I was reading ^ that book and Marcus quotes D. H. Lawrence when talking about freedom in America, and in David Lynch’s portrayal of America through the community in the show Twin Peaks.  The community in the show is located in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington as far west and north you can get in this country, bordering Canada.  The furthest possible from the nation’s ideals and the founding land of the east coast.  The quote struck a chord with me if we’re still thinking about having an intentional community (or are doing it despite distance):

“Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.
Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do what you like, there is nothing you care about doing.”

Our community is currently a severed one, and we are all serving our own interests.  Most of them are completely necessary for where we feel we need to go.  I, myself, feel I am at a crossroads of many different destinations all of them leading me to very different parts of the country, or to stay in the one I’m in right now.  All of these roads have about a year until they can be taken; they are still being constructed.  All of them are intentional, I have to exit the road I’m on to start them.  I hope and pray any of these roads ends, or at least detours, where any of you are.  But I agree with Ian that this community must serve a purpose; must desire to fulfill some unfulfilled.  I think I want to end up in any community, be it ours or another, where that is happening.  That thought makes me wonder, how am I doing that now?  Am I at all?