Flexors

"You watch the television.
It tell you that you should."

-- Supertramp, "Child of Vision"

--

Aside from watching Rikki Tikki Tavi as a child and then checking it against the story in an old, dimpled green paperback copy of The Jungle Book, I've never really read any Rudyard Kipling. But for ten cents at a library book sale, I picked up The Man Who Would Be King, and Other Stories, mostly out of regret at having never read Kipling. I've missed out; the stories are wonderful.

Not a huge fan of his prose style (it's a bit, well, British for me), but his descriptions and especially his attention to Indian culture are fascinating. So far, I've read "The Man Who Would Be King" and "The Mark of the Beast." The first, naturally, is a textbook example of mimetic theory: An outsider arrives, solves tribal warfare, then gets sacrificed by his own followers. And the second, a horror classic, delivers the chummiest werewolf story I've yet encountered.

And I haven't yet read up on Kipling, which is maybe a good thing. I feel like I'm getting to know him on his own terms, walking in his country without (as King would say) a map. It seems to me he's aware of colonialism and gently, tactfully, tries to pull out the threads. In these two stories he has shown how British outsiders who misunderstand or underestimate Eastern societies get what's coming.

I like Kipling so far. I'm halfway through "'Them'" and am getting chills. That's always a good sign.

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And I've been reading in the van, fighting carsickness as Kentucky landscapes shift around me. Tonight, in a motel in Franklin, KY, the paperback collection of Kipling stories, its pages dog-eared because of my halting progress, sits on the edge of the bed. The spine shows water damage, distorted colors and warped paper. It's an old, worn book. In its pages lurk monsters and mysteries long overlooked.

Reading is not just feeling like an escape from my job; in time, it has become a pleasure again.

Taking in these large chunks at a stretch, for me, is a lot like eating grilled cheese sandwiches. I forget how much I love it, and then when I indulge for the first time in weeks, I think, Why don't I do this all the time?

--

Hurt my left hip flexor today while doing the hoedown in the bunny suit. My hip throbs.

In two more months to the day, I won't have to do this touring thing any longer. And I'll be able to flex these reading muscles again, and more often, too.