This is another post for my personal aesthetic practice.
Here are two pictures of houses in Regina. The first is an image of a house I lived in for a couple months with some roommates in downtown Regina right beside Scott Collegiate on Athol Street. The next is an image of a house in the same neighbourhood as I live now with my parents in the South East corner of the city. 
You may be asking how this relates to my Personal Aesthetic Practice topic “Childhood Wonder.” The answer is I wonder how this happens. How does this large of a gap in economic wealth and living conditions exist in such a country as ours.
Throughout our class we have investigated the aesthetic experience and what it is. We generally associated it with pleasant and beautiful experiences. So why this? Well so far from my understanding, the aesthetic experience is something we get, something we feel when we see something amazing or awe inspiring. It’s that little flutter you get in your stomach, or that jolt of pleasure you get when you understand a complex equation or read a really good book. But does it have to be “good” necessarily?
When I see these two images and think about what they imply and try to wrap my head around it, I definitely feel something in my stomach. But it’s not pleasant butterflies. It’s more like a sinking, stirring, sick feeling. Nonetheless this feeling, this ugly feeling, is there and cannot be ignored. It starts with my senses, rattles through my mind and finds its way into my gut.
I do not have a definite answer as to why this happens. I assume it involve things such as: effort, drive, work ethic, luck, misfortune, discouragement, self discipline, education, the list goes on. All I can do is wonder. I wonder why some people work as hard as they do, I wonder why some chose to settle for nothing less than the best and why other are able to let life slip through their fingers. It’s something tragic really.
Now, I am not making this post to bash either one of the people who own these houses. I am simply trying to understand how this happens, I am reacting to the wonder that fills my head and knots my stomach. It feels surreal. Hopeless. This feels sad.
How could this be an aesthetic experience -something that is suppose to be (or at least we associate it with) beautiful.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe this isn’t an aesthetic experience. I suppose you could call this the wonder of how far the aesthetic experience goes. Where do we draw the line? Does an aesthetic experience have to be a beautiful one? Is there any beauty that could be found in these images and in this idea of there being an extreme gap between life in our very own city. I wonder.
Update:
So after some thought, I felt like this post was unfinished. Further, I felt like this sad feeling was not an aesthetic experience. After thinking about it for a while, I was able to find something beautiful about these two pictures and the idea there being a very big gap in living conditions in our city. That is the beauty of potential. Sure the large gap shouldn’t be so big, in a perfect world there would be no gap. Unfortunately that is not the case, but the beautiful thing is, that no matter who you are or where you come from you still have the opportunity to make something great of your life. To some, being great means living in a really large house, and if thats what you consider great, the by all means go for it. But I think it is important to know, and believe, that we can change who we are and direct our future to become whatever and however successful we want to.
When I first put these two images together, I was upset. But now I look at them and feel excited thinking about the endless possibilities of where I could go and I cant help but wonder how I will live in the future.
Benjamin Ironstand 