Double Dosing

As proclaimed in my bio over there on the right, My identity is that of a writer. Photography is a secondary fun-generator. (Not that it's always fun. Sometimes, when the person I'm taking a portrait of turns out blurry while the background is annoyingly sharp, I lose my cool a little bit. But even one killer picture in a shoot gives a thrill.)

However, when I really buckle down and get writing, as I have here at the Colony, I don't feel as much of an urge to take pictures. For a year, maybe two years, it was the other way around. But writing has always nagged me in a way that photography doesn't. (Thus the career choice.) So back I go.



The creative process of the two arts is immensely different for me. One involves thinking thinking thinking, and the other involves shutting off the verbal part of the brain and seeing. But once I'm knee-deep in a story, the words in my brain form and bump around no matter what I'm doing or where I am. So for the moment, this photography blog might be more about writing and the photographs might be a little raw. Such things happen when you try to double dose.

I forgot to install Photoshop on my new hard drive (the old one crashed and burned) before I left anyway.

Casita 3

I first came to the White Colony (which I try not to refer to as The Colony For White People) in February, 2005. The founder of the colony, Bill White, died the month I was here. He was old. It was natural. It was a strange and sad time. Bill was a peace activist and expatriate who started the colony in memory of his two children, Julia and David, who were both artists and died tragically (one of a drug overdose, the other of suicide). I get the feeling that the White Colony has always been a kind of dark and random place, but it's in the most sunny and alive of spots, and I've met some wonderful painters, sculptors, and writers here. And boy do I get work done. I mean, it's not like there's a whole lot else to do.

This time I am in the furthest casita from the public road.
(That's my house! The cute little pink house sticking out...see?)

There is nothing between me and the rain forest.
I walk the loop around the compound every day. Mangos and bananas grow with no one to pick them. On my first day a mango (a green one even, not even ripe!) landed like a bullet in my path.


I do yoga daily and base my diet around the godly avocado. My friends are geckos. I have a good groove going. And when I feel I deserve a break? There's the pool.
That white chair is where I sit and read Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. I highly recommend the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. I love her!

Costa Rica: Birds of Paradise

I'm spending the month at the Julia and David White Artists' Colony in Ciudad Colón, Costa Rica. I have a little writing studio with a 10-foot window that looks out over the rain forest. It's not one of those showoffy Costa Rican rain forests - no monkeys or sloths here - but there are some rather cool things growing outside my door.