Discipinary foci are the normal diet of the professional; cross-disciplinary — broader — approaches are mandated in the case of difficult questions, when issues are to be quickly sketched — in a coarser fashion — for the intellectually initited, or when the analyst lacks professional status and speaks as a dilettante.  The essay uses such a — broader or coarser — brush to sketch its issues, and when I read essays with joy, the topic lingers on and I experience a bond with its author.

 

Essays appear to be a natural domian for the aging scholar, the opinionated or the dilettante, because essays do not require time and depth to cover a topic; and the reader may opt to read essays becasue the staple is eaten and digested quickly. I have noticed that I have taken up the essay as a form of expression later on in my life, be it as an aging scholar, as an opiniated person, or as a dilettante. 

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