How to View the World Aesthetically

In writing for eHow, my basic lack of being a typical "how to" American male has really slapped me in the face. I'm not the guy who tells you how to fix your car, build a deck, rewire your den, or anything like that. I struggle with driving a car, so I'm certainly not going to tell you how to fix yours! I'm mechanically challenged, but I think this is because I view the world broadly in a manner that I'll call aesthetically rather than technically. I perceive, interpret, feel, express, and evaluate much more readily than I manipulate objects in prescribed manners. As such, sometimes my "how to's" are as much description as instruction, as is the case below. I appreicate your patience with this method of "how to". The images are particularly relevant to the steps.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Leisure
• Imagination
• A touch of madness

1. Let it be. Instead of confronting the world as if it's instrument to be wielded for ends you may already have in mind, try letting it be, let it offer itself up to you.
2. Snowflake photos by Wilson Bentley circa 1902 Remember when snow was beautiful. In your youth, it was not an ugly hindrance that was going to make you late to work or have to do extra work when you come home. Remember when snow consisted in individual snowflakes and you learned that no two were alike and then you made your own by folding up a piece of paper and making cuts in it?
   Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley was the first known photographer of snowflakes, and as I read in "Exubereance" by Kay Redfield Jamison, he was seen as a bit eccentric by his neighbors in Vermont. As I recall, taking the liberty to paraphrase her, this may have been due to his viewing snow and nature in general neither as means nor hindrance but rather as things of beauty.
3. Remember when colors were brilliant and new and each crayon exercised a fascination over you.
4. Male Luna Moth Peel your eyelids, skin your flesh. During my late 20s when I was admittedly going through an episode during which I was a bit "touched," I told friends on campus I felt as if I were walking around with my skin peeled off. Everything penetrated me with luminous intensity. A luna moth that had landed in the stairwell of the graduate community at Binghamton University burned into my eyes in a manner that seemed consistent with tales I'd heard of LSD usage, only I had never dropped acid, out of fear that I might never return from a trip.
5. Waterhouse - Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) Visit the paint store (both literally and metaphorically). Also during this period, I walked to a house-paint store, despite not owning a house. I remember being polite yet unashamed (as a child) upon asking the clerk if I could take as many paint samples as I liked so long as I only took one of each card. Somehow, permission was granted. I was smitten with the variety of colors, and especially the subtle differences between hues. The adult peeked out in me too, as the extravagent names of the colors, written on the cards, metamorphosed into beautiful names for beautiful women, both exotic and erotic. I ended up with a backpack full of paint cards to be used as decoration for my bedroom walls.
6. A Naiad, by John William Waterhouse, 1893 Let your imagination wander. In working on this project, I discovered quite by accident Waterhouse, whose depictions I enjoy so much that I wanted to add another, just because. This became then the last step, structure adapted to imagination rather than the other way around.

Tips & Warnings

• Share the wonder with a lover or with your children.
• Remember Icarus.

Who Can Help:

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