The walls of my apartment are bare. They are stark. They are white. Not cream but blue-white, bright white, cold white, a sea of white-out. If I put a piece of art on one of the walls, a nice drawing of a fox, maybe, or a bandicoot in a wooden frame, the art is swallowed up, made cold and sterile, drowned out by the clean infinite nothingness.

The clean, pure, infinite sterile nothingness. It stretches all around me. It swallows entire rooms. It has no edges or borders. It is a constant streaming wash of light, an empty blankness. I can see, on one hand, the appeal. But it is also boring, and I would like to decorate.

I’ve searched the internet for solutions, collected them in my brain, and have adapted them here for you.

HOW TO DECORATE WHITE WALLS

– Cover the walls in brown paper, cornstarch, magazine advertisements, and fabric spread on dowels.

– As an alternative, pleat the fabric. (This will take much more fabric!)

– Cover the walls in bits of grass.

– Cover the walls in birds nests made from spider webs and your own saliva.

– Cover the walls in colored light.

– Cover the walls in giant Rastafarian tapestries.

– Cover the walls in old, stained sheets.

– Cover the walls in beer cans and hot glue.

– Cover the walls in rhinestones and small, round mirrors.

– Cover the walls in pressed flowers.

– Cover the walls in living sea turtles.

– Cover the walls in plants.

– Cover the walls in walls.

– Cover your wall’s walls in fabric strung on dowels.

– Cover the fabric in other peoples’ discarded framed photographs.

– Surround the photographs with sticks (buy them cheap at the craft supply store!) and small, taxidermied animals.

– Infest the sticks with Real Insects on small, invisible chains.

– Collect the insects when they’re young, so that when they grow large they will not know their own strength, and they will not attempt to escape from the chains.

– Feed the insects dense political theory pulped in apple cider vinegar.

– Fill your apartment with humidity and tropical birds.

– Wrap the birds in canvas. Paint the birds.

– Buy cheap bookshelves. Line the bookshelves in colored paper. Put ugly knickknacks, chosen at random, with eyes closed, at the goodwill, on the bookshelves.

– Do not dust the knickknacks. In time, and with the proper humidity, your knickknacks will accumulate topsoil.

– Build a wall around the knickknacks.

– Deconstruct the idea of inside/outside, living/dead, preservation/decomposition.

– Deconstruct ninety degree angles. (Question: why are there so few ninety degree angles in nature?)

– Build a palace inside of you where your heart can live.

– Fill the palace with Russian nesting dolls.

– Build a wall around the palace.

– Go outside.

– Live outside.

-Lie on the ground.

– Do not try and stop the rain.

– Allow all that you have built to decompose.

– Accept that one day you will die.

– Notice how, in the forest, empty space is broken only by the trunks of trees and shafts of light.

– Notice the intricacy of every leaf’s serrated edge.

– Forget, for a moment, that you are capable of symbolic language.

– Listen to the wind. Feel the dappled sunlight. Wait.

-The land will tell you what to do.