July Fourth. Drinking morning tea on the deck of Philip's house in Koskina, on the island of Evia, in Greece, I can hear the BBC News playing inside. It is Independence Day in the U.S. People are getting ready for barbecues and beach parties with their families. Or maybe not. Maybe it's an obligatory office party. Or maybe they're too busy or too tired.
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."