The following
article appeared in The Associate, the newsletter of
The Nation Magazine, Volume 18, Number 2, Fall/Winter 1998.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
by Philip Higgs
From
May to October, former Nation Magazine intern and researcher Phil
Higgs was welcomed as the first Nation Magazine guest at The Julia
and David White Artists’ Colony in Costa Rica, owned and
operated by Nation Associate Bill White. Here’s Phil’s
report.
"In sharp
contrast to the brutal internal conflicts in Guatemala or the
grinding poverty of Nicaragua, Costa Rica has become synonymous
with stability and prosperity, with a long democratic tradition,
free and open elections, no standing army (it was abolished in
1948) and a Nobel Peace Prize to its name."
So says my
Costa Rica guidebook. In the fall of 1997, after finishing my
internship (which I extended, as looming unemployment induced
me to hang around doing editorial research projects), I jumped
at the chance to visit Cost Rica under most fortuitous circumstances.
I caught sight of a posting by Nation Associates director Peggy
Randall on an office bulletin board offering accommodations at
a Costa Rican artists’ and writers’ colony to a Nation
writer or editor. It was with characteristic calm that I strode
into Ms. Randall’s office and announced, "Me! Me! Pick
me!"
The story
of the founding of the colony is a devastating, but then invigorating,
tale. Bill White escaped to Costa Rica in 1991 after living through
and protesting the Vietnam War, the invasions of Granada and Panama
and the Gulf War – the last straw that finally sent him south.
Then Bill suffered a series of terrible losses: His daughter,
Julia, committed suicide; his son, David, died of an overdose
in Spain; and shortly after losing his only children, his mother
died.
For nearly
three years after their deaths, he mourned his children and mother,
rarely leaving his house or the porch from which he stared at
the lush hills surrounding his farm outside San Jose. Then in
1997 Bill began planning what would become The Julia and David
White Artists’ Colony, to honor his children. Julia had been
a poet and playwright (in addition to holding a degree in astrophysics
from MIT), and David had been a musician.
The colony
would be a four-studio complex to house two writers and two artists,
with two more buildings designed for composers, as well as a small
community house with a common dining area. Residents would pay
only for their transportation to Costa Rica – room and board
would be gratis – and the colony would welcome guests from
May – November, Costa Rica’s rainy season.
The relatively
sound political structure of Costa Rica makes it an attractive
destination in Latin America, particularly for lefty Generation
X types, but Costa Rica’s natural beauty is its real charm
– especially in the rainy season, when the hard brown of
the dry season is replaced by the tangled green of the rain forests,
flowering orchids and luscious fruit hanging in the trees, and
when the rains roll in around noon and pour for an hour or so
before the afternoon warms again into orange and then the purple
of a postcard dusk.
All this beauty
was quite a problem when I arrived in May for my five month junket
as the colony’s first writer-in-residence. How can one be
expected to work while the bamboo’s clacking in its yellow
grove just outside your door near the lilies in full bloom? Or
read DeLillo’s White Noise while a warm pool and wide
sky are waiting nearby? Or compose some vibrating poem of gritty
New York in all that sunshine? Trials of Art, indeed.
Butterflies
provided lighter distractions, crashing into my windows or bumping
their way through a half open door: the great gray owl butterfly,
a near-perfect mimic of it’s namesake’s head when its
wings are open, right down to the beak; the enormous blue morpho,
which isn’t really blue but shimmers that way by refracting
certain patterns of light; and the fancy little postman, which
lives four times longer than any other lepidoptera because it
prefers the protein secretions of a special heliconia to ordinary
nectar.
The colony
lies in the southern half of the Valle Central surrounding San
Jose, in the center of Costa Rica, but a beach is never more than
four hours away. Manuel Antonio National Park, on the country’s
southern Pacific coast, has the finest. Jungle extends to the
beaches, and white-faced monkeys come out in the early morning
to prowl near the sand. Abundant banana trees keep them fat and
happy.
Also within
a bus-trip distance are Costa Rica’s three famous volcanoes,
Poas (almost dead), Irazu (dying) and Arenal (still kicking out
red eruptions every few years). You can hike to the crater lakes
topping both Poas and Irazu, but Arenal is off-limits to travelers,
and when the quiet of night falls in the surrounding towns, Arenal
still rumbles and sends its slow streams of lava downhill.
But the idea,
of course, is to use the opportunity of the colony to grind out
novels, plays, movie scripts, masterpieces. (Besides, the sun
goes down at six in Costa Rica, so there’s only so much tanning
you can do in one day.)
For stimulation, lunchtime at the colony often includes local
artists, writers and other American ex-pats. Costa Rican writer
Joaquin Gutierrez, author of Cocori and Muramonos, Frederico,
was a frequent guest, as were painters from Costa Rica, Germany
and Brazil.
Further entertainment
is offered every other Sunday, when the Costa Rican national symphony
gives concerts – playing everything from Rachmaninoff and
Mozart to Villalobos and local composers – in the century
old, beautiful post-Baroque Teatro Nacional, to which Bill keeps
season tickets for handsome balcony box seats for each of his
residents. Concerts are often followed by a long drive to waterfalls
or through the lush Orosi Valley, or by walks through the Museo
de Oro or Museo Nacional near the theater, or lunch in one of
the gardens of San Jose’s old hotels.
Retiring to
my room for a post prandial nap, I’d find comfortable beds
and clean sheets (a maid came every Wednesday). Or if I finally
quit bumming around and sat down for some work, not only would
I find ample desk space and plenty of inspiration but also mangoes
and papayas and steaming pots of Costa Rican coffee, grown on
Bill’s grounds – sufficiently jolting to break open
even the heaviest tropical stupor.
A new phase
of recovery for Bill White is imminent. It will begin when artists,
writers and composers filter out of the fecund colony grounds,
carrying heliconia pollen and banana seeds on their fingertips
and Bill’s coffee beans in their mouths, wings open, shimmering.
I left Costa
Rica with a satchel full of my writing (will I get it published
– that’s the big question), feeling rested, relaxed
and hopeful – and wondering who the next lucky Nation writer to stay at The Julia and David White Artists’ Colony
will be.
