The Green Ray at Playa Grande

There's something about the sun over the Pacific that's a little more special than Atlantic settings.

On the East coast, you don't get that picture postcard sunset point of view you'll find at say, Playa Grande, Costa Rica (see right), late in the day, after several Central American beers (with their elevated alcohol levels), and also after the facts of the day, however productive (like a day fishing either off a charter fishing boat, or right from the shore, with no fishing pole) or a lazy day, like the hung over and hammock bound, locked in, gazing into a thick paperback with a simple plot, twisted with gun play, wild sex, explosions, expensive things, extraordinary settings, odd coincidences and working class heroes serving up the poetic justice for which the reader has labored, carrying through customs, raising the stakes to: "damn it, I'm going to finish this thing so I can leave it here!"

Reading like that can eat up a day faster than a fishing boat and a cooler full of iced local beer, that is until the sun reaches the point where the light changes enough to draw your attention to the ribbons of reflected sunlight bouncing off the ocean, and those sprawled out beach readers look up from their murder mysteries and salacious tell-alls to see the sun dropping into the water, and waiting in the hope of catching "the green ray", that last bit of sunlight bending over the earth's curve, turning it green for the lucky few, like the tortured souls in the New Wave film maker Eric Rohmer's U.S. release, "Summer," which featured the green ray in the final 30 seconds.

Rohmer devoted his directing career to making movies without using the Hollywood close up shot, or extraneous musical soundtracks that do not come from the "real life" action within the film, a kind of realism you surly won't see when Tom Cruise straps on for some impossible mission to chase international spies for the return of some deadly micro chip.

Rohmer, who changed his name, was known for the realism and the neurotic romance in his films. As in Jules Verne's book "The Green Ray," Rohmer's, characters spend a lot of time searching out that green ray in the belief it will bestow something on them, but end up missing that green flash because they find romance, looking into each other's eyes rather than obsessed with the sun's final green rays. The characters stop searching the horizon for their better deal when they find what they've been looking for next to them.

But no discussion of the green ray is complete without an honorable mention of Herman Wouk's green ray novel, "Don't Stop the Carnival", which is a love story too, in a way, where a fictional island in the Caribbean basin meets the carnival of American capitalism. "Don't Stop the Carnival" was published in 1965, the wake of two events that precipitated America's existential angst: Kennedy's atomic face off with Cuba there, and of course his murder. "Amerigo", the fictional island, was a place that maybe a Bronx born comedy writer, who worked writing radio spots to sell American war bonds might like to imagine, if there were a Caribbean free from Fidel's false promises, murderous secret police, profiteering and degenerate command economy taking hold from the tip of Fidel's silver tongue, or maybe in spite of such a dictatorial political economy.

On Amerigo, the natives look at America's influence on the Island as a seemingly endless carnival. Jimmy Buffet made "Don't Stop the Carnival" into a musical in 1997 that played for six weeks in Miami, as Bill Clinton and Gore were partnering to do telecom deals in Haiti. In 2000, Buffet played the the White House lawn for Bill Clinton. It's rumored that Bill Clinton and Buffet exchanged green rays on that occasion.

More recently, Disney got into the green ray act, with yet another fantastical, comical look at piracy, where the green ray set loose the souls of those trapped in "Davie Jones locker", sort of like investor and employee victims duped by the 65 billion dollar con artist, Bernie Madoff.

Sunsets in Costa Rica are a great place to search for your own green ray. They say it reboots the system, and if you are able to find the right piece of land to buy from a seller who is willing to entertain your low ball offer, you may be able to generate your own green rays. The fishing has few parallels. But whether it's Costa Rica real estate, coffee for export, a fishing charter, cattle, or timber, it's important to realize what's been done before in search of that kind of green ray.