of kipling

long day :) went PD with family and aunt today, we were planning to go melaka but daddy figured it was too far a drive for a sunday afternoon. had a lovely time with my femme, i'm getting to know her more and more, and i think the wait was well worth it...i love femme to bits and tiny little pieces. femme is my camera, btw. she takes awesome pics, i just have to figure out how to squeeze them out of her. she can be contacted here.

i first met kipling in the form of the just-so-stories, in the form of 'how the elephant got his trunk', on the banks of the limpopo river, o best beloved. it was in a book of children's stories, where i vaguely remember also reading 'the jungle book' and various fairy tales beautifully illustrated. aesop's fables too...loved those, because they were only one page and thus, in my mind, easier to read. i called it the elephant book, and that was probably 'how i made my first pun' being that it was an enormous and heavy volume, besides having three stories involving elephants and all of them illustrated differently.

image via britannica.com

next came a tiny little book with the most beautiful digitally painted illustrations made on glossy paper and kipling's own highly detailed illustrations printed on the ordinary paper in black and red ink. daddy gave it to my sister on her birthday. it was really a tiny book, about the size of my palm. i think that may have added to the beauty of the drawings, as it gave them a certain complexity that many lines and colors in a small space have. here i met 'the cat that walked by himself', the beginning of the armadillos', 'the crab that played with the sea', 'how the whale got it's throat' and many many more. after poring over the illustrations, i moved on to enjoying the stories themselves, despite the small print my interest had been piqued enough to pore through them.

image via justsostories

when the stories themselves had been enjoyed to the fullest, i realized that the illustrations had discriptions as well, delightful little remarks like 'the little stute fish is next to the other stute fish, who is his wife, but that is another story' or something to that effect. oh joys! reading was taken to another level...and at the end of the stories was a little poem by kipling.

image via victorian web

i remember being rather bewildered by the connection between the 'six honest serving men' and the story before it, although i cannot remember what the story is (that little book probably lost among the very many we have scattered around the house, perhaps we lost it when we moved three years ago? i want to read it again!). you can read it here. it's a funny little poem. oh! it was after 'the elephant's child' (basically 'how the elephant got it's trunk') and NOW i know why it was printed there! whoa! i'm revisiting my childhood questions and answering them, haha...

i wish i could get hold of this same copy again. it was such a pretty little book, and there was so much inside for such a small tome! the one we had is lost and if i remember right very tattered on the edges, despite it being a hardcover, probably due to over-love. :)

later when life took a more confusing edge, i came across kipling again in my english literature textbook. in the form of the poem If. kipling's name did not jump out at me at the time, as i was impressed to the core that we were learning 'life's brief candle' and 'sonnet 18' by this strange bald man who was so famous. i was rather interested, and took to trying to read 'the merchant of venice' (recommended by mummy) and 'macbeth' (because of 'life's brief candle') and 'romeo and juliet' (famous what) and 'a midsummer's night dream' (dunno why) but needless to say i did not succeed in getting past the 2nd page. i read hamlet abridged though. hahaha. and the tempest really abridged, in the form of a picture book (faust looked awesome scary talking with a skeletal creature) but i never understood the story. but enough of the bald man.

image via victorian web

well, being brought up in a family who spoke english at home and studying in a malay medium school, my english tests were usually aced with not much trouble (while my chinese tests were below c-level with alot of trouble) so in order to pretend i was studying for english i went ahead and memorized all the poems we had to learn (no big deal, i figure the most we had was 16 poems for two years, all less than a page long). i have long forgotten most, but i remember robert frost's 'two roads diverged' quite well...oh let me sidetrack...

Fire and Ice
"some say the world will end in fire,
some say in ice.
from what i've tasted of desire
I hold with those that favour fire
But if i had to perish twice,
I think i know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
and would suffice."
-robert frost

does 'suffice' rhyme with 'ice'? dunnoe leh. but i love this poem leh. i memorized this one but i can't remember where i first read it.

where was i?

Oh! If!

I love this part:

"If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too"

because i need it in my life right now...

and anyway, this entire post was inspired by my visit to PD today. we visited a mangrove swamp and saw loads of crabs and my aunt was saying 'lets ask God why he made crabs walk sideways' and that reminded me of 'the crab that played with the sea'. not to mention last week dad was talking about how whales ate krill and there were people saying a whale couldn't possibly swallow Jonah and that reminded me of 'how the whale got his throat'. and then grace (the aki one) put 'i am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me' on her fb status...and ditto lah.

i have to go through femme's PD photos of crabs. keep a lookout on femme's blog :)

and here is a link to some of kipling's stories! oh this behappened and became and was, o best beloved!