One of my dreams--which, sadly, won't ever happen--is to be able to live in a retirement community when I retire, a retirement community made up of compatible people.

By which I mean people of the well educated, liberal/progressive, open-minded humanistic sort. Also people who share my interests of social justice pursuits, but also reading, knitting, pets, garden, etc.

After all the long years of adjusting to everyone else's viewpoint/lifestyle/whatever, it would be lovely to be able to quote Shakespeare and have it understood, to be able to reference the Platonic Ideals and not be dissed for it, to get out in the garden and grub around with friends. I am so tired of living with the great unwashed, who maybe have community college classes (for their careeer) and who seldom read a book.

They are nice people, but there's a whole side of me that feels the lack of understanding and companionship.

I envision a large courtyard, ringed with individual apartments, affording both privacy and community spaces. Not that it's ever going to happen, but I can dream, can't I? I have my Emerson friends now, and we are a community, but in typical American fashion we live in houses scattered all over the landscape, so we don't interact on a daily basis, but only on Sunday and the occasional weekday.

When I dream of community, I dream of something resembling a village of like-minded people, an affinity community.