Intentional Community: why I teach part "N"

If our un-intentional community simply ignores suffering and refuses to respond charitably to society’s injustices, the maybe we should build….

Intentional Community 

David Morgan told us his aunt traveled the world on her summers off.  She never saved a dime for retirement.  Each year she planned a lavish vacation to exotic places. She drew out all her money and went.  She spent what she had, on what she wanted. She saw the whole world.  She never married or had children.  She worked for many years, and retired when they made her, before she felt ready.  Retirement for Mr. Morgan’s aunt was a big step.  Much bigger than anyone else could have known.  Well, I disagree, anyone who cared about her and watched her over the years would have guessed her plan.  She died the year she retired, like the next day after her last day of school.

We were packing up after playing the song circle, and Peter seemed distant, a little flustered and stressed.  His usual efficient ways were hyper effective and we tried to give the big man his space.  Once we got on the road Peter’s steady hand on the wheel calmed him down, yes I said that right, driving helps Peter maintain when he is anxious.  When he’s calm, he is more receptive to chatter, and he took in David’s story.  We were celebrating the start of our own summer vacations, and none of us was taking a cruise.  We were all looking for summer jobs, like we always did.  David told us about his aunt.

After we dropped David and Vicky at their house, helped them trundle in the floor harp and baby grand piano, and said our goodnights, Peter cracked.  His reaction to the story about David’s aunt needed to see the light of day, he had to get that out of his head.  That was when I brought up Epicurus for the first time.  Peter is a person who does remember the Sixties.  He knew enough to separate the party down drugs and promiscuity from the legitimate political struggles, and invested himself accordingly.  His father was a lion of secrecy, clearances and intrigue as were others in that family, so Peter kept it on chill.  Looking back, he was a radical.  At the time, he was fairly moderate.  I was in grade school, and thought the protestors and hippies were the same thing.  Then I got an education at the university and was never complacent again.

Teachers in the 1990s, over 40 and realizing that like pirates, our occupational hazard was our occupations didn’t exist anymore (Thank you, Jimmy Buffet):  we had jobs and tried to be employees, but teachers are what they do, so fit is everything.  When the military industrial complex swallowed up the schools in our country, teachers became the enemy.  And the tactics were brutal.  “Psy-Ops” – blacklisting, creating psychiatric labels and disabling medical cures, stealing and then accusing the victims of theft, enlisting peers and students to set-up and drive out other teachers, we had seen it happen and it was happening to both of us. That’s when we started talking about building an intentional community that would be a school, like Summerhill. 

Click on the image to play the movie.  2008, 2 hours and 20 minutes (posted on the homepage of this blog - still working out tech to add in elements here)

 I made the leap, and bought the property in Aztec, New Mexico.  We were not, definitely not, interested in a commune.  I started reading Solviva, and planning for a greenhouse and garden.  Others had their contributions figured out.   We wanted a lot of privacy from each other, no counter-cultural romantic or whacky spiritual crap unless it were strictly private and not a community matter, and a commitment to live and let live with many shared meals and musical evenings always available to anyone who wanted to be there with us.

Things didn’t turn out the way I planned them.  The timeline was staggered, I was first and the others planned to come the following summer.  We communicated a lot on the phone.  As I described interactions with my new principal and neighbor I didn’t realize the effect this information would have on my friends.  The antics of humans who have too much power and too little accountability are notorious, and in a poor state fraught with corruption and nepotism, the events I described put even the seasoned educators I knew on alert.  If the kind of mindset that I was experiencing was “normal” our vision of a school and community started to look too idealistic for the place I had settled. 

I had fallen under the “enchantment” part of the New Mexico dream and having given up everything to come here, could not wake up.  I could not bear to face the fact that I was stranded in a hostile place with no way to escape.  It is possible to orient your life to truth and beauty, so realizing that was all I could do, I started a deep education on ethics, religion and philosophy.  I worked my tail off to find a way to be at peace, even though I am not sure how much time I will be allowed to live in my home with my family – I still need to have moments of respite from this daunting inevitability.  Of course I did normal things like try therapy, but in the end it was reading, writing and reflecting with a couple of old friends that saved me from living in the depths of despair 24/7.  Of course I am desperate and sad and lonely, but that’s not my home base. All I know is that I have to find a home, and if it’s not an external, concrete place then it will have to be an internal abstraction. And that kind of salvation is hard to sell to others.

No one came to live here, there is no school, no farm and I don’t even have a job anymore.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been blacklisted from the teaching profession, and called names and accused of crimes so vile only my best, old friends will speak to me anymore.  Everyone from my yoga teacher to the teachers’ union to the lawyers who say the will take my case and then never call me back, to my whole entire teacher family that has disowned and disinherited me out of fear and the shame survivors often suffer – if you look at that pie chart,[another graphic element I can't mange to put here, find in at School of Life, on their youtube channel vid, Suicide] things are not so good in my world.  If I did have a chemical imbalance, would I be here typing out this essay? 

If the hard, cruel world could kill me, likewise, I’d be dead.  My circumstances make people shun me, distrust me and scrutinize the most innocent requests or remarks I might make, things that are never pathologized when others ask for or say them. I am isolated, both physically, intellectually and emotionally, but I’ve found ways to cope.  I need to teach, it’s more than a job and I’m more than an employee, and it’s hard to accept that I am unlikely to be allowed to teach anymore. But I'm no quitter, and even if I do get it why people give up, there are ways to keep on.  Truth and Beauty.

“I feel like I’ve drowned, think I’ll head uptown.” 

                                                                        Jimmy Buffet A Pirate Looks at Forty