewhat coincidentally but also by design (teleology?), I am teaching the power point in my mythology class tonight that I am shown teaching in these photos.
If you have not read The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, and you have any interest in either Tao te Ching, Winnie the Pooh, or both, then I recommend you read it immediately.
A free PDF version is available FROM THIS LINK.
Today, I wish to share thoughts punctuated by a series of photographs that comprise some of my favorite ideas in the whole world.
The best reaction to all situations is LOVE. But it is so hard to function this way.
It is so much easier to judge and to be angry, frustrated, annoyed, to give into one's stress.
But I keep trying.
If this statement about love as the right reaction to the universe makes you think of "Love is the Answer," then check the video I posted in T-shirt #166.
The movie of Christopher Robin begins with him having a send off with all of his childhood playmates in the Hundred Acre Woods, which turns out to be in another dimension (good choice!). After the requisite tea party and gifts, Christopher and Pooh go off alone to switch on a hill to watch the sunset. It's a sad goodbye as Christopher explains that he is off to school and must give up childish things, and he will be too busy with maths and studies to just "do nothing" as he often has been able to do with Pooh as his companion. He asks Pooh to remember him by visiting this spot often and to think of him while doing nothing.As the story unfolds, we see Pooh check the tree that is "Christopher Robin's House," visit the special spot, and wait for Christopher to come back. And the seasons change and the years pass, and Christopher does not come back. And so, eventually, Pooh decides to go find Christopher because, even though Christopher doesn't know it, he needs Pooh to remind him of what is important in life.
"Pooh, why are you here?" asks Christopher Robin asks.
"I need your help. I have lost all of my friends," Pooh says.
"What should happen if you forget about me," Pooh asks Christopher Robin.
"Silly old bear. I won't ever forget about you Pooh, even if I am 100," Christopher Robin replies.
But then, as an adult, tt seemed as if Christopher had forgotten his childhood friends and had actually forgotten how to have fun; how to balance adult responsibilities with a sense of play, wonder, and joy; how to show real love to his family; and even how to completely disengage from the rat race and just do nothing, just BE, which is the central lesson of the Winnie the Pooh stories: JUST BE.
But Christopher Robin had lost his way.
"I wonder which way?" Christopher Robin says at one point as he and Pooh returned to the Hundred Acre woods to find everyone who had become lost.
"I always get where I am going by walking away from where I have been," Pooh says.
"Do you?"
"That's the way I do it!" Pooh says.
However, I have not forgotten the joys and loves of childhood, of family, of just being.
And I will always remember because that's how I am wired, and I am not going to change; I see no reason to change.
I had seven years to play on my own before my sister was born, but then I was old enough to create a rich tapestry of stories with her for many years in creating a group of her stuffed animals first known as the Protectors Five, then the Protectors Seven, and then just the Protectors.
The original five were Baby Dreams, Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, Snoopy, and a furry guy named Moe. Eventually, two more joined the main group: The Camel with the Wrinkled Knees, and a dragon named Evinrude. Scooby Doo was also a regular.
I made many stories about these characters and how they protected the family during its travel and adventures for International criminal cartels hell bent on the family's dissolution and jeopardy for reasons that now escape me.
I drew some cartoons and started a series of novels on these characters, but these creations are lost in my films, which remain in my father's basement in Michigan.
In watching the film, I realized I have a new Pooh and Piglet. I have Satchel and Ellory. My love for them is even greater than it is for my stuffed animal friends.
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| http://365-tshirts.blogspot.com/2013/09/t-shirt-166-fao-schwartz.html |
Or as James Taylor said: BSUR (Be aS yoU aRe). Same concept.
About the bears: The brown bear in the picture below is "Yukio," named for Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who seemed like a kindred spirit when I read part of one of his novels, but in the end was not a kindred soul to me at all (though an interesting person with a good pen name). Ultimately, as for Japanese writers, I liked Kawabata's novels better and later, even more, Haruki Murakami. The other bear in the photo farther below, obviously, is Winnie the Pooh. Both bears are second generation bears. My first brown bear (seen in the final photo of me with many stuffed animals in the lower right corner of the shot) was named Timmy or Tim. I am not sure where this came from as I named the bear when I was two or three years old. As you can see he is still barely intact, very threadbare and fragile with his stuffing coming free in many places. The original Pooh also came apart at the seams, even though he received a new shirt made by one of my first girlfriends, which prolonged his life a few years. She was one of the first people I trusted with my secret love of teddy bears, and she did not judge or mock.
As for the shirt in the photos, for those not acquainted with FAO SCHWARTZ, it is a very famous toy store, located in New York City on Fifth Avenue across from the equally famous Plaza Hotel and just south of Central Park. FAO Schwartz was featured in the film Big, as Tom Hanks' character played there with a toy CEO and won himself a job in a toy company. Anyway, back to my subject about the teddy bears.For many years, I was a closet teddy bear lover. And for many years, into my adult years, I continued to sleep with my teddy bears, secretly. This was a fact that I shared with very few people mainly because I did not know if I could trust people not to judge and mock. This was a part of myself about which I could not abide any mocking. For instance, during one quarter at college, I hung poster boards from the ceiling all around my bed mainly so I could sleep with my teddy bears without being seen. The teddy bears (two) were kept hidden under blankets or in a drawer. My roommate thought I wanted privacy for sex with girls, which is also part of the motivation of the poster board curtains. But since my then girlfriend was in New York for most of the quarter, the main reason was privacy for sleeping with my teddy bears. In graduate school, I met a guy about my age who also slept with a teddy bear. We had a good talk about it one time, but I never "outed" his sleeping practice to others, and he kept my secret as well. Throughout these adult years, when I was in a relationship and sleeping with a woman, then I left the teddy bears off the bed. But when sleeping alone, it was back to the snuggle with the bears.
As I share about this topic, a part of me wants to lash out. There's a part of me that is angry about the way people make judgments of others, of elements of people's identities, and I want to lash out and call those people names, call them shallow, or find other ways to needle their insecurities. But this strikes me as antithetical to what I am advocating here. My whole point about love of toys, stuffed toys in particular, is LOVE. The toys are just a manifestation and vehicle for recalling and focusing the emotions. In so doing, I cultivate an aspect of my personality that makes me a sensitive and caring individual. I would be violating my principles of love and forgiveness if I lashed out at the stone throwers. The whole point of my principles is to NOT be that way, to not invite the bad karma."Light of the world, shine on me, love is the answer; shine on us all, set us free, love is the answer."
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| Satchel when first adopted - 2012 |
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| Ellory with Teddy Bear 1701.22
I REMEMBER YOU.
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1160 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1809.06 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
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