This is in marked contrast to the generic, cookie-cutter houses lining the curved cul-de-sacs (literally dead-end!) of the suburban hell that surrounds us and spreads like a mutant weed. The houses are manufactured assembly line fashion, which you would think would lend a certain amount of quality and standards, but don't. Instead, what you get is a relatively cheaper pricetag - and you get what you pay for. They feel cheap and chintzy, and although they have amenities like 2 and even 3 car garages, the overall effect reminds me of the cubicles at work - quick and cheap to setup, and just as easy to take back down. There typically aren't any sidewalks, and the few vestigial ones you see have all the functionality of the fake columns and lintels in the more expensive cookie-cutter homes. Thus, everyone drives, and when you see someone out in the street, they're usually just getting into or out of a car. You do see kids playing out in the streets, but that's just because they haven't been fully indoctrinated into the mall-culture that attends suburban hell. Yet. But I digress.

Our oasis of old-world charm, of course, has gaping inlet roads that provide access to and from the horrid outside world. One of the worst is a road called Uintah. Mostly because it's an exit from the interstate, but it also provides a relatively fast way to get across town. It creates an ugly gash across the northern section of downtown, and makes getting across the road an interesting exercise in assisted-suicide. Cars whiz by at 40 to 50 miles per hour, mocking the posted speed limit of 35 mph. This road is slightly more than a flesh wound and a bit less than a severed artery into our enclave. Nonetheless, it's interesting to watch the interaction between the compromises of the new world intruding into the quaint niceties of the old world.

Which brings me to the point of this little essay. On Uintah, there is an old house (they're all old) that I pass on my way home from work every day. It's a large, but slightly run-down and non-descript house. I suppose that students are renting it out, since it's location is a single block from the college, yet is on a busy road that makes it not so desirable. In any case, it's non-descript, or rather it used to be non-descript. A few months ago, which is conveniently at the beginning of the school year, I noticed a remarkable construction on the front lawn.

Someone had piled up the rocks that formerly constituted a rock garden into some sort of sculptural display full of whimsy and invention. There were entwined columns of rocks, arches, and pedestals. The closest thing I can compare it to is the rock art of Andy Goldsworthy. Some of the art was quite large and creative, and I was duly impressed with it, or as much as one can admire such a thing as you're whizzing by at 40 to 50 mph. I gave it a few weeks before some yahoo knocked it down.

I was right, perhaps; in no time at all, the sculptural fantasies were different, and on a less grand scale as before. I could imagine small-minded plebes cruising the outskirts of civility, alighting onto the delicate formations like grafitti-mongers to a blank wall. I could picture them kicking the small towers around like children not knowing any better, like Salieri destroying the greatness of Mozart to boost his own feebleness. And I could imagine the creators emerging like hardy pioneers after the storm, and doggedly rebuilding, because it was the right thing to do. Privately, I cheered on the creators from my enclosed cocoon of glass and steel, not sure which way the battle would turn.

Occaisionally, a particularly impressive specimen would rear up from the yard, thumbing it's nose at the destroyers-to-be. Inevitably, the tide would come in, tearing down the figurative sand castles with ruthless clockwork efficiency. And so it went, and so it goes. These days, it's mostly rocks piled one on top of each other. It's as if the creators can only do so much, or perhaps school or work is catching up with them. Or maybe the destroyers are realizing the terrible meanness of what they are doing, and are trying to rebuild what they have destroyed, even if it's a shell of what it once was. We will never know. Each day I watch for the now infrequent flashes of genius, but I still watch, wondering if the stone minds of the world will ever catch the real meaning behind the stone garden.