Fingertips

One of the hidden treasures - in truth, aside from our fellow cruisers, the only treasure, hidden or otherwise - of Bali Marina was a well-stocked book swap room, with over 500 books piled on shelves and in boxes, left by passing sailors who had run out of room for already-read books. The swap at Bali Marina was started by my new friend, Bobby Friedman, who captains a large sailboat that's often based in the marina. (His entertaining and pungent blog, recommended reading, is here. I spent a morning inside the tiny swap room, arranging the books, perusing the titles, and re-stocking ile de Grace's library, as well as donating our already-read books that had been collecting mold on our shelves. With the exorbitant price of books in Australia ($25 for a paperback!), the bookless ports of eastern Indonesia, the untimely drowning of my Kindle, and my forced 3-week laying-in while Jennifer returned home, the tiny room and its book collection proved to be my salvation. Kudos to Bobby for starting something special.

The accidental discovery of new authors, courtesy of the cruising lifestyle's reliance on these book swaps, has been an unanticipated benefit of our trip. Boats being tight on space, few sailors keep books they've read, choosing instead to exchange them at ports of call. Across the Pacific, book swaps occurred wherever cruisers congregated.  In Tahiti, the books were piled up in the laundry room; on Rarotonga, at the nicest restaurant on the island. Your faithful correspondent has a nose for these places, and each time we stopped, Jennifer would plead with me to choose only the least-moldy books. As she points out, on a boat, what doesn't rust, molds, so to be fair, it's a real concern. I've managed to "discover" such disparate authors as David Mitchell, Ian Rankin, and Tim Winton, among others, and I'm in debt to those cruisers who have left those authors' books behind for others to enjoy.

The books at the Bali Marina tended to the mystery and thriller genres, although there was a Bible or two, some how-to sailing books (!), and a number of classic novels and non-fiction works. About one-third of the books were non-English - a heavy dose of German, some French, and a few Spanish. Patricia Cornwall's forensic detective novels seem to enjoy a wide international audience. In leafing through some of them, I was reminded of another cruising tradition - scribing books with the name and home port of the donating boat, along with the occasional note indicating which port the book had been picked up in. Reading these notations reminded me that books have lives of their own, often traveling from town to town, country to country, or, in this case, port to port, leaving a wake of readers in their path. Some of the Bali books had most recently been in South Africa, where we are headed; others, in Australia, Fiji, or Galapagos. It's an arresting image, this one of books migrating across oceans.

With Jennifer gone, and me resigned to keeping the boat safe and secure, the Bali books helped me pass the time. When Jennifer returned back from the states, in addition to replacing my Kindle, she also brought with her some books generously shared by some friends of ours in Austin, Texas. One of them, The Shadow of the Wind, by the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon, centers on the life of a book, and begins with a visit to "the Cemetery of Forgotten Books." The Cemetery houses "books that are lost in time," and is a place where they "live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands." As Zafon's character relates, "in truth, books have no owners."

I happen to collect books and can attest to the assertion that books have no owners; I'm loathe to throw any book out, preferring instead to donate it to a library, sell it to a used book store, or give it to a friend - I don't feel as if I own a book, only that I am a custodian. Like Bobby, I've created a book swap or two with my excess volumes, and I imagine these book swaps attracting other donations and living on for months and years to come. I've come to realize that there's a reader for every book, and a surprise in every collection. The Zafon book is case in point -- a mesmerizing book of passions, centered on books, with each chapter answering one question in the unfolding mystery, and posing two more - creating a momentum and urgency that's addictive.

Having fallen asleep reading, I woke from my midday nap (with alternating 4 hour watches, you sleep when you can) with an image of fingertips touching books, and of readers connecting to one another through the physical act of touching the same book, even if separated in space and time. In this, the Kindle, for all its obvious benefits to a space-constrained reader, cannot hope to compete. There is something magical about touching a book that others have read and others will read ∑ to me, books create a palpable sense of connection between readers, especially if the readers share the same physical book.

And so this, written as we sail briskly on a broad reach, under a bright sky across a blue Indian Ocean:


Fingertips


From time to time, I pull down the book
You gave me the afternoon before I left,
And examine the paper on each page,
Recalling that your fingertips once rested
Here, and here, leaving a patina of memory
That I now touch, tip to tip, print to print,

As if by pressing against the paper,
I can pull your hand away from this book,
Like a glove lifting off the page, sliding back,
Your skin wrapping around my fingers, my wrist,
So that once again we might read these words together.