Robert A. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance drew a distinction between 'classical' and 'romantic' modes of perception. Classical is concerned with inner workings, with gears and levers that lurk behind the surface; romantic is concerned with impressions and associations. (It does not, in this context, refer in particular to romantic love.) There appears to me to be some similarity to Jung's 'thinking' and 'feeling' preferences, and probably to Snow's two cultures of the sciences and humanities.
As I start fleshing out ideas, I am at my grandparents' house, probably for the last time before they move out; I have looked around at the impressions and memories. What I realized a little while ago, with some degree of surprise, that my conceptual paraphrase, equating classical with what is deep and concerned with what lies beyond the surface, and romantic with what is shallow and only concerned with the surface, was mistaken. Perhaps it is a fair representation of Pirsig's book, which defines 'classical' and explores its inner depths, but does not explore 'romantic' much at all — but it is not a fair understanding of 'classical' and 'romantic'. The romantic mode of perception is also deep and is also concerned with what lies beyond the surface; this is true in a way that a classical perspective would not recognize. With this realization came an awareness of romantic impressions I've had — impressions which mean something.
The meanings that the impressions hold to me would not necessarily be evident to other readers; for this reason, and because I do not know of an existing genre that serves my purposes, I am writing about the romantic impressions in a non-romantic (some would say 'classical') manner. I will describe the romantic impression first — or, more precisely, the image evoked in my mind — and then talk about what it means to me.
Or that is one way to put it. A slightly more informative statement would be that there