"Do you like it at Silverstag?"
"Do you visit Silverstag often?" I asked a friend of Otter and Polecat.
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"No, not really. This is the only time I've been. Just visiting Otter and Polecat on a whim," he replied.
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I chuckled, "Yeah, I was visiting on a whim in August, and then I never left . . ."
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"Fancy!" He exclaimed "Do you like it at Silverstag?"
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Contemplatively, I replied, "I think Silverstag is okay. I don't know everyone here too well yet. I have been friends with Polecat and Otter for years through a polyamory gathering we've all attended before. I fell in love with their neighbor, Hibiscus, and moved in with him.
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"Everyone else I only have just barely learned their name, their house and their face at this point, with only vague ideas about who they really are. The land is nice. It sure beats living in the city, which is what I've done most of my life.
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"I like that it's an eco-community, but I feel like there are a gazillion design flaws. All communities have their major issues. Communal living isn't the norm, so each community is its own experiment, and many community founders have not even visited many other communities, meaning that they're isolated experiments, each learning the hard way.
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"I've visited only three other communities myself and this is my first time living in one. For years I thought perhaps I wanted to found one, but now that I know more about the legal-grumble-work involved, I'm not sure I'd really enjoy doing that."
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I was thinking back to my permaculture internship at Redbud Community, which had piles of zoning issues to work out. Redbud was set up to host twenty interns at a time, but due to legalities, could only have "one blood family" in the building. What a waste.
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Then there was the Eco Village that Hare was teaching Consciousness Awareness at - way, way to the east. And then there was the first community I'd ever visited, one that was only an hour away from Snowland and religion-based. It was that first community that had gotten me inspired to want to join or found my own community one day. I'd been less impressed with Redbud, Hare's Eco Village and Silverstag by a long shot.
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For one thing, what was the point of having the houses at Silverstag so close together if they were not to be connected? If they shared a wall on each side, everyone would save on heating costs, and everyone could visit one another without putting on coats and boots in the winter time, or shoes and sun hats in the summer time. Entirely separate houses made sense if one wanted privacy - to have a house by itself on its own hill, or its own clearing. But what was the point if the next house was only four to twelve feet away?
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That particular point bothered me the most. I'd been so impressed with the commune I'd first been introduced to because the thirty people who lived there really lived together. All three meals each day were prepared and shared in common. Afterward they would all gather together in their large living area for talking, dancing, singing and playing instruments. I had yet to visit another community like it.
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Yet, what if it only worked because it was a religious commune? They could settle their every difference by doing what the Bible prescribed, I thought. How do we choose our internal regulations, and whose preferences to go with when we have no such unifying code of ethics? Voting isn't enough. One or two people always getting out-voted means that someone is always getting the crappy end of the deal.
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I'd thought about it plenty over the years. I'm not cut out for it. I'm not enough like other people. The things I want to prioritize conflict with the majority. It makes no sense for me to live communally. Others have to compromise too much of their own ease.
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My latest dream was living in a green house with small cob guest apartments so that I could have people visit me for periods of time, entering my life and leaving it again as befit their own preference. I was tired of feeling like my needs were an imposition on others.
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Still, it felt like a fantasy. Marrying Hibiscus and staying with him in his house felt like a reality I could hold on to and count on, and so I devoted most of my thoughts, energy and time to making his home the best I could.