The rabbit of memory, the duck of history

History is the written form of what we choose to remember.

Memory is the personal form of what we perceive.

Oral tradition has no greater claim to truth than does history.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it might be a rabbit.

 "During the Easter period, people are more likely to see a rabbit first but in October, seeing the duck first is more common." (cf. The Independent)

Perception isn't about seeing, even if seeing is believing.

Consider Mulder's perception. As he lies at the mercy of the holy ones, they appear to him as Deep Throat and his father. Could there be two less likely holy ones?

In truth, we perceive only what we are able to conceptualise. Think of any myth, legend or fantasy and you will find them peopled with variations of humans and animals well known to all: Medusa is but a woman with snakes for hair; the Minotaur is but half man and half bull.

Maybe the most valiant attempt to conceptualise a creature unknown was Albrecht Dürer's woodcut of a rhinoceros in 1515.

Working only from second-hand information and his own imagination, he produced the representation of the rhinoceros that was used right up to the eighteenth century. (cf. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, p.81)

E.H. Gombrich tells the interesting story of one James Bruce who published his own drawing of a rhinoceros in 1790:

What's curious about this drawing is that it was published in Bruce's Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, during which trip he allegedly saw a rhinoceros. Gombrich tells us with delight that, from what he has been told, "none of the species known to zoologists corresponds to the engraving claimed to be drawn al vif!" (ibid, p.82)

It seems that once we have conceptualised a thing even the real-life version makes little impact upon our preconceived notions.

The Navajo can lay Mulder in their hogan and perform the Blessing Way chant, but  the holy ones will be perceived in the only way Mulder is able to conceptualise them - as the two dominant father figures in his life. Curiously, they tell him nothing more than he either already knows or believes.

Another curiosity is having Deep Throat now a denizen of this mystical realm, paraphrase Nietzsche who said, in The Gay Science, "Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial." (cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, s.126, p.182. Trans. Walter Kaufmann)

Albert Hosteen, in his opening voice-over, tells us, "memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable…" and that the Navajo prefer memory to history, because the latter is "written in the blood of those who might remember" - a far more poetic way of saying it is written by the winners. Which would seem to contradict what he told Mulder in "Anasazi":  "In the desert, things find a way to survive. Secrets are like this too. They push their way up through the sands of deception so that men can know them."

Memory and history, if not the same thing, are, at least, like an old married couple - they may spend the day doing their own thing, but the night-time is always spent in each other's arms.