My friend Tom Simon, is nearsighted. That may be why he focuses so eagerly on side-bar issues rather than the main topic. There may be some uncanny wiring connecting nearsightedness and disinclination to pay attention to the big picture. Perhaps as the eye is habituated, so too, the intellectual penchant.
Or maybe it's something else altogether.
It's certainly not a deficit of intellect.
Tom has plenty of that. He's a scholar of wide study in language, literature, science, and history. Tom can discourse at length on subjects ancient and current.
Curiously, Trivia, musical comedy, and the oddest of arcane events are as worthy of his discerning attention as are any of the more profound subjects.
I don't think Tom has ever been inclined to sift the chaff from the grain. His interest in the connection between the two, precludes interest in examining the value of either.
Perhaps that's why I enjoy our conversations.
If I say, “thus is so”, Tom brings up - in detail - examples of exception. If I say, “exceptions only serve to prove the rule”, Tom says, “truth eludes precise explication”, and so we ramble on.
On good days, we both take pleasure in considering things worth considering. Neither of us are impatient with the process.
I value having a friend who enjoys informed reflection as much as myself. In a world obsessed with the quotidian, Tom is happy to explore larger concerns, and, of course, the smaller ones as well.
So few are.
Without Tom as interlocutor I would be left to reconnoiter the verities only in essay or internal dialogue.
Some may think calling Tom a Sage, exaggerated.
I think otherwise.
Tom would disagree.
Tom lives in Cuyahoga Falls. I took "Falls" out of the title
because "Sage of Cuyahoga" sounds loftier. If I added "Falls"
it might sound parochial. Tom is a Sage in either case.