2013-05-21T22:26:12-04:00 W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=w-hunter-roberts Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for W. Hunter Roberts Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1705044 2012-07-27T12:33:05-04:00 2012-09-26T05:12:33-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/ 96th percentile on "balance." You know: balance of work and social life, family, friends, health, and all that. My life coach asked what I thought about that. I laughed. I'd rated myself much lower.

"That's funny," I told him. "It's not something I have ever tried for. I'm not sure I even believe in balance."

My coach persisted. "But other people -- many of whom are striving for balance and not achieving it -- see you as balanced. Extraordinarily so. What do you think they are seeing that makes them say that?"

His question gave me pause. What is this elusive thing called "balance" that I apparently have, even though I have never aspired to it? What are people seeing?

"I think they see engagement, " I said finally.

Everything counts. I am engaged, no matter what I am doing. If I am giving a dinner party or salon, I engage in every detail of meal-planning, cooking, and serving. If I am traveling, I take a big bite out of whatever place I am going, drinking it into every pore. I am engaged with my friends, making time to talk with them, email them, and meet them for a drink to celebrate whatever needs celebrating -- including nothing. I take time to spend the evening over a leisurely dinner, discussing life, the universe and everything, with people whose company I enjoy. I am engaged with my family, often spending a night a week on my VOIP phone visiting with my mother, while preparing and eating dinner. Because we live six hours apart, sometimes she is fixing her pre-dinner cocktail as I am heading for bed, and we realize we have been on the phone for four or five hours. I am engaged in my political activities, whether doing voter registration for Democrats Abroad or signing yet another petition against "Frankenfoods." I engage with my clients, my business, my ministry, my writing, the weddings I perform, rigorous workouts and yoga classes, diet, academic work, and the wine I taste. I try to give them all my best.

When my beloved was killed, I was actively unbalanced for a long time. I engaged fully in grieving for as long as it took me to be able to stand up again and resume life. When I take a day of "downtime," I am happily engaged in being disengaged, just puttering, reading, or watching old episodes of Sex and the City.

Balance is static. As soon as you move, it is lost. Nothing is static in a living system; anything static for long, dies. You walk by continually moving off-balance, leaning into where you want to go. It's a state of shifting off-balance to move forward evenly, going from one imbalance to the next. It's called equilibrium, and it is achieved by using all of yourself. Try to walk without your arms. You lose balance. Try to do it with just one foot. Even harder. Equilibrium is achieved by engaging all your parts.

It's ironic. I, who have never desired balance, seem to have achieved it. Could that mean that we are looking for balance in all the wrong places, trying to live lives of moderation, while fearing engagement with divine obsession? Maybe taking back your life involves engagement, and loving every aspect of it.

To hell with balance! Do what you love, really, and include loving yourself. The rest will fall into place. It's all about saying yes to what, and whom, you love, without guilt or fear. I make it a point never to say, "Sorry, I don't have time" to anything or anyone I care for. Yes to friends, yes to creative impulses, yes to standing up for what's right, yes to body's and soul's need to be nourished and cared for. Say yes to life, in all its aspects, and you will find balance -- a living balance, not a neat, moderated one, but one that is divinely alive!

And that's what matters!

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W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/ some Christian pastors are having a problem with President Obama's support of gay people's right to marry. Why? What does the Bible really say about gay relationships?

The Book of Leviticus is often quoted to justify objections to same-sex love. Leviticus 18:22 clearly states: "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." OK, but...

Have you read the Books of Leviticus? There are 27 chapters, each containing a boatload of prohibitions. Leviticus 1 is all about the correct way to administer burnt offerings. But we don't do those anymore, do we? Leviticus 17 consists of prohibitions regarding food, like, "Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth." Really? I should bury my chicken in the back yard before roasting it?

Leviticus 19: 27 commands: "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." So, whaddya think? Why are we not passing laws against the cutting of sideburns, or the eating of venison? Few Christian preachers in Texas and Arizona seem to feel bound by Leviticus 19:34, commanding, "the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born." Why do biblical literalists consider some of these injunctions still in effect, while disregarding others? The answer is obvious: Prejudice against gays has nothing to do with either Scripture or so-called "traditional" marriage. It has to do with fear and hatred, neither of which is a Christian value.

Marriage has taken various forms in different eras and cultures. According to biblical accounts, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines and slaves. Sexual fidelity was not expected of men; the Israeli prohibition against adultery applied only to married or betrothed women. David's sin with Bathsheba was because she was married, not because he was. He was encroaching on another man's property, which was a violation of Biblical law -- even for a king. According to Jay Michealson of Religious Dispatches, "In biblical society, when you conquered another city, tribe, or nation, the victorious men would 'win' their defeated foes' wives as part of the spoils. ... if a man died, his younger brother would have to marry his widow and produce heirs with her who would be considered the older brother's descendants." Those were the "traditional family values" of that day. There were even laws governing the proper treatment of the first wife, should a man decide to take a second one -- customs from more or less the same era as the oft-cited Leviticus passage. Mitt Romney's claim that marriage has been between one man and one woman for 3,000 years (an odd assertion for the great-grandson of a man with five wives), is about as historically accurate as "The Flintstones" cartoon.

It is only since the relatively recent end of feudalism, and the ideas of the Enlightenment, then the coming together of birth control, women's economic independence and moving into a non-agrarian society, that marriage has evolved into a voluntary union, based on love and choice. Like all living systems, it is continuing to evolve, this time, to include same-sex unions.

So what, in the 21st century, should marriage consist of?

I would argue that marriage should be a sacred covenant and legal contract between and among any consenting adults who choose it. A child is not a consenting adult; nor is a dog,
nor an inanimate object. Such a covenant need not always involve sexual relations, but rather, the long-term commitment to love, honor and mutually provide.

Consider: It was not so long ago when many women died in childbirth. It was common then for the unmarried sister of either the man or the deceased wife to reside with the family to help raise the children. Was this not a legitimate family?

Families come in all shapes and sizes. I have friends (yes, in California) who have a long-term group marriage. Two of them are lawyers, one is a high-tech entrepreneur, one was the mayor of their town, one is a teacher, and one, a financial planner. They are homeowners, pay their taxes and have cohabited for some 20 years, raising their children and providing a stable base for all family members. There have been rocky times, as with any marriage, but they have weathered them, and they are still together. It looks like a marriage to me.

Of course, there are prohibitions against homosexual acts in the New Testament as well as the old. The most often cited is Romans 1:24-27, in which Paul rails against "vile passions ... against nature ... leaving the natural use (sic) of the woman, burn(ing) in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due." But Paul was railing against a particular group of people, who apparently were disregarding all moral codes and love of truth, in their decadence, not people who loved and wanted to commit to one another. And Paul was a man working to build a movement and a church, inside the biases of his time. He was not God.

Jesus, on the other hand, was not building a church. He was building the Realm of God. He had little to say about sexual practices. I believe this is because such things were of minor concern to him. Nor did he espouse traditional family values. To the contrary, when told by disciples that his mother and brothers waited for him outside, he pointed to the group he was teaching, saying "these are my mother and my brothers," indicating that love of God and truth trumped family.

Jesus was more interested in love than he was in rules. That was what got him into so much trouble with the fundamentalists of his day. It was love that justified his healing on the Sabbath. It was love that called him to break bread with people who were considered socially unacceptable: tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes, revolutionaries and Samaritans. Who do you think would be at his table today?

Obama did what was right, and I believe he made the call as a person of faith. For this one precious moment, I am proud of my president, proud to be a citizen of a country in which change is possible, and proud to be a red-letter Christian, helping to usher in the Realm of God, where all are valued and love trumps dead rules. I think that Jesus would feel the same.

And that's what matters.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1489234 2012-05-08T11:19:02-04:00 2012-07-08T05:12:08-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
Recently I met someone who did something radical about it. I bumped into him in this little hotel in Spain. We walked along the main pedestrian street to the tourist office, as he told me his story. He was recently divorced from a woman with whom he had been living for years "like brother and sister." He had finished raising his son and had helped him get started in business. He had everything he was supposed to have: money, big house, responsible job, even a fancy lawnmower, like his neighbors. But something was missing.

He figured it out watching his best friend from the age of 6 die of cancer at 45. His friend regretted that he had never traveled, and now it was too late. It was a dream they had shared. So 10 days after the funeral, this guy locked up his fancy house in the suburbs, left his grown son, his high-paying but deadening job with the assistant he trained, and took a plane to Paris, where he got on a motorcycle. Never having been to Europe before, this high-school dropout is driving across the continent to Moscow, where he'll board the Orient Express to Bangkok, motorcycle and all, and continue around the world. He has no exact plan, just a direction and a quest. He was as open as any human being I have met in a long time.

We talked of souls and meaning, love and God. I congratulated him on his new-found freedom, and gave him some travel tips. "I don't know what you'll do when this is over," I mused, offering an anchovy in vinegar, which he ate with gusto. "Maybe you'll go back home, or maybe you'll sell everything and start a new life. Maybe you'll just keep traveling. It doesn't matter. What you can be sure of is that you will never be the same." His eyes shone with wonder. We drank the local wine and wandered through the Jewish section of Cordoba, visiting the Sephardic Museum and the great mosque-turned-cathedral during the Spanish Inquisition, then a Flamenco performance filled with passion that took our breath away. The next day I threw him a map out my window and wished him good travels, as he boarded his bike, which took him west to Seville, while I continued southeast to Granada.

Leaving everything is a dramatic move. It was what he needed to do, and was able to do. But you don't necessarily have to do the same to take back your life. You can take it back the same way people give it up: one choice at a time. You begin by being intentional and owning the choices you are already making every day, moment by moment, instead of blaming them on circumstance, or on your lack of time. Say "I am eating fast food because I choose to eat it; I choose convenience and speed over health and satisfaction." We are sorting and choosing all the time. The cumulative choices we make give us our lives. Everything counts.

We make choices we call practical without questioning what it is we wish to practice. We give away our "one wild and precious life," as Mary Oliver called it, for comfort, but do not ask what it is we feel we should be comforted for. We sell our souls for convenience and call it survival. But we fail to note the irony: The one thing we can be certain of in this life is that, in the end, we will not survive.

So what profits a man who gains the world and loses his soul? The man I met in Spain gave up his familiar world to save his soul... and in return, he gained his life back. Isn't saving your life worth a little comfort and convenience? Who knows? You might just gain the world -- and your passion -- in the process.

That's what matters.

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W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
There were hurdles. You expect that, if you make this kind of move, especially alone and without a lot of money. I had to find a flat. I had to get my residency permit. I had to replace my Mac laptop at Hungarian prices, setting my finances back at a very bad time. I had to figure out how to support myself, without a work permit or the book sale I had hoped for, and to build an international client base. By the time I wired the money and gave the go-ahead for shipping my goods, a year had gone by. Then came Hurricane Irene. No shipping that week. So my artwork and dishes, my grandmother's favorite chair, and the chest that moved from Brooklyn Heights to California, and back again, languished on a pallet in a warehouse in New Jersey while I camped out with Early Expat furnishings: an odd assortment of Ikea, the owners' antiques and posters, and minimal cooking supplies. I managed. By Christmas last year, I succeeded in cooking a goose dinner for a dozen new friends in my galley kitchen, served on borrowed dishes.

It is only now, looking back a year into my new life, that I realize what a crazy thing it was to do, and what a brilliant one. What made me take the leap? I went for a few months, to write and gain some perspective. Sure, I had a good time. I made some connections. I liked the art and music, and of course, the food and wine, but is that a reason to pick up your earthly possessions, get rid of three-quarters of them and ship the rest across the ocean, with no clear means of support and no predictable future? It's not like I had a job there, or a trust fund, or even social security, for Heaven's sake. What made me do it?

One thing: desperation. My soul was shriveling up and dying. Moving back to California wouldn't have solved a thing. I had to leave everything. I had to go somewhere completely new, and start a new life. My soul took me to Europe. I don't know why, but I know it was no exaggeration: I did it to save my soul. If I hadn't I would have slowly died inside.

For some folks, I suppose, that wouldn't be much of a problem. It might even be a relief. Souls are an inconvenient thing to have. They don't help you earn a living. Sometimes they downright interfere, with their insistence on ethics and justice, beauty and grace, and a desire to connect all the time instead of just going through motions. Pain hurts a lot more, pain hurts a lot more, as Sophie Barth shows us in her quirky indie film starring Paul Giamatti, "Cold Souls," in which an overly sensitive actor decides to put his soul in storage. In a world dominated by expedience, a soul may seem like a luxury, like a pet ocelot. They cost a lot, constantly have to be tended and groomed, they require substantial food, and don't like waiting for dinner. Damned impractical, I'd say, in the current economic climate. It might make more sense to focus on saving your saving your job, your house, and your credit rating than your soul... and most of us do. These days even artists are more concerned with design than souls. No wonder they've gone out of fashion.

There is very little in American culture that feeds the soul. The first serious sign I've seen of a common soul there in recent years is in the OWS movement. Its sounds resonate with the wails of prophets of old, crying into the Wall Street desert that life is not merely a commodity to be bought and sold, and that danger lies ahead for a society that does not heed. That is the soul of America, reawakening in a land of greed and easy answers. God and the soul cry out for justice.

Alas, prophets are seldom heeded in time. Instead, a lot of rhetoric called politics, spirituality, and religion gets passed out, like fast-food for souls -- sugary and easy to digest, a sentimental, feel-good palliative, but not very nourishing. The soul is a demanding mistress. She won't be placated for long; she demands real food. If she doesn't get it, eventually she goes crazy, or gives up and dies. Inconvenient wench! But "What profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?" (Mark 16:26) In other words, life without a soul is empty and worthless. Ask the Wall Street bankers. Do they look like happy campers to you?

I followed my soul to Hungary, where people still have music salons in their homes. I had no particular other plans or alternative, other than to give up on beauty, courage and passion, and die slowly, which wasn't much of a plan (not that I minded dying. Life had gone pretty badly for awhile, and survival for its own sake held little interest for me). But living a half-life -- a life without soul -- was unbearable. So I took the risk. I did not know then what awaited me. I certainly did not know that I would be founding a post-modern ministry there called Spirit Without Walls, which would fulfill me and touch many other lives. I just felt a yearning I could not deny.

Often the soul will take you by surprise, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, or when something on YouTube, like a flash mob, or a piece of music, stops you in your tracks, making you think and feel all at the same time. That's your soul blinking awake and taking a deep breath. The soul yearns: for beauty, grace, love, meaning, justice and God. Following its yearning it will lead you to your greatest love, like a homing device, calling you back to what matters. You may not want that. Or you may want it, but you may not be willing to pay the price. It costs everything. I risked my life for the renewal of my soul. It was the best bet I ever made.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.906829 2011-08-01T13:32:19-04:00 2011-10-01T05:12:01-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
Christianity's Great Commandment is to love God completely, and love your neighbor as yourself. The Ten Commandments don't spend much time on sexual mores, either, except for a prohibition on adultery (which meant something very different in those polygamous days). The oft-cited prohibitions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are actually pretty peripheral to Christianity, so what's going on here?

Is it possible that some of the fundamental ideological differences between Conservatives and Liberals might not really be about the deficit, taxes, big government, compassion, or even Christianity? Maybe it's all about control, which means, at bottom, it's really all about sex (except for a tsunami or a cyclone, nothing feels quite as out-of-control as sex)!

No one says that, of course. It hit me while reading about Michele Bachmann's husband, his anti-gay therapy, and her comments about "sexual anarchy." Anarchy: a situation in which there is a total lack of organization or control. It's quite a phrase. I had to think about it for a while.

The phase implies that if we let go of the old order, there would be a free-for-all somewhere to the left of whoopee. Conservatives like Bachmann and her followers think of it like Pandora's Box: Let one thing out (like gay marriage), and everything else (like pedophilia), will follow. Loosen the rigid, outdated, and outrageous standards of the early Tribal Hebrews outlined in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (which outline equally arcane and rigid food purity laws, which no one seems to think Christians should still follow), and lose all control. Better to keep the lid on it.

Is sexual anarchy something we should fear? If not, what's all the fuss?

Before you throw out the baby with the bathwater, and make that old liberal argument that everything is OK, and no one should judge anything, consider Kesha. I was at her free concert in Budapest a few weeks ago. Lining the street were thousands of tween girls in mini-skirts, some with their hip parents, staring glassy-eyed at the teenage idol, who was pretty much telling them that life and sex are a consumer event, and that their bodies are there for the trading. If I were the mother of a young girl, I would have hustled her out of there. Instead, parents, apparently thinking it was harmless fun, accompanied their children. I saw a father with his child on his shoulders so she could get a better view of the scantily clad, glittered party-girl and self-styled "ho." Vendors wove through the crowd selling little LED devils' horns as souvenirs. No wonder Michelle Bachman has a following! In a binary world, with Kesha at the far left end, you could easily think it was the end times--and you might just want to protect your children from the devil by locking up sexual deviance and throwing away the key.

Of course, we know from experience that such prohibitions don't work. If they did, we wouldn't have the high rate of sexual abuse and pedophilia among highly regulated Mormons and the plethora of conservative politicians and clergy caught red-handed in activities like gay solicitation and every other manner of sexual "sin," some consensual and some not. My sister worked in the hospitality industry in Orlando, where many religious conventions were held. She said it was common knowledge that there were more booze bottles in the trashcans and prostitutes in town during the Southern Baptist Convention than at any other time in the year.

I don't mention these scandals to make Liberal politicians out to be better, cleaner, or holier. We're all human. I believe these men, for the most part, believed what they were doing was wrong. But their laws and prohibitions didn't work for them, and they won't work for us, either. They create a kind of magical thinking, based on denial and wishful thinking. Sort of like the old "Try NOT to think of an elephant" game. Go on, try it if you never have. See?

Laws and prohibitions set up a "must have/can't have" scenario, which, ironically, sets the stage for "sexual anarchy," which then sets the stage for more laws and prohibitions. In systems science it is called an oscillatory system. Like the Chinese finger puzzles we played with as children, the harder you pull on one side to try to get out, the tighter it gets on the other. The more out of control things seem, the harder we clamp down to control them. The harder we clamp down to try to regain control, the greater is the desire to rebel, or break free. And so it goes, with each action creating an equal and opposite reaction. Each side increases the alternating oscillations until the whole thing explodes. In this sense, Michelle Bachman creates Kesha, and Kesha creates Michelle Bachman. You and I are caught in the middle, wondering if there is any basis for sexual morality that honors and lifts up our naturally diverse, joyous, life-giving and loving desires. If prohibition is not the answer, what is?

Progressives abdicated responsibility for setting standards of sexual conduct way back in the 1960's, when youth rejected the repression and stereotypes of the '50's. Now, in the aftermath of the sexual revolution and the gender wars, we find ourselves uncertain of who we are, how to relate to one another, and how to conduct ourselves sexually. Nature abhors a vacuum; Enter the Bachmans.

We are at a crossroads. If we don't want to cede the discourse to Regressives, Progressives of all stripes had better put forward a sexual ethic that works humanely and lovingly. Few people want sexual anarchy, especially as regards their children. We need standards that allow our sexual interactions to enhance and express the beauty and uniqueness of our souls. Such standards would not be rule-based, but relationship-based. We must look at the quality of our interactions and ask, "Does this affirm and respect the wholeness of the individuals involved? Does it increase the odds on love? Does it honor and celebrate Life Itself, in all its variety?" If so, there are qualities, which are more likely than not to be present: regard, mutuality, caring, choice, honesty, openness, and a willingness to be fully present. These qualities constitute sexual and relational integrity. They make way for authentic intimacy, and the flow of erotic love that connects us far beyond our ability to understand or control it.

We can stand for love and responsible relationship, in all its shapes and sizes, as a positive moral force, or risk losing the gains of the past half-century to fear and control. When sex loses its relationality, it becomes mere pornography. In the absence of life-affirming sexual ethics, it would be tragic and shameful to return to the destructive strictures of the past, which destroyed countless lives and cannot, by the standards of love and respect, be called moral at all.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.880682 2011-06-20T17:12:08-04:00 2011-08-20T05:12:01-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/ Anthony Weiner's pecker and Arnold's mistress. The tabloids, and even the more "respectable" publications like the Huffington Post, are increasingly filling their pages with celebrity gossip. Apparently most Americans are fascinated with people who think they can get away with things we can't, or don't, but might like to. The cult of celebrity gives us the seductive opportunity to judge virtually and get off vicariously on the people who play out our fantasies. We pronounce them sick or sinful, and congratulate ourselves for not being "like that" (without ever quite defining like what). Imagining ourselves safe from temptation, we return to our own self-righteous, hypocritical lives with a sigh of relief. Thus we feed our cynicism and resignation watching the great fall, not for public crimes against humanity, but for private faux pas. We paint a scarlet A on them. We feel entitled. It's part of our Puritan heritage.

But, not so fast. Why are we watching? Why are we discussing the private lives and shames of people we don't know or care for? Why are we filling our minds and souls with the prurient claptrap that journalists, who have already sold their souls to the highest bidder, are spoon-feeding us? Isn't there something creepy about our desire to know all this? Be honest: Don't you feel a little bit ashamed of yourself when you succumb to the media circus? Say what you will about the media; you and I are the ones consuming it.

When I was a teenager, and especially vulnerable to peer pressure and pop culture, my mother would put her hand on my arm if she saw me pause on the supermarket check-out line to check out a headline in the National Inquirer. "Oh come on," she 'd say, "You don't want to waste your time on that! You have better things to think about."

She was right. Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather not know. I do have better things to think about.

I understand the wrongness of sending unsolicited sexual content through social media. It is demeaning, invasive, and as much a violation as any other sort of public exposure. That's the point: Public Exposure. But public exposure has become a way of life in pop culture. Working out at my gym the other day to hip-hop pumped in on the speakers, I heard ," target="_hplink">Rihanna boldly declare " Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me." Well, OK, but do you have to tell me about it while I'm doing my sit-ups? Call me a prude, but I felt embarrassed. I mean, isn't that sort of private?

As far as Weiner's exposure goes, it's gross, but I can't think of it as high crime, like molesting children, selling public favors for private gain, or torturing prisoners. How is it that we let child molesters, torturers, and thieves off the hook with a scolding, while indignantly shaming a man who did what a lot of clueless guys do on Internet dating sites -- send pictures of their weenies to women who are not impressed and are actually somewhat repulsed? (Note to men: Most women are not turned on by disembodied pictures of organs!)

It's as old as Greek tragedy, the hubris of a great man, fallen to some venal sin and and felled by the crowds. And as " target="_hplink">Rachel Maddow had the solitary guts to point out , Democrats lost a potentially great politician in the bargain.

Nor do I wish to minimize the damage infidelity can do to a marriage. I am truly sorry that Maria Shriver was deceived and humiliated. But I am even more sorry that it was a public humiliation in what should have been her private pain. It is not my business to commiserate with her, defend her, diagnose her husband, or anything else, unless I am asked to by an interested party, which is extremely unlikely.

When Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone," (John 8:7) he wasn't only defending the accused adulteress. He was defending the souls of the people who were selling themselves out, people like you and me, prey to gossip and self-righteousness. When we expend our precious attention on gossip, judgment, shaming, and poking about where we have no business, we become party to witch-hunting and inquisitions, not an elevated morality. We are demeaned, dragged into the very dirt we think we are above.

I think there is serious confusion in our world between public and private. The difference is not one of artifice, but of intimacy, not of phoniness, but of boundaries. When an intimate image or story is shared in public, what is precious in private becomes pornography. That was Weiner's sin. But it is every bit as much a sin, if not more so, to peep at his private shame and judge him as any worse than many of us, including Rhianna. We are all guilty of Public Exposure.

There is a line in the oft-quoted Wiccan prayer, the "Charge of the Star Goddess": "...All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals." (Book of the Goddess, Co-edited by Julie Ann Rhoads and Ann Forfreedom in 1979-80; The Wings of Vanthi Coven. Doreen Valiente; "The Charge of the Goddess"). Love AND pleasure: what my lover whispers in my ear, what we do and feel when we're alone together, what covenants we make and keep, or break, is a private affair. I think celebrities and other people should be free to do the same, in love and in privacy. But please, don't tell me about it, unless I ask, and I won't, unless I care. Maybe I am getting old, but I don't want to know. I want to expend my energy on my own life and passions, sexual and otherwise. Unless I ask, or am in some way party to it, please keep your own and anyone else's private life, and parts, to yourself.

The question the Beatles asked in their 1968 White Album, "Why don't we do it in the road?" is, after all, not a very interesting question. The more interesting question is: Why on earth would anyone want to? ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.865189 2011-05-22T17:08:12-04:00 2011-07-22T05:12:01-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
It's taken since last year, just about this time. I wrote my first episode of "Notes of a Temporary Ex-Pat One," on Easter weekend 2010, when I boarded Cheapo Air Aerosvit through Kiev, to Budapest. Soon I discovered I liked my life better here, and stopped calling it temporary. I've been a year in the crossing, but I am really here now. It takes awhile.

Why Budapest, people ask. I don't know -- serendipity, synchronicity, call it what you will. I wanted a place I could afford to live and write, a place with café life and an international community. I figured I needed at least one friend to get started. The friend invited me, and I came.

Budapest is filled with people who jumped tracks. One of my new buddies is a petite blonde, who looks young enough to have a herd of twenty-something guys chasing her. She had never been here before when she arrived with her two suitcases and no plan. Actually, she hadn't been much of anywhere since her junior year abroad, and that was six kids ago. Her banker husband promised her a life overseas, but it never materialized. Instead he moved them to the Midwest. There she led the predictable executive wife and mother lifestyle, with kids, PTA, charity events, tennis, and a husband who bored her to tears. Eventually she bailed on the marriage she'd hated since before her first child was born. She found a new boyfriend, but he turned out to be a phantom. In the end, she was left in a dead-end town with no husband, no boyfriend, no profession, a lousy lawyer, and very little money.

She figured if she stayed where she was, she'd die. I'll take her word for it. Someone -- I don't know who, maybe it was her hairdresser, told her she'd like Budapest. She put everything in storage and bought a one-way ticket. She arrived in November and lasted through the winter on gumption, a budget, and her mother's old fur coat. She found a tennis club to sustain her -- her one luxury -- and played whenever she could. This summer her teenage daughter is coming to join her. Most people wouldn't have the nerve.

A lot of people dream about jumping tracks. A small percentage actually do it. It takes something. Maybe it takes desperation -- knowing that if you don't, you will surely shrivel up and die -- if not physically, at least your soul will atrophy. And eventually your body is likely to follow suit. But even so... most of us would rather die. It's a damn lot of trouble to do this. There are so many details to attend to, unless, of course, you are under 25 with minimal baggage. There is health care to figure out, and how to stay in touch with the folks back home, passports, residency permits, finding an apartment, dealing with your "stuff," arranging for mail, bills, work, voting, and taxes. It takes transferring and re-establishing all the logistics of daily life into a new place, from mail to grocery shopping. It takes finding new streets and directions, getting lost, being lonely sometimes, learning new customs and manners, and making new friends. It takes learning at least enough of the language to buy milk and bread. Having an allergy to cow's milk and wheat, the first two words I learned after "please" and "thank you," were kecske tej (goat milk) and tonkoly (spelt).

Moving across the ocean to start a new life takes caring more about your life than you do about your stuff. It takes being extroverted enough to go to events alone where you know no one, and being open to meeting people. It takes trying new things and acquiring new ways. It takes having some income (it need not be much) or nest egg to get you through the first six months till you figure the rest out. It takes the ability to plan ahead in the details department, so that you don't run out of vitamins, bio-identical HRT, or whatever else you consider essential to your well-being. It takes searching out the resources you need, be it a cardiologist or an acupuncturist. It takes facing the unknown, and trusting that some combination of determination and Grace will get you through. No auto-pilot here; it takes your complete attention.

You need to be able to laugh at your mistakes and quirks in the culture. The customer service in Hungary ranges between non-existent and terrible. People don't like to be wrong, so they just say "Nem tu dom," (I don't know) rather than taking a chance, when asked a question. Being unable to read packages, I often find I have purchased paper towels instead of toilet paper, or split peas instead of lentils. Iced coffee, my favorite low-calorie treat in the US, comes here with ice cream in it. Oh well. Like a small child, it takes learning all over again the small things that make up being in the world. It takes being100% responsible for your own happiness.

The pay-off is huge. This is just the sort of action the brain specialists tell us will keep our brains young and agile into old age. If just taking a new route home from work helps, how can your brain possibly fossilize when you are figuring out a new tram system, exploring foreign hiking trails and flora, or making your way through a yoga class that is taught in half-Hungarian and half English?

But the greatest pay-off is this: Your life. No excuses. No more rehearsal. All yours, just as you make it.


Photo by Beth Martin


I left everything I thought I needed to find everything I want. It is all gravy, or Grace, if you will. And it is all mine. Outside my window, a large cruise ship docks. People are playing shuffleboard on the deck. A barge goes by, and then a sightseeing boat. This afternoon, I may sunbathe on my balcony, or walk to the covered market for asparagus and strawberries, or the gym for a work-out, before I see my clients. Then I will walk to an outdoor pizza joint on Raday utca to share drinks and conversation with other writers for THINK, the new Central European literary mag. This is my new life. I have reached a new shore. I may stay here or I may move on; who knows? But one thing is certain. There is no going back.



]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.819666 2011-02-11T13:09:00-05:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
I am lonesome for a cup of tea and a conversation about God at Sarah's table, while she juggles Genevieve on one leg and George plays with his trains. I am lonesome for my big kitchen, the neighbors who knew me, Stephen Sondheim's music, my favorite jazz station, a Scotch with Ann, a martini with Russ, a walk down Broadway, a barbeque in Ali's back yard, and a cozy evening in front of my brick fireplace. There are no fireplaces here.

But most of my friends are in California, which I left long ago. I can keep in touch as easily here as from Massachusetts with Skype and my VoIP phone, but somehow the psychic distance seems to discourage contact. Then there is the time difference. Not to mention increasingly different lives.

A glass of good Kebfrankos would ease the pain. Or a Hungarian dinner with a fatty goose leg. I've been on a Spartan diet for a month -- no eating out, and no drinking. It limits my social life, which is just as well, financially. Money is tight, as often happens at this time of year. But I am far from home, so it's scarier now.

On top of that, I am having problems with the Hungarian Communications Authority regarding my wireless phone. They want to come and inspect. I had to call my lawyer. (I've been advised not to do anything here without a lawyer -- my friend took her lawyer with her to the post office to file a change of address card). It seems to have been straightened out for the moment, by replacing my lovely Plantronics headset with a Hungarian phone emitting a different frequency, but it shook me up. What if they took my VoIP phone away -- my lifeline to my mother, my clients and my old friends?

All the thoughts of "what if" queue up to torment me. What if I found myself alone and broke in a foreign country? What if I got sick? What if I can't make it here? What if I am just drifting, not starting a new life? Another of the lost souls I see on the street, untethered, with no anchor to the past and no direction home?

My fears are irrational, of course. I have the same friends and family I've always had. They wouldn't let me fall far before catching me. Medically, I got myself checked out before leaving the States; I'm in excellent health. I bought an emergency catastrophic plan, which would cover me if something dire befell -- even if I needed to be medevaced back. I have no real reason to be worried; but such fears, archetypal in quality, remind me that I am a stranger in a strange land.

I recognize these fears. They keep us from going too far from the home. Disneyland, OK, or maybe a cruise, but stay away from rabbit holes and emerald slippers, or you may just not be able to get back. Since I left the US, I've received numerous e-mails and comments confiding, "I wish I could do that," from folks assuming I have more money than they have. I don't. The only things that distinguish me from anyone else are faith, willingness to go the distance and an unwillingness to suffer large quantities of ennui.

I remember my first European odyssey, some 30 years ago. In those days, the only way to communicate with home was by waiting in line at the post office to mail a letter or make an international call. Homesickness could get really bad. For three months, I'd been traveling with my boyfriend through France and Spain -- living on beaches, tasting new wine. Now, it was late October, and rainy. We were going stir crazy, cooped up together in a VW van, parked along the Seine, uncertain what to do next. You can pretend you're on vacation for three months. After that, you got some 'splainin' to do -- especially to yourself. All the questions come up: What are we doing here? Where will we spend the winter? Shouldn't we be doing some thing "useful?" What about our careers? What about Thanksgiving? Lots of travelers gave up and went home. We decided to stay, and I, at least, was never the same after that. I made my first visit to Budapest that winter. Now, all these years later, here I am again.

Life is funny. One day it is so cold I don't want to go out. Then it's Groundhog Day. The sun suddenly comes out. My friend has a party. I open the door to my balcony, and golden warmth pours in. My guests read poetry and eat little Hungarian cakes. I even sip some sherry. I will return to my winter diet as surely as the groundhog will return to his hole. But for today, it is 45 degrees and I feel giddy. I waltz down Vaci ut in a light jacket and scarf. I settle into a café with heat lamps and pull the soft blanket on the chair around my shoulders. It is a joy to sit on the plaza and write. Couples stroll arm in arm. Mothers push babies in prams. Music students play Bach's Invention No. 4. I am happy once again to be here, where cafes have blankets and Bach is played on the street.

Tomorrow I shall go to the Budapest Opera, and Thursday, to a charity concert at the Finnish Embassy. I am strangely content in this foreign land with its complicated language. I am making a new life here, far from all that is familiar. Wherever that takes me, I am going the distance. I could be lonesome anywhere. In the end, aren't we all strangers in a strange land? Security is an illusion, made of lies we tell ourselves to keep us from having to acknowledge the great maw of mortality. Maybe I'll stay here forever, maybe I won't. The trumpet player reappears, as if on cue, and plays "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I'll go there next, I think.

What is home, anyhow? I was lonesome for Europe for 30 years after returning to the States. Finally I am back here. Sometimes it's hard, but sometimes it's glorious. What does it matter when or where we die? Why try to protect ourselves from the inevitable? What matters is how we live.

I think of an early Leonard Cohen song:

Passin' through, passin' through,
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
Glad that I ran into you,
Tell the people that you saw me passin' through.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.815121 2011-02-01T17:40:48-05:00 2011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
Whatever the reasons for our dislocation, we are Americans. We can't help caring. Something of hope, justice, and possibility burns at our core. It is for that reason we are gathered to watch Obama's State of the Union message at the Café Spinoza (you gotta love a city that names cafes after philosophers), a trendy, comfortable eatery with a theater, in the up-and-coming old Jewish district of Budapest. Gathered around the table are about forty registered Democrats, ranging in age from their mid-twenties to their seventies, sipping wine or tea. I look longingly at the plates heaped with real looking hamburgers in seeded buns, cole slaw, and mounds of crispy fries, thinking to return the next time my native burger craving hits, once my January cleanse is over.

At the head of the table is a large video screen. We are streaming the address direct from the White House. Most of us have refrained from pre-screening it on the Net, to get the experience freshly. The sound goes on and, through the wonders of technology, we are united with millions of our countrymen and women. We see everyone rise as Obama comes down the aisle with his winning smile. It is good to see the bipartisan Congress seated together, even if it is just a gesture. I am of an age where I appreciate gestures. Sometimes they even are a precursor to substance.

We seem to share sharply critical eyes and a sense of jilted love for our estranged country. It feels good to watch in this group of ex-pat Americans. In Massachusetts, my last home, I watched alone. Maybe we band together here because we're far from our native land. It's painful enough to be disappointed in the President you worked for and put your faith in; it's almost unbearable to be disappointed alone in a foreign country. I made it a point to join this group tonight in part because I didn't want to be disappointed alone.

I expected camaraderie and commiseration. I did not expect what I got: Obama shone. It was not his moment of oratory glory. It was the moment I had long awaited, in which he threw down the gauntlet of vision and forward thinking in real, do-able policy terms, in clear, pro-active, non-adversarial language, and economic reasoning.

Rich Tafel wrote a piece in The Huffington Post right after the mid-term elections, suggesting that Obama learn to speak Republican. It deconstructed the way in which Republicans frame issues in terms of fiscal impact and results, while Democrats frame issues in terms of rights. Thus it is easy to knock us down by making our arguments seem sentimental and economically ill-conceived. Tafel, a gay, Progressive Republican, was suggesting that Obama frame the very same issues and policies he had been failing to sell, in terms of fiscal soundness and economic recovery. Apparently Obama got the message.

That was the Obama I heard deliver the SOTU -- an Obama whose thinking, after all, references the Chicago School of Economics, speaks the language of deficits, free-market, investment, and sound fiscal policy. This Obama did not argue for health care based on what the Republicans call bleeding-heart Liberalism, of everyone having a right to care, but in terms of cost containment. He did not argue for alternative energy and high-speed rail in tree-hugger terms, but in terms that hard-nosed business could understand: American innovation as a means to regaining our competitive edge in the changing global market. A fiscally responsible way to pay for it? Stop subsidizing Big Oil, yesterday's fuel, making it sound like such a subsidy was mere nostalgia. Immigration reform was argued on the grounds that we are losing some of our best talent by sending students back to their native lands where they compete with us in science and industry. And last but not least, he talked about the need for less bureaucracy, the right of citizens to see where their tax dollar is being spent, more efficient government, and simplifying the tax code, long the battle-cry of business unable to innovate, buried under mounds of red tape.

His speech could lead the way to a true bi-partisan future: Doing what needs to be done for the nation and the world through polices that are humane, innovative, and fiscally smart both now and long-range; and to look at our problems through all those lenses. This is not watering down our Democratic values; it is giving them legs.

There were a few in our group who bemoaned the loss of the traditional Democratic rights-based language, thinking he was giving in. But most of the ex-pats assembled, savvier than the average bear, cheered. They saw the need to meet Republicans on their own turf -- the turf of fiscal responsibility and economic growth -- and challenge them there, without compromising our humane stands. In so doing, the President was able to take stronger stands than he had done previously on big oil, DADT, clean energy, immigration, corporate tax loopholes, open information, and education.

Republican and Tea Party responses were sadly predictable. There is a mean spirit alive in the land, despite the rhetoric of civility. Those who want to destroy Obama at any cost will accuse him of being elitist in his verbiage, and when he changes it, they will turn around and call his speech Disneyfied and disingenuous. When he comes up with real dollar-and-cents rationale for Progressive programs, they will ignore or lie about them. To those people, it won't matter what he does or says. If he quoted them back to themselves, they would contradict him; they already have. If he says black, they will say white. If he says white, they will accuse him of playing the race card. They will not, under any circumstances, let him win.

Their criticisms are not coming from a commitment to solving the deficit or the economy, any more than an abusive spouse is really in a rage about the dinner being cold. But this time he called their bluff. Their attacks in the aftermath of his speech seemed emptier than usual, as if they were flailing about, trying to stay on script with arguments that had no teeth, since he had already addressed each and every one of their fiscal concerns with substance. They even stooped to saying they were bored, as if it were the President's responsibility, in a State of the Union, to entertain the citizenry with a little bread and circus. And we may rest assured that, had he done so, that, too would have been criticized, as not taking the situation sufficiently seriously.

The Independents, Republicans, and Democrats who voted for Obama because we thought he had a shot at presenting real solutions and transcending partisan brouhaha, got the opportunity to see what he is really about, presenting Democratic values in hard-nosed economic terms. Whether his policies are allowed to succeed will be another story. But Obama took the high ground last night, and it will be difficult to take potshots without being called a spoiler. Whatever the Tea Party tries to spin from the speech, they may well fall flat. Michelle Bachman is already being called a balloon head. I like to think American voters are smart enough to understand his program makes sense for the future of our economy.

After more drinks and a spirited discussion, we finally left the café. I felt warm and encouraged, as I made my way home through streets that were cold and snowy. For the first time since leaving, I had some hope that my country could turn around. Maybe I could even help in some way. After all, like my fellow viewers at the Café Spinoza, I am still an American. And as our President said, we believe that anything is possible.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.798943 2011-01-05T12:46:00-05:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
Watching falcons dive for food outside my window, I can see the Szabadsag, or Freedom Bridge, connecting Buda and Pest. Bright green under the lights, it looks like it leads to the Emerald City of Oz. It bears the emperor's crest of Franz Josef, who presided over its opening just before the turn of the last century. German forces bombed it during World War II, but after years of construction, it was finally completely restored in 1980. Directly across the bridge, on the Buda side, the golden Gellert Hotel and Baths are built, like much of the city, in gracious Belle Epoque style. Across from that, standing high atop snow-covered Gellert Hill, is the Citadel, erected by the Hapsburgs as an act of domination after putting down an uprising in 1849. Alongside the old fortress is the statue of a woman holding an olive branch over her head, left over from Soviet times and ironically called the Hungarian Statue of Liberty. It's quite a history to look out on every day. It gives me a longer view somehow, of what I see happening in what is still, after all, my own country, even if it seems far away.

Nothing lasts forever, and I think the days of the American Empire are over. I'm not alone in observing this, nor is it necessarily a bad thing in the long run. But regardless of anyone's opinion, yay or nay, it seems too late to do much about it. Its demise won't be pretty. America can step down gracefully or go down kicking and screaming, in massive debt from fabricated wars and waste, doing the dance of the headless chicken. I have little hope for the former. I campaigned for Obama in 2008, but in spite of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell , I am deeply disappointed by his inability or unwillingness to stand strongly for much of anything.

I've been expecting this crash for quite awhile. A lot of what anchored us in the last few centuries is on the wane, from newspapers and some attempt at accurate reporting, to Christendom, mainline Protestantism, Sunday dinner, and civility. Yesterday a friend sent me a piece about Harry Truman, who made not a penny from the private sector (and didn't get rich in the public sector, either) by being President. I sigh. It's never going to be that way again. There are too many self-serving forces, like foreign governments now permitted to finance American elections, multi-nationals and government cozying up together, the world-wide domination of large pharmaceutical companies, and the medicalization of nearly everything (including more than 10% of the US population on psychotropic prescription medication, just like Huxley predicted in Brave New World) to go back or save it. America has cancer of the soul, caused by greed and entitlement, her leaders are fighting over which symptoms to try to suppress.

In the three months I spent in the US sorting out my affairs, I sensed a desperation I don't think most people were aware of---undistinguished, poisonous, and ubiquitous, like toxic water poisoning fish as they swim---people flailing as they drown, or running in place, trying to survive, trying to get ahead. You can find that other places, too, but there it seemed like a way of life. In restaurants and cafes, people obsessed with winning talked loudly about business and sports---not music, not art, not politics or social life. Conversations were more transactional than relational. Even with the economy in tatters, everyone was doing some sort of a big deal. I was constantly in and out of cars and freeways. It was all about getting somewhere---anywhere. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it made me tired.

The American Dream wasn't supposed to be about making a killing. It was about a fair shake for everyone, grounded in a shared sense of citizenship and concern for the common good. That ideology is vestigial now---mere political window dressing. Now it's about cars, houses, trophy kitchens, and the biggest, fanciest birthday party for your kid. The American dream is as broken as Humpty Dumpty, with people scrambling to get their share of the spoils while they still can. Some are angry because people at the end of the line are trying to take what they consider theirs, while others are angry because they're last in line and they can see the supplies are going to run out before they reach the front. I don't think all the king's horses and all the king's men have much of a chance, or even much care. What is shattered can never be repaired; it can only be transformed.

So why watch from a land-locked, small Central European country while Rome burns? I have no illusions that Hungary is a model of democracy. Some of my friends tell me it could go Fascist any day, since Fidesz, the party in control, can do pretty much whatever it wants, with their two-thirds majority--they've already done some pretty scary things. The economy is in trouble. Greed is on the rise among the new, young capitalists of Buda. But Hungarians have lived though good times and bad, as I can see from my window. They know it all passes, while Americans are used to getting their way. I worry about how that will play out, as times get tougher in a violent, gun-packing culture. Call me a wuss, but I don't want to be there.

America lacks simple graciousness.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-douglas-fields/rudeness-is-a-neurotoxin_b_765908.html Knowing a fair amount about shattering, I have learned the value of graciousness. I have come to believe that much of life is made up of small moments and simple graces. Here in Budapest, the embassies have Christmas parties to which they invite their local citizens and guests. I went for cocktails at the British embassy, hot chocolate and desserts at the Canadian Chamber, and a lovely symphony concert at the Duna Palace, given by the Azerbaijan Embassy. But I received no such invitation to the American Embassy. Nor did my friend, who was, not so long ago, a State Department appointee. When I finally got the low-down about what the richest nation in the world offered for the holiday season from a diplomat of another country, I learned that the food and drink consisted of some chips, cheese bits, and soft drinks. There was no music.

Yesterday I had to wait while a seamstress sewed a hook onto my coat. I was about to leave the store to wait in the café across the street when the proprietress ushered me into a chair and brought me fresh espresso in a china cup. I sat there for an hour while we talked of many things. The only time I recall a similar experience in the States was many years ago on a rainy day in NY, when I arrived late for an appointment with my Viennese doctor. Instead of berating me, he saw my bedraggled state sopping wet from the rain, and asked his assistant to please bring in coffee and little cakes, while I dried myself. This is the European sensibility. It may be on borrowed time, but I am enjoying it while it remains. I want a longer view and friends who have time for dinner, serve on real dishes, and take the time to celebrate life in all its glory and imperfections.

There is another, more inchoate reason I am in Europe: If any sort of positive change is to happen now, it will probably not originate in the US. We have passed the era of nation-states into the international era. Unless we entirely devolve into tribes--the other direction it could go---we need to think in larger sweeps, trends, and trajectories. Europeans are more international in their world view. The smartest young people I know are living on edges of nationalities, doing as much good as they can, creating a global future. I think the best chance I have of hearing the call of the Phoenix will be from a distance. Odd as it may sound, I have hope. It is not hope for America or any nation. It is hope for the soul of the world. It is hope that comes with Advent, for a new birth. Something is dying; that is the way of things on earth. But God isn't done with us yet. Something new and surprising may be arising from the ashes. I look for it in the mist as I watch the ice breaking and sip my tea, slowly.



]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.778206 2010-11-03T10:18:02-04:00 2011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
I think back two long years to Election 2008. I was in New York City. From my friends' 10th story window I could hear folks all the way to Harlem dancing in the streets. People from everywhere converged in Washington DC to celebrate the dawn of a new era. Now, lots of us, who campaigned enthusiastically for Obama just two years ago, feel like broken, jilted lovers. Like many Romeos, he was not what he promised to be. I am not naïve. I have voted in enough elections and had enough lovers to know the romantic glow can dim when reality sets in. I knew he was a centrist. But I thought he was fair and honest, canny and creative. And, speaking personally, I shared his taste for arugula.

Even though, as a feminist, I would have enjoyed pulling the lever for the first viable woman presidential candidate of my lifetime, I didn't. The reason: I thought Hillary would provide more of the same -- an old-line no-longer-New Deal Democrat, with solutions that don't adequately address 21st Century problems.

Obama had all indications of being a systems thinker: someone who would see complex issues, from education to the economy to the environment and foreign policy, as a multi-faceted system, and deal with them systemically. The overall interests of the economy, education, and the environment are not at odds in the long run -- not if you factor in the costs of global climate change in agriculture and extreme weather conditions, which threaten to displace massive populations and require trillions of dollars in emergency relief (of course, if the multi-nationals have their way, this will become a profitable industry with large government contracts); not if you consider the long-range economic necessity of getting the edge on new energies as part of a thriving economy.

It didn't turn out that way. First Obama appointed Tim Geithner, darling of the Wall Street foxes, to guard the chicken coop during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. My heart sank further when he left a loophole for lobbyists in government positions, and William Lynn waltzed right through it. Lynn was a Raytheon lobbyist for six years, lobbying extensively on a broad range of defense-related issues. He is now the top operations manager at the Pentagon, with final authority on a number of contract, program and budget decisions.

When Obama bailed out Wall Street but not Main Street, got into bed with Big Pharma, and didn't even invite Single Payer to the table in the healthcare talks, in spite of a groundswell of popular support for the idea, I knew the game was over before it began. Once again he had given away his chips to the highest bidder before even reaching the poker table. After that, he had nothing left to bargain with. Not surprisingly, his opponents used all their muscle to crush him, and he had nothing but words left to fight back with. It ended predictably. The adversaries he tried to placate abandoned him after getting what they wanted. Happens all the time. The American people were sold to the highest bidders: Big Pharma, the banking industry, China, and the Insurance Industry.

We should not be surprised by the lack of enthusiasm Democrats feel today and the honest anger of people taken in by the rhetoric of Rupert Murdoch and the Tea Party, even if it is an astroturf movement. I know an intelligent, well-read man in California who is convinced that it is the Obama administration that is driving us into economic ruin through regulation and increasing debt. He is waiting for the election results before deciding what to do about selling his house in the Silicon Valley. If the Democrats continue to dominate Congress, he is sure the economy will continue to fall; if the Republicans score a victory for business, he thinks it will return to strength. I am sure of the opposite, but many voters agreed with him. I just heard an interview with a former bank officer in Indiana who voted Democratic in 2008. This time she voted Republican because she lost her job and spent down a considerable amount of her savings in the past couple of years. She says she doesn't "blame" the Democrats; she just thinks it's time for a change. That's as much analysis as most Americans give to the issues.

Obama had the trust, and even the love, of the American people, who voted for something different. But he lacked the courage of his convictions, if indeed he had any. Under the expert guidance of Rahm Emanuel, he gave us rhetoric and more of the same old bridge mix -- bite into it and it dissolves. He was more interested in pleasing all of the people and all of the corporate donors all the time, than in getting the job done. As always, that MO failed at keeping the Democrats afloat. Obama and Pelosi accommodated the wrong forces and caved in to the wrong interests. Voters are sick and retching. Our votes will no doubt reflect our stomachs. The rest of his term won't be pretty. I have a weak stomach. I am glad I will be out of the country.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.699648 2010-09-01T12:00:15-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
Before I got back, my subtenant bailed on her decision to pick up the lease of my flat, which she'd rented with all my furniture. It was too late to change my reservations, so I was left having to dispose of all my earthly possessions before my lease expired on July 31, a mere 10 days later. Oh well. At least she saved me the trouble of disposing of my wine collection, by drinking it all.

If you're leaving, there's no point in storing stuff in the U.S. It just costs money and leaves you with the same decisions a year or three later. Might as well be done with it. I called my friend Elizabeth, who lives on my block, and arranged a tag sale in my absence. Thanks to the wonders of technology I was able to talk with her from a rural village in Greece while she walked through my flat with her cell phone, looking at every piece of furniture, every dish, every silver-plated serving tray, deciding what to keep and how to price everything else. I placed an ad in the local paper, and set a date.

Katherine, the organizer, says there are only three categories: Love it, Use it, Get rid of it. Noah, who moved to London from San Francisco, then to Boston, and back to London again, sorts a little differently. He says there are things of lasting beauty, unique and irreplaceable, like art. Then there are family heirlooms and mementos. Those are trickier. They have to have an actual story you can tell. Third, there are tools you use to make your life easier. He said my bed and memory foam mattress were tools for sleeping, allowing me to keep them, which was a relief. Then there is everything else--maybe cheap, maybe expensive, but stamped out and replicable. Those are in the get rid of 'em category.

When you sort everything you own in nine days, you see clearly what's important to you. I wrapped every single piece of art to ship, yet it was stunning how easily I let go of hundreds of books. I had to admit I would probably never again open the many tomes I had loved and had carted around for decades. Better to bestow their gifts upon someone else. I pared down a legal sized four-drawer file cabinet to a single box. Shoes were another matter. Would I ever again find the perfect pair of four-inch taupe suede and black patent leather spectator pumps? Or peu de soie peep toes with a rosette on top? Never! They got to come, stuffed into the bottom of my wardrobe. So did serving dishes, pasta maker, crock-pot, and silver. Winter coats went in along with my black velvet Jessica Rabbit dress, fall suits and table legs that got removed to make tabletops easier to transport. One large, ornate sideboard and mirror, which had crossed the country twice already, made the cut, packed with linens and lingerie. But bookcases, bureaus, sofas, rockers, end tables and dining set--all gone. Sarah's church was having a rummage sale, so two guys came over with a truck and took whatever I hadn't sold and couldn't take. The soup tureen found a good home with Elizabeth and Ali got the fragile angel.

By 8 p.m. on the night of the 31st, everything was gone. The rummage sale guys drove off with a truck full of furniture and housewares. The sales ended, the free box was set out on the street, and the international shippers loaded my most precious things into the van to wait for me to give them the go-ahead to send it across the ocean. The house was clean and holes patched. Burt took my sofa and two rockers to sell on consignment, and I was left with an accordion file, my laptop, two suitcases and a little money. I sprayed some rosewater on, because I had packed the shower supplies, and went out to celebrate.

It was amazing how light I felt. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I think I understand that now. In those days camels entering the city gates of Jerusalem would have to go through an archway, called the eye of a needle. In order to do so, they had to unload the burdens they had been carrying, or they wouldn't fit through.

There is nothing wrong with having stuff, if it gives you pleasure. But if you are unwilling to let it go when the time comes, it will keep you from entering the portals of the Promised Land. I unloaded enough to pass through the first portal that week. I am on my way. Stay tuned.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.635400 2010-07-07T12:21:46-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/
It seems far away. I left that world three months ago, when I sublet my flat in Massachusetts in hopes of healing my soul in Europe. My sojourn here is drawing to a close, but I have no desire to return. From this distance, life in America looks like a treadmill: working constantly to maintain a life with little reward or joy: striving and consuming.

Sunday a week ago was my last official day in Budapest. Berne and I walked through city streets along the Danube, to arrive at a long set of stone steps, which took us up to an outdoor restaurant sheltered with trees and umbrellas, overlooking the city. Soon Kathleen arrived. The menu offered an all-you-want, three course brunch of salads, soups, steak, fish, duck and desserts, along with coffee, tea and a complimentary glass of Prosecco. All fresh and homemade.

I ordered a bottle of good Hungarian champagne (right up there with the French, and better than any in California) for the table. Soon Alan arrived, and eventually, Beth and Gisela. There I whiled away the sunny summer afternoon in the company of English, Hungarian, Filipina and Americans, chatting about travel, politics, art, soccer and the wonders of Budapest. I felt far more at home than I usually feel in groups of Americans, where 90 percent have no passport.



Eventually Kathleen left for a walk, and Berne for a nap. Alan went for rugby, so Beth, Gisela, and I went to Heroes' square and secured seats for everyone to reassemble in time for the free evening concert. There beneath the statues of war heroes and angels, with a large stage and a screen before us, we sat rapt on cardboard stools and listened as Ivan Fischer conducted approximately 70 members of the Budapest Philharmonic in a concert of Schubert.



As we topped off the day with a glass of wine in a nearby café where we could hear strains of the jazz that followed, we considered a getaway to Italy or Morocco next winter.

The day was like many others. It happened easily. There was no involved planning weeks in advance with calendars, just some exchanges on Facebook. We enjoyed music, food, conversation, ideas, laughter and beauty: the things that make life worth living. No one was in a hurry to get anywhere. We were already there.

I used to host dinner salons in the States. For days I would shop and marinate, in preparation for a feast of conversation orchestrated with food and wine. Even though I'm a pretty good cook, over the years, it became increasingly difficult to find guests willing to spend an entire late afternoon or evening in meaningful conversation over a meal. "I can come by for an hour," friends would say. An hour?

On Monday, before leaving for Greece, I looked at an apartment two blocks from Franz Liszt Square. I am going back to Massachusetts to sell most of my possessions and ship what remains. It's not that life is easy here. It's that life is worth living, and there is life aplenty waiting to be lived.

None of us at that brunch table was retired. Nor are we rich by American standards. Gisela runs a pre-school. Alan is a real estate agent who runs a wine club. Beth does IT for a large NGO. Berne is a professor, and therapist in private practice. Kathleen practices acupuncture and energetic medicine, and I am a writer and liminalist, coaching people through transitions.

Philip, my English friend gone native in Greece, has lived here for more than thirty years. He came as a young man on holiday and never left. I met him during those early years, when I was traveling in a VW van. Back then he scraped together a living teaching English, and lived in an old section of Athens, without hot water. But there was always enough for a trip to the local taverna, bouzouki music, and a bottle of wine, which we would buy in bulk and take home in our own bottles. Now he's built his dream home in the hills of Evia. He works from there as a medical translator and editor, looking out over olive trees, a garden, and miles of hills and valleys dotted with stone houses with red tile rooftops. He is where he wants to be. In the evening, when we finish our work, we have drinks on the terrace, followed by dinner, either at home or at a seaside taverna. Picking up the conversation begun thirty years ago, we talk of many things.

I couldn't do it when I was young, but now I can. Because I work on Skype, I can be anywhere. Living in Hungary, I won't have to earn so much just to stay afloat. My new apartment will cost--furnished--half of I was paying for my flat in Massachusetts, and a third of what I paid in California.

There will be bureaucracy and frustrations. I'm sure I'll hit some bumps. I may not even stay in Hungary. Who knows, I might move on to Portugal or Southwestern France. But I know I want an international life. I am at home with an international perspective; I like being able to get on a plane or train and, for what it would cost to go to LA from San Francisco, be in a different culture; I like buying fresh food grown by people who sell it proudly in open markets; I like hearing live music a couple of times a week; I like the variety of people I meet; I like walking down the street and seeing beauty all around me, taking trams instead of driving, sitting in cafes on pedestrian streets to write, and meeting my friends for a coffee or a meal. I like the life here and, I admit, I like not having to hear Tea Party nuttiness on a daily basis.

So on this Independence Day, I am declaring my independence from the US culture of striving and consuming. I am still an American with certain American qualities I value: a sense of individual responsibility and a sense of "can-do," willingness to try things, and the belief that anything is possible, a belief in fair play, and the ability to be outraged by injustice. But I can take those qualities with me into a world where there is beauty, grace, and life in abundance. My soul is restored. I am ready to live again, and there is no time to waste. In the words of Auntie Mame, "Life, my dear boy, is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."







]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.600361 2010-06-04T12:36:01-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/ "Slip out the back, Jack/ Make a new plan, Stan/ Don't needa be coy, Roy, just listen to me."

Use any metaphor you like: The Matrix, The Truman Show, Pleasantville, or "The Hotel California." They all tell the same story. There is a place that has bright, shiny surfaces. It seems like the only place there is. It's a risk-free, artificial environment in which you are buffered from the unpleasant realities that chafe at your sense of certainty. Everything is handled. Death does not exist. But it's a little unreal. People don't seem fully alive or authentic. You're living in a bubble. Something is wrong, but you can't put your finger on it. Inside the bubble, everyone reassures everyone else that it's real, and that it's the best, or only, place to be. Outside the bubble is danger. After all, the bubble contains the best of everything--the best healthcare, the best food, the best houses, the best education ... doesn't it? Surely it is the world everyone wants to be a part of, the world no sane person would voluntarily leave.

Living elsewhere demonstrates otherwise. I go into a travel agency and see the posters on the wall for destination spots few Americans consider: Islamabad, K2, Cuba. Wow, I think. The poster for K2 shows a magnificent, snow-capped mountain. Feeling a little embarrassed, I ask the agent where it is. He tells me it is the second highest mountain in the world -- in Pakistan. I also find out there are islands off the coast of Croatia where I can rent an apartment in a fishing village for about $20 a night. It's a different world outside the Matrix. I think I like it.

I had coffee recently with an ex-pat from PA. She came here with her family two years ago, and now is returning to the house in the Pittsburgh suburb from whence they came, richer and wiser in experience. She knows her old neighbors won't be interested in the family's travels; they already treated her like a parent of questionable judgment when she told them she was taking her children out of the country for an extended period. What would they do for school (as if there were not good schools in other countries) or health care? One neighbor said, "It's dangerous out there. You shouldn't take your children."

America sticks to you like fly paper. You can slip out for a quick trip to Fantasy Land, or a Disney-fied version of another country, where you're carefully kept plugged into the Matrix through "safe travel" -- like cruises. You eat "safe food," stay in "safe hotels" where everyone speaks English, and come home with a bunch of pictures of monuments to show to the people in the "real world" of America. In my twenties I spent two years driving European back roads. I traveled behind the Iron Curtain, camped out on beaches in Greece and Spain full of international groups of young people, lived in people's homes, and overall, had my world turned inside out. But, when I returned to the US, people related to me as if I had been on vacation. They couldn't wait to catch me up on what had been happening in the world of the Matrix -- the Real World.

There is a lot to keep you there. Media and shopping malls conspire to make you think you are at the center of the universe. Everything revolves around you -- your fears, your desires, your ambitions and addictions. Most of all, your illusions. Who doesn't enjoy that? But ... there is a price. In the "Hotel California," you can check out any time you like but you can never leave. Don't kid yourself. It's almost impossible to unplug in America. It's not the technology to which I refer; it's the bubble. That's much harder to leave.

I don't know about you, but I am neither saving the world nor running a multi-billion dollar company. I don't run a daily newspaper that informs the nation or write critical legislation. I am not shipping urgent medicines to Haiti or stopping the oil spill. If I don't log on for a few days, no one will die. Probably no one will even notice. It is only my ego that thinks otherwise, and that is what keeps us plugged in. Every time we think "I MUST check my messages," we are feeding the Matrix, which tells us "I am so important that if I miss a single Facebook message about my friend taking her cat to the vet, the world will come unglued."

Unplugging is more than turning off your Blackberry. It is disconnecting from the delusional bubble of self-importance that allows your life force and blood to be sucked from you, while you are plugged into the world of pleasant illusion. You think you are getting the best of everything, but you are really feeding the machine with your soul. Try unplugging from that.

"Hop on the bus, Gus, you don't needa discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee, and set yourself free." Free. Breaking the spell of "this is how it is." It can be a marriage or a job. It can be a country or a culture. Getting free means stepping outside the illusion that this is all there is, and the fear that, beyond the known -- as the old maps used to say, "Here there be monsters." It's stepping into nothing and seeing what shows up and what you can create. It's an act of faith. It's also a dangerous thing to do: Take the red pill.




]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.560788 2010-05-04T13:30:00-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

W. Hunter Roberts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/w-hunter-roberts/ Note to Self: Accept any and all invitations which are not either (1) prohibitively expensive or (2) a danger to life and limb.


In three weeks, I have heard three classical piano concerts, one singer of American folk blues (definitely a low point), a private salon featuring vocal performance of classical Finnish compositions, a performance of Japanese flute, and one surprisingly good Hungarian Swing band. I've been to three wine tastings (one of which I got in from at two o'clock this morning), a hash that took me tramping through the Buda woods, an art and antiques fair, a political brunch, an International Women's Club event, and an open house with the "cream of Hungarian intelligentsia." I've had coffee, cocktails, meals, and Turkish baths. I've been to a fashion show by a Russian designer who works in Germany, lunch at the home of a woman from Azerbaijan, a Turkish boat ride down the Danube, and a six-course winemaker dinner in the Grand Corinthian atrium.

That is, by far, more invitations than I received in two years after moving to New England---which may say as much about New England as it does about Budapest. But never mind. It's great. Having a friend here to get the ball rolling certainly helped, but only three invitations came directly from my old friend, who has reclusive tendencies. I'm sure my state of mind and my readiness to be out of mourning helped, too. But I think there is another factor. It is called the Ex-Pat Community. There are 40,000 expatriates in Hungary. I think I have met about 50 of them, which is just a drop in the bucket. I'm working on the rest.

I got lucky my first week. At the first private concert I attended with my friend, three days after arriving, I met a well-known music patron, who invited me to two other events. I was fortunate in being seated next to an extraverted woman of about my age, who moved here last fall. We exchanged information, and she immediately started sending me links and inviting me to expat events, where I met more people, who invited me to more things, and so on. People give you their card. They take yours. They call or email and invite you to lunch or coffee. They know how it feels to be the new kid, and not know anything or anyone, so they tend to be gracious and generous in the extreme.

Of course there are always a few jerks. There was the misplaced Tea-Bagger who worked for Bechtel, "rebuilding" Iraq, who retired here. He spent an hour sounding off about immigrants in America who don't learn our language--this while speaking unapologetic English to our waiter. But wherever they came from, for whatever reason, they got out of Dodge and created something new for themselves.

That makes expatriates interesting people. Many have lived in multiple places around the world--Singapore, the States, Paris, the Netherlands, Africa, Dubai, the Ukraine, you name it. They could parachute down anywhere and make it work. They've learned to walk over to someone they've never met and start a conversation. They know how to figure out where to get what they need, whether it's an apartment or soy milk. They are primo net-workers. They find their power, not in hoarding information, but in sharing it.

Ex-pats have the guts and the imagination to try something new. They can create a life out of nothing. They're experimental. They've seen life from enough different perspectives that they know there is more than one way to skin a cat. They seem not to be as hung up on looking good as the rest of us. After all, they have to be willing to look foolish sometimes to make themselves understood in a language they may speak haltingly, if at all. The other night at the wine bar, I met an American from Kansas, who was speaking Hungarian with the owner. Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages to learn, having 40 letters, fourteen vowels, and no roots in common with any other Indo-European language except Finnish. I was impressed.

"Wow," I said, "You speak Hungarian."
"Badly," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "I aspire to that."

I've noticed something in the past few weeks. Ex-pats seem happier than the ordinary run of people. They like their lives. A few feel stuck with decisions they made and later came to regret, but most say they love living here. There's a lot to love.

Life in Europe is of a manageable scale. People have time to live their lives, meet their friends, have a meal, and listen to a concert (many of which are free). They take vacations. They travel. It's affordable. You can go to the opera or out for a glass of wine for less than $5. Life does not revolve around work, nor are relationships predominantly transactional. I spent an entire three-hour dinner in conversation with strangers last night and no one asked anyone else at the table what they did for a living. That's different.

Geographic solutions to personal problems have gone out of fashion. Part of the American delusional bubble is the belief that everyplace is really the same, so going somewhere else won't fix anything. If what's wrong with your life is a bad attitude, that's probably true. Bad attitudes travel. But if it's something else, like a paltry social life, feeling trapped in the rat race, or maybe just needing to hit the reset button and set some new anchors, a change of location and culture might be just the thing.
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