More reviews of Cathedral of the World.

 

 

 

 

From Kirkus Reviews
If this miscellany of essays and letters and fragments is any indication, Arms has not only logged some serious mileage on his sailboat, but raked up some impressive down time between watches. The idle hours were anything but, for Arms is given to pondering why the ocean makes him feel so good. He keeps that musing quality alive in these pieces as he struggles to convey the spirit that moves him: the edges are raw and unfiltered, as if he might be bouncing a notion or two off you while sitting around the galley table, with just enough buffing to add focus. Its the sum of many small things that pleases him so, most of them having to do with "the exquisite geometry of an inscrutable universe infinitely chaotic, infinitely simple.'' Take the weather as a good example, its thousand faces and unadorned lessons: Arms can reel and roar along with the rogue seas, go quiescent on flat days, mimic and adapt. There is the strange world of charts, their wealth of information and half-truths, queer scale and miscalculations, the credulity and skepticism necessary to put oneself in their hands. There are the colors of the water, which can be read like a book and are too often signals of distress from pollution; the daring trickery and sly wing work (the "avian magic show'') of shearwater, fulmar, and petrel; the sensible offerings to the sea gods, who just may be feeling a little squally. For the artful, guileless Arms, one senses it comes down to the migratory urge, what he calls the "oughtness'' of wandering, in his case over big water, where he can "focus on today and embrace the journey as if it were all of life.''

From Cruising World:

Best-selling author of Riddle of the Ice and Cruising World contributor Myron Arms has written a book that is perfect for those times on the water when you finally find solitude, described by Arms as "an attitude, a condition of the spirit, a meditative distance from the clutter of life ashore." It's an opportunity to explore "the primal spaces" and to understand your place in the world. With attitudes and eloquence reminiscent of Bernard Moitessier, Arms' philosophical perspective on the ocean wilderness is sensitive and profound.

From Sail Magazine:

…Arms' experience as a teacher shines through in his clear and well-illustrated prose. He cites scientists, philosophers, and poets in his exploration of the wilderness…. He argues that the ocean is one of the last truly wild places on the planet, and he suggests that people need to work to get back in touch with the earth as a living organism, whose breathing can be heard in the surfacing of whales on a midnight watch.

 

Sailors will find that Arms' experiences and musings ring true. And though I would not have come upon them myself, I identified with many of his conclusions. This book is worth having aboard for moments of quiet reflection, both offshore and at anchor.

 

From The Christian Science Monitor:

The pull of the sea has long lured sailors into territories unknown. Myron Arms taps into metaphors of the mysterious deep to steer readers into yet another unknown: the inner consciousness.

 

The bulk of his book, Cathedral of the World, focuses on the concept of journey--preparation, departure, travel, and return. What better place to muse the power of unseen forces and the interconnectedness of all things that in the rise and dip of ocean waves?

 

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