I hate straight lines in landscapes. The “right” angles become ever patterned grids that allow no scope for the imagination or creativity. It used to be a comfort knowing how to get there only turning left or right, now it just seems boring and redundant. I want a challenge, an interesting view, strange corners and alleys I’ve never seen before. Life is not the organized graph paper American cities and suburban sprawl try to make it. I long for the waving stone fences of Ireland, the irreverent mish mosh of streets in Rome, French wine country where vines revolt against their ordered lines fighting for sun much like the political protest and militant joie-de-vivre of the French people. Order and organization have their time and place; it is not on the landscape or in our neighborhoods. Gardens should be unwieldy. Children should run wild like vines. Directions should not just be rights and lefts; there need to be turnarounds, twists, and the inability to get there from here. Like our lives, we should be able to mind the gap but still forge our own way.
The image of conformity and uniforms as utopian must be destroyed. The middle class lacks creativity. With faux snobbery and silly pride so many Americans let their imaginations die. Striving to fit in, individuality is sacrificed on the altar of groupthink and assimilation. We must branch out or we will die. We cannot all be the same person or some version of a stereotypical individual. The direct lines of the Third Reich were destroyed by the allies’ ability to adapt, to devise new methods, to creatively attack from another direction. As Americans we must use this same ingenuity to change our country’s maps to reflect rolling plains, fierce mountains, and roaring rivers. Let us not fall victim to being agreeable and likewise. Instead let’s fight not only on paper but in our daily lives, let us be ourselves and proud of the differences that make our world interesting.
