where do you go when there’s nowhere to go?

I spent a few hours on Monday researching property in Uruguay. I was looking at 2 bedroom houses, modest but nice, near the beach outside of Montevideo. I found a reasonable cottage on an acre for $275K and have made it my mission to be able to buy that house (or one like it) at the drop of a hat. Technically, I could probably do it now, but I’m not sure how financing works if you’re an American wanting to buy a house in South America. Fortunately there are no financial penalties for buying property in Uruguay as a foreigner.

My Spanish is okay. Somewhere around that of a seven-year-old probably. I can speak fairly well in the present tense. I have trouble with the past or the future. That’s okay in many respects. The past is bittersweet and the future troubling. Best to forget them both. Both Uruguay and Argentina have had their dalliances with military dictatorships and fascism. The people there got sick of that kind of government and adopted something along the lines of democratic socialism. I worry about Brazil, right up there above tiny Uruguay — teaming with fascist intent. Would they press a button marked “absorb Uruguay?” There is a beach community called Punta del Este considered to be the French Rivera of South America located in Uruguay. I don’t want to buy there because the people who own homes there are the oligarchs, the billionaires, the people causing all of the problems we currently face. However, my thinking is, they’re not going to fuck up their winter homes. They might have a vested interest in protecting Uruguay if only because they want somewhere warm to go in December. I could be kidding myself.

My friend J who was my boss back in the Loser Industry days has been getting her Northern Ireland passport in gear. She has enough ancestral links to qualify for dual citizenship. In Uruguay you can get residency if you have $1500 a month income. My Writers Guild Pension would more than cover that. However, that assumes that the WGA and the banking institutions holding my pension are still functioning. I can, of course, try to sell the house here in LA — as my current boss is doing. She’s getting her cash out of her house now while she still can. I suppose if it’s a cut and run situation, where the only advance warning is the burning of the Reichstag, I could always start over in Uruguay. I mean, they have a small but vibrant film industry. There are universities where one could teach. But really what I’m hoping for is a kind of slow motion apocalypse with plenty of flashing red lights and when does that happen? The Soviets were pretty good about letting the air out of the tires slowly. Starting with Glastnost and the loosening of various restrictions to give folks a heads up. It didn’t work out in the long run. Of course by 2006 it was pretty clear they were making a beeline toward autocracy. It was such a slow slide, too, that they just sort of got used to increasing levels of fucked-up-ness. It’s legal in Russia for husbands to beat their wives. You can thank the Russian Orthodox Church and the Cossacks for that charming bit of legislation. We’ll probably have that here, soon enough.

Can you tell I’m in a bit of a mood? I’m convinced that we’re not going to take back the house. I’m in full liberal bed-wetting mode. You know that thing where you try to imagine the worst case scenario in great detail so it’s not so shocking once it arrives? I’ve given up on good news in the age of Trump. Pipe bombs and all. Plus the sinking feeling that it’s too late. Even if we showed up in record numbers we’d lose. That the races are rigged. That the fix is in. I have this weird feeling, ever since the UN Climate Report came out, that they know what’s in store for the world in some very accurate way and our last 20 years are about the wealthy plundering as much as possible before all social contracts dissolve. Anyhow, how are you?