downthefallfullpassagain

My friend and colleague remarks to me over dinner that islands make visible what it means, or might mean, to live with limitations. On an island it is not always expected that what you desire is at hand. Here on Terschelling, an island in the Waddenzee, Netherlands, it’s normal to make do with what you have. Island-ness, I say, is the embodiment of salvage culture. When you use a broken ship’s mast as the topline for your humble roof, you are solarpunking it with the sea. We go to speak with an islander who leads school groups to pick up trash on the northern beach. Under his knit cap and mustache he has a character deeply attuned to plastics and pollutants, and he is adamant that these represent the largest threats to humans and nonhumans alike. We are standing 150 km down along the coastal current from Rotterdam and just a few kilometers from a major shipping lane where cargo routinely gets tipped overboard. Terschelling, he says, is a place where ‘international rubbish’ washes up: ‘...