Have some Emerson quotes, I guess.
April 27– “Beauty” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860)
Summary: Maximum hipster!
Commentary: I broadly oversimplify the transcendentalists as a bunch of hipsters naval gazing and trying to pretend they're not a bunch of spoiled brats. This is peak hipster navel gazing. Almost every paragraph is some variant of, "X was cool before we ruined it by studying it," or "beauty is natural, we ruin it by not appreciating it." You just don't get it, botanists. You just have to feel the plants instead of studying them. That's it, that's the whole essay, over and over again, for 10 pages or so.
Which leaves me with how to get X is for something in here. I chose X is for Xenophile, loving things that are different or strange. I think this goes well with Emerson's thesis. He talks a lot about overstudying things (or studying them wrong) or losing imagination. Strange might not quite be accurate (I think he appreciates becoming familiar with plants or whatever). Novelty is really what I think he's going for. He wants a new eXperience that he can interpret and imagine in a new way.
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