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Can You Achieve the American Dream by Leaving America?
I don’t believe in Tarot, necessarily, but the woman who was going to sublet our apartment in Culver City insisted on giving us a reading before we left for Costa Rica. It was the summer of 2019, and we were sitting on the balcony under a palm tree over the courtyard of our apartment complex. Well, it wasn’t a balcony really. It was the walkway. And we were in our shorts and sandals, with our legs crossed, getting dirty and sweaty drinking cold water with lemon while she spread out the cards in front of us.
I’m not an expert in the Tarot and I honestly couldn’t tell you what she spread out in front of us. A lady? A skeleton? Something with cups? “Ultimately,” what I remember her saying is that if we moved to Costa Rica, there was a chance we might become rich. I was skeptical, of course, but a week later a different friend, using a different deck, drew the same cards and the same conclusion. This friend was sitting with us at our favorite coffee spot in downtown Culver City under a jacaranda tree.
We didn’t rely on the Tarot cards to tell us what to do. We had already decided. But we did feel a little bit better after not only one but two readings confirmed that moving to Costa Rica was was a good choice.
This was the summer of 2019. My husband and I had never actually been to Costa Rica before.
Like so many Americans, my husband and I were trying to live The American Dream. We both wanted to be writers and own our own business. We both had masters degrees. We had a modicum of success getting published, helping others get published, and I had actually won a few awards and about $150 in prize money over the past ten years. Like so many Americans and writers, we found that our art, drive, passion and talent, just didn’t seem to be “enough” to make it in Los Angeles.
Whenever our income would rise, so would our rent. We’d get a grant to teach workshops, then the car would break down. We’d get a new client, go out and buy ourselves a big vase of flowers to celebrate, and then the cat would eat those flowers and need to get its stomach pumped. So it had gone and so it would go on and off for almost a decade. Make money. Lose money. Repeat.
If you’ve never had the chance to live in Los Angeles, I’ll tell you, it is a terrific place to be an artist. You can take classes with the best creatives in the industry. You could go to the downtown library for a reading with Zadie Smith, get your book signed by Tracey K. Smith, or go to the Hollywood Bowl for a live performance of all the Smiths. But then rent comes due. Meanwhile you’re always waiting for that most elusive thing - your big break, which everyone assures you will come when you least expect it.
When Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia published in 2007, I thought, “That could be me. I could write about eating and praying and loving. I do all of those things.”
“In fact,” I thought, “I could write it without even leaving Los Angeles.” It would start with a woman who wanted balance in her life, so she would give herself a month of hedonistic indulgence by eating in Beverly Hills, then a month of spiritual pursuit in Santa Monica yoga classes and intensive seminars. Then she would come back to Culver City and fall in love.
Of course, everything would go wrong. In Beverly Hills she’d spend most of her money in one night. The rest would be blown by overpriced crystals. Eventually she’d do what everyone in LA does when they’re broke—drive Uber. Her car would break down, so she would wind up stuck in her apartment in Culver City with nothing to do but sit on the stoop with her cat, wondering how things had gone so abominably wrong.
Instead of Eat Pray Love, I would call my book Sit Sit Drink Beer. It would be optioned for a movie staring Natasha Lyonne or Aubrey Plaza with product placement for Fat Tire.
I think everything you might want to know about trying to be a professional artist in Los Angeles can be summarized by what Bukowski has written on his grave. The words, “Don’t try.”
My friends from Los Angeles thought this was a funny title and I should write it, but where would I find the time? Living in Los Angeles meant if you aren’t actively working, you are looking for work, drumming it up, sending out emails, networking, working your mouth to lure in your next client, gig, interview or part-time job.
My grandmother, who was a terrific actress, came down to Los Angeles half a century ago with my grandfather. By all accounts he was a world-class opera singer. They wanted to make it big on the boards, but when they got down to the last dollars in their account, my grandfather said, “I think it’s time we join the establishment.”
My grandmother, who eventually made some okay money in the establishment, passed away and left us a small inheritance. I thought it was fitting we use it to continue making art. My husband’s family offered us some money to keep us afloat while we were “figuring things out.”
What we figured was that we should go somewhere to make that money last.
I wanted to go somewhere with an ocean. Some place where I could walk along the water and look at waves and feel breeze and cast my poetic eye onto the water and imagine my big imaginings and take deep breaths and close my eyes and dream. After living there his entire adult life, My husband wanted to go someplace—any place—that wasn’t Los Angeles. Also, we needed a good internet connection and to be in roughly the same time zone as our family and friends.
Costa Rica hit all of those marks, but was also listed as one of the most expensive countries in Central America. The taxes on products there are very high because the government uses them to pay for health care, education and other social services. My husband was skeptical that this was going to be a good choice for us. It would involve a lot of expense to move down to the tropics and establish our life here. “Would it really save us that much money?” he asked more than once. He’s the one in our relationship who asks these kinds of questions. He grew up in a family of electrical engineers and other professionals—people who know how to make spreadsheets, balance checkbooks, and load the dishwasher with optimal use of space.
I come from a long line of people whose motto is, “Leap and the net will appear.”
What really sold us on Costa Rica, aside from the Tarot readings, was hearing about a friend of a friend of mine. She was an online high school English teacher. She moved to the tropics to make her paycheck go further, and while there invested in a condo which she rented on AirBnB.
“You know an English teacher who has extra money?” I asked the teacher’s friend.
“In Costa Rica she does,” my friend told me.
And just like that, we packed our bags, sublet our apartment, got our cats their vaccines, shoved them, yowling and whimpering into carriers and headed to the airport.
And that is where we encountered the first of many unexpected expenses you don’t consider before moving to a foreign country. That is where we first heard the term, “Border Run.”
To be continued…