Foam insulation is washing up on the shores of southwest Washington. Last week, a dock float showed up on the Oregon coast. According to a recent Los Angeles news story, this was a concrete and metal fishing dock approximately the size of a freight train box car: 66 feet long, 7 feet tall and 19 feet wide. It came with its own microsystems, carrying millions of living organisms, native to Japan, never before seen on the West Coast.
“Whoa,” the Japanese crab and starfish might be lamenting. “We’re a long way from home.” If displaced Japanese algae could speak, perhaps they’d chorus back, “Indeed.”
A concrete box sailed, against anyone’s will or wishes, across the Pacific Ocean. Docks and foam insulation and shipping containers seem a bit different than the first pieces of the debris: a volleyball and soccer ball (how to identify the national origin of a volleyball or soccer ball eludes me, but I’m not a reporter) showed up on island in the Gulf of Alaska, and a Harley Davidson came ashore on an island off of British Columbia. This initial debris (or the reporting of it) made it seem like no big deal. Sure, we know stuff is coming. We can handle it – we’ll just walk down to the beach and play ball with whatever comes in. And who can resist the romanticism of a Harley washing up on shore? Not me. I can imagine the screenplays being written with this as the opening visual, leading the way to a story of lost yet redemptive love, or lost youth, or lost masculinity, with a final twist in the story line because, of course, that Harley does wash up on a faraway shore. There is hope. There will be a new love. A new man (or woman). A new way to be strong and free and vibrant. The ending may even be a wistful scene of the two new lovers heading off, but on a different vehicle – it would be way too cliché for them to ride off on the waterlogged hog.
We’re at just over a year from the astonishingly deadly tsunami, and the debris is just beginning to arrive. A lot of it, apparently, is coming; about 1.5 million tons are still floating around.
If the personal is political and the world is our backyard, if nations struggle just like individuals, perhaps we can learn something from the floating debris. Maybe we shouldn’t expect relationship endings to be cleaned up right away. Maybe tons and tons of personal flotsam and jetsam are floating around out there from relational tsunamis, and we should be very cautious before entering any body (of water). Maybe we should be very kind to the small organisms mingled with the debris, since they have landed a very long way from home. Maybe we should play volleyball and soccer and ride our Harley every day, so a tsunami’s arrival upsets a fully lived life, rather than an empty one.
For if there’s one thing I’m taking away from the idea of having to deal with even more garbage on the beach, it’s that I want a life that will create great garbage. If a tsunami – emotional or real – upends things for me, I want my perfectly crafted set of gold-rimmed stemware and dessert plates and my newest gold-plated flatware to be among the items that make it, a year later, to the shores of some unsuspecting family having a day at the beach. I want to send out happy and well-loved debris, sheets worn thin from love-making, great books read and re-read numerous times, photos and photos and photos of happy moments, my son’s favorite stuffed bear. Even if these things get waterlogged, one, just one, may end up finding its way to a new shore.
Note: newsworthy- sounding items from http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8693946
Leaving only happy and well-loved debris – I can see that using that as a guideline, we could eliminate a lot of clutter from our lives (and our houses.)
Loved this post.