The word I wanted last class was 'idiom'.

For the first time in the readings we have done these past weeks, I can see many of the points Emerson is trying to make in this piece.  Which, if this essay is more difficult to understand than the previous readings, I probably didn't get any of it.  To a degree, all that Emerson writes is written both for performing as will as education, although there is usually a heavier dose of the latter.  On the rare occasions where he does slip into a mostly performative style, it is usually in a listing style.  One of my favorite points where this appears in the essay 'Experience' is the sixth paragraph from the end.  Earlier, he was writing about the world only being 'real', or as to be taken for granted that its existence is solid.  Life is a series of dreams and we swim from one to the next, never escaping the illusion.  We are always hyper-focused on one thing, exactly what depending on where in life we are.  Here, Emerson backs up his earlier points with insight about a cat chasing her tail.  There are millions of things that we could judge to be more exciting than following the appendage attached to our rump, but we don't.  They're out of the focus of our minds because we're tuned into looking at things relative to ourselves and our happiness.  Sure, we could dedicate our weekends to mercilessly finding a cure for cancer, but that's stressful and my not be affective and it's much better for our self-esteem if we just look at adorable pet pictures for the weekend and feel that warm fuzziness we call happy.
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"The partial action of each strong mind in one direction, is a telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. But every other part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same extravagance, ere the soul attains her due sphericity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate,--and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of tamborines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance?--A subject and an object,--it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete, but magnitude adds nothing. What imports it whether it is Kepler and the sphere; Columbus and America; a reader and his book; or puss with her tail?"-Experience