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
