Need for islands
ENIf, like me, you love islands, here or elsewhere, dive into this book: Need for islandsby the geographer Louis Brigand. The man is a scientist, but it is as a passionate person, as a lover, that he talks about the islands he visited in the course of his research.
Starting with the Breton islands, and the one of Beniguet in particular, in the Molène archipelago. I invite you to read this report that my colleague Marc Pennec devoted to him in Ouest-France. Enough to fill up with invigorating marine freshness!
Need for islands
Stock editions
252 pages, 18 €
Louis Brigand is a professor at theEuropean Institute of the Seain Brest, at the University of Western Brittany (UBO). He is one of the great specialists in island issues. His job as a teacher-researcher leads him to travel from one end of the planet to the other, from island to island... Another "dream job" for globetrotters?
😉
No Asian islands in the memories evoked in his book. But he has the right words to say the irresistible attraction that islands have on our imagination (remember Treasure Island of Stevenson!), to talk about the beauty of insularity, the happiness that consists in letting the days go by while looking at the sea... Small extract:
Finally, I prefer to move regularly from one island to another, and thus be itinerant and nomadic, rather than fixed and sedentary. As a result, I have the impression of having chosen to live in an immense archipelago, to travel permanently from one house to another, and to share my life between spaces that come together, forming a whole from which I draw energy and a certain resourcefulness. (P.67)
I don't feel anything else, at the idea of leaving again, very soon, for distant archipelagos. The Perhentian Islands, then Borneo, Sipadan and Mabul, Derawan and Sangalaki ...
I'm going there in a tourist context, for vacations, and I won't be in a situation of complete isolation, far from it. But I like being surrounded by water, having no other border around me than the sea. Contemplating the horizon clears my head. Many people feel locked up, a bit like prisoners, on an island. For me, it's the opposite: staying on an island frees me, soothes me. I leave the floor to Louis Brigand:
Maybe that's what happiness is all about! An island.
I think isolation is something that happens in the head. There are millions of guys who live in dramatic isolation, in their apartment or in the city, in front of their TV or their electronic games! I may be isolated geographically, but not at all mentally. On the contrary, the island with its closed borders is a mirror that reflects in depth and amplifies the things of life. (P.14)
Oh, my! This book is perfect for me. I am in dire need of islands.
🙂
Here's an islander Parisian at heart, dry of his island for 30 years and who's going to see it again in 1, 2, 3, 4,... 27 days... I'll certainly shed a tear when on July 25, I set foot on the ground again at Bauerfield airport in Port Vila. I'll ask the cab driver “Yu fala save tekem mi long ples ia...”... No need for a Bahasa dictionary 😉 ... the words in Vanuatu's bislama will emerge on their own, from a 30-year silence.
Is insularity an isolation? Not at all, insularity is a taste for discovery, uncertainty... it's the condition that teaches you to look beyond the horizon and wonder in what direction there is another island, similar or different... the islander is sure there's another place, he scans the sky while the continental thinks he's the center of the world, he moves the earth... the islander is movement while the continental is certainty... how can you be sure of anything, when three cyclones a year sweep away bad structures like received ideas.
A condition usually implies its opposite or complementary: the traveler's first reflex is to find a way out of the place where he has just arrived, while the islander's first reflex is to find out what downwind conditions will enable him to escape or return to his island.
Well, while we're on the subject of literature, I also have “need for mirages” like Gilles Lapouge, writer also known for his work on pirates, other intrepid travelers.
And then another essential work to re-enchant the small and large contingencies of the trip, on the basis of our illustrious traveler predecessors (Flaubert or Baudelaire) there is Alain de Botton with his “Travel art”.
Good readings and especially selamat jalan 8).
you'll have to open a literature section where your readers can each put their own bedside travel book (personally a wardrobe 😆 ).
@ Wet & sea / Ludovic: Superb, your thoughts as an insular Parisian... And thank you for the reading tips. It's a good idea to collect book suggestions from everyone. I wish everyone would do what you're doing, and contribute to this “Books and reading” section.
Go, more than three small weeks of nothing to wait, before seeing your island again !!!
8)