that I would end up finding my perfect writing environment in a rustic Casita on a Farm in Costa Rica??!!
But life does seem to have a way of bringing us full circle, doesn't it? And integrating all the mixed-up parts of ourselves if we let it, I think.
It's not like I went straight from my Dallas days to this lifestyle, either.
It took a while to figure out how to reconcile the complex intermingling of the little woods wanderer naturalist meets lover of Shakespeare and Handel that I remember being from about age 6 onward.
And it involved a somewhat confusing to others journey that took me from from Dallas to Fort Worth to Santa Monica to New Orleans to finally a healing season back in the small Midwestern town of my childhood home that I'd left far behind.
That was then...
(Dana Buchman in the speaking photo, Louis Vuitton in the one on the brochure to the left--both purchased at Neiman's, I believe, and each costing more than my total monthly expenses are now!)
My personal staff during those days of the rapid business growth consisted of
- a housekeeper,
- a gardener,
- a landscaper (and yes, those were two separate people--the one who tended my garden and the one who kept lawn and flowers beautiful),
- a personal assistant,
- an errand-running service,
- an image coach/personal shopper for wardrobe,
- a massage therapist who brought her table into my home weekly,
- a personal trainer who brought her equipment into it a couple times a week to train me
- and a succession of three different personal chefs.
But this is now...and these are my daily neighbors in my very low-maintenance life...
(Taken out my writing view window, without zoom--just by sticking the phone out the open slats of glass--to give you an idea of how close they are.)
And the closest thing I can see out my front window is a little Babe-like Charlotte's web entertainment by mommy sow and the piglets:
Can't imagine a single place in my life here that I could wear black dress, pearls and heels, actually!
Practically back to where it all began.
I grew up in the rural Midwest on about 60 acres of land. Much of it was overgrown orchard, which is where I learned about that Naturalist side of myself in early childhood that is eternally fascinated by the ferns and mosses and new floral and fauna around each new bend out exploring.
We didn't personally farm the rest of our land, though. It was rented out to area farmers and the only animals we had were cats and dogs.
But my Grandpa John was a gifted farmer, who somehow managed to farm something like 500 acres while also working a full-time job at General Motors! Some of the family found out after his death the high level of respect the area farmers had held him in, often consulting with him to learn what he was doing to so successfully utilize his land. My primary exposure to life on a farm was through that property, just half a mile up the road--helping bale hay or harvest pumpkins or watching cows being milked, and a fuzzy memory that maybe included a pig or two being there? Definitely some happy moments from my childhood.
When years later my father's secret life erupted publicly, I left rural life and everything about it in my rearview mirror.
Yet here I am in Costa Rica living Tican style and loving it!!
But while I didn't have a clue where exactly I'd be living in Costa Rica till a few weeks before my relocation and am as surprised as anyone that I ended up on farm, maybe that's the point. I am, after all, writing a book trilogy based on my father's secret life--and that secret life began on a farm.
Only this is not quite my father's farm! Or his father's father's.
Yes, the animals are somewhat the same. The surroundings, the culture, the crops, the farming practices--and especially the blessed climate!--are all dramatically different.
Which also makes for a bit of a learning curve and some humorous mistakes.
My landlord was pretty gracious, as one illustration, when he tried to explain to me--after I asked if it was okay to pick the bananas anytime I wanted them off the plantation since he'd said they were free to me with the rent--that this is not like going out and picking apples off the trees in the overgrown orchard I grew up next to! There's no way I could reach them to pick them apparently. There goes my childhood idea of how bananas grow. :-)
This is taken of the buildings on the farm from the highest point on the slopes where the cattle graze and I write. Far back building is my Casita; green area in front of closest building on the right is the banana plantation.
(It's fully organic, by the way. One part of the tour I maybe could have skipped was of the vats full of what the cows leave behind. :-) This extended farming family imports a special worm from California that turns what's in the vats into a special kind of compost that allows them to use no chemicals at all in the farming.)
Perhaps it's this combo of the familiar with the exotic that's allowing me to finally re-embrace my rural roots with such enthusiasm--out snapping pictures regularly, much to my landlord family's amusement, I think--
(especially since we have babies like these, right now....)
To memories of my history it adds a new flavor: the things I craved and didn't have in my childhood.
- The adventure of being able to get all over a beautiful new country to so much diversity in a small space with the bus stop just a block from my farm's driveway...
- The exotic aspect sprinkled in right alongside the ordinary and familiar that speaks to something deep inside me, reminding me there are so many new worlds beyond my own to be discovered and explored...
The peace and serenity in a different style and approach to life of the culture that the little back woods wanderer in me has perhaps always craved and needs to balance out the more intense sides of myself...
Loving it that it's looking like my lifestyle for these next years of the book trilogy completion and promotion will be the perfect intermingling of these two diverse sides of myself.
As per prior blog posts, I spend most of my week right now in complete solitude out in nature--or in my Casita surrounded by beautiful views of it--discovering and daydreaming and creating in this whole new world to me--which I totally thrive on. An assessment one coach did for me about my best pattern for working a few years back identified Nature as the key stimulant to my creativity, and being out in it year-round yet uninterrupted from the flow of my creating is ideal for me.
But every quarter or so, I'll be resurfacing and heading to the cities in the States where my key networks are to reconnect with the community that cares about this issue and project and do speaking events and book readings...
...hopefully timing those trips in conjunction with major artistic events--
- Art Prize in Grand Rapids,
- Jazz Fest in New Orleans,
- the Van Cliburn in Fort Worth,
- and maybe take in a ballet in the Kodak theatre while in Santa Monica area,
It's taken 46 years of life--and 15 years past when the key career counselor in Dallas suggested a pattern something like this would be my best and most sustainable fit and optimum way of making a difference for the whole--to figure out how to do anything like this!
But, you know the saying: better late than...
Makes Me Think...
I've never fit easily into conventional society--perhaps because of such dramatically different sides to myself. Tricky to do a pedestrian lifestyle in a nature-oriented but densely populated city like Santa Monica, for example, if your preference is to look and feel like you stepped out of a Dallas spa and are ready for a symphony performance when going out in public. :-)
Also very tricky to do the in-depth solitary wandering while creating writer's life out in nature if you run into people you know everywhere you wander, as I typically did in both of the beautiful cities of Santa Monica and New Orleans when trying to be productive there.
Here I have a daily hiking trail that takes me up to an incredible view of acres and acres that is just me and the farm animals, no interruptions in my solitary little Casita from phone or internet or drop-in guests, and on my town days when I'm trying to stay focused enough to complete blog entries I'm rarely interrupted. I don't speak the language, and I look like I don't.
Perfect blend for me of the general connection to humanity with all the fun of life happening around me but able to stay in flow for maximum productivity!
Not a conventional life at all. But then again, if we were each fully true to ourselves,
- would any of us fit all that well in trying to blend into the lemming-like nature cultures naturally lump themselves into?
- aren't each of us a mixture of complex parts?
- and might the world not be an even better place if we could figure out ways that allowed us to fully embrace and express all sides of ourselves?
- and all give each other that freedom daily?
It might also make it easier for us to answer that highly individualized question of reconciling our histories with our own uniqueness: How do we mine our own unique diamonds out of the coal that is passed down to us from the generations before?
My hope is that this optimum environment will allow me to stop running from the intensity of this call on my life and do the dark, hard, yet beautiful kind of storytelling that needs to be done if we're going to turn the tides on this issue of childhood sexual abuse that impacts 1/3 of the population in such damaging ways--with ripple impact to the rest.
It is the quest I am on here in this Costa Rica Writing Adventure...
- a world away,
- yet also only a few steps away,
- from my rural roots.
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